Killzone 2

Then we and a chap called Garza are told to go off and open the floodgate. When we move over to Garza and press circle, he helpfully boosts us onto a platform and we turn to pull him up, before climbing onto a narrow lift and heading into the second part of the demo level, Stahl Warehouse. Up to now, Killzone 2 has stuck to a glum palette of sawdust browns, damp blues and iron greys, but it's had a gloomy brightness to it; as we head indoors, the nuclear beige of the cloudy sky can only break through in shafts, so things are darker and claustrophobic. Ascending a staircase with Garza we emerge onto a raised gangway that loops around the small warehouse interior, allowing us to fire down on Helghast for once as they scamper around large crates covered in tarpaulin and palettes of cans and boxes. Firing at a canister, at first the gas inside gushes out of the hole, sending the cylinder erratically across the floor, before it explodes, helpfully igniting some of the red explosive barrels.

But the Helghast aren't hapless, and are capable of throwing grenades accurately; this, coupled with the need to keep activating iron sights, keeps us on the move. This isn't a game where you can hunker down somewhere safe and systematically headshot everyone, and enemies react to our own grenades by getting out of their way. When bullets do connect (most satisfyingly when we've shot out the thin panel of waist-high cover they're hiding behind), the damage registers locationally and we get a nice reaction and ragdoll death. Physics are applied to some objects - boxes, canisters, set-piece items like the bridge - but mostly for effect. Having negotiated the warehouse floor, Helghast turn the tables by smashing through the ceiling panels and raining down on where we came in via zip-lines, but we're practised now and they don't last long.

After moving outside again to the floodgate control room, Killzone 2 has one more novelty for us: using the Sixaxis to turn the valve. Pressing the circle button, we then grab the valve with both hands (L1 and R1) and twist the pad left, as though rotating a steering wheel, before releasing the shoulder buttons, returning our hands to 10 and 2 to take hold again and repeating the action. After a few twists, the floodgate opens, and we're able to leave the control room, dispatching our last few Helghast enemies just outside, and stand on a ledge above the opening we created to watch our armoured vehicles trundle through. At which point we make for a nearby doorway on Garza's tail and the game fades to black, before showing us a highlight reel of what comes next: shootouts of greater scope, and firing a turret Howitzer at the side of a building, which then falls completely apart. But what to make of Killzone 2 on the basis of all this?

Well, impressions are likely to be muted in some quarters for a simple reason: this is a Call of Duty 4-style trail of interactive set-pieces, and for that to work the actions that trigger each event have to be carefully measured and anticipated by the script, or the illusion falls apart. It's like a train ride through the haunted house at a funfair: things pop out at you on cue, and spotlights and sound effects are used to direct your attention. At the moment, Killzone 2's script is playing out at a set speed, and it's possible to get ahead of it, so that you have to wait for Garza to get his cue to move forward, or behind it, so that your squad wipes out the opposition in a showcase fire-fight while you're still fumbling over the buttons. It sounds like a massive problem, and it has big implications for those of us trying to preview the game, but it's just an unfortunate byproduct of designing a game this way; the illusion's only fit to judge when it's complete.

That said, there's already a distinctive urgency to the combat. It's not so different to anything else on the market in some respects - you can hold one big gun and one small one, scarlet trickles into your desaturating vision to indicate a build-up of damage, there's a lot of military banter - but being forced to move around and keep aiming manually takes us out of our comfort zone again, as invading an alien planet probably ought to, with the lean-and-peek cover system allowing for precision. Meanwhile your enemies, while easy enough to overwhelm in the bit we played, are clearly not stupid. Once again, though, what we've been shown and played through is open to interpretation, and predicts more than it instructs. With Killzone 2 now down for a February 2009 release, expect us to get more extensive exposure to the game later in the year, when we stand a better chance of getting to know one of the PS3's most interesting shooters.