Killzone 3 pad lag measured

By Richard Leadbetter Published 5 November, 2010

Guerrilla makes good on latency claims.

Guerrilla Games says that Killzone 3's control system has been substantially improved over its predecessor's. Last week's limited release of the Killzone 3 multiplayer beta was a golden opportunity to put these claims to the test, and forms a small part of an extensive tech analysis set to be posted on the Digital Foundry blog tomorrow.

"Our first priority when we started working on the controls for Killzone 3 was to listen closely to Killzone 2's players - what they liked, what they disliked, and how they felt things could be improved," Guerrilla game director Mathijs de Jonge wrote on the official Killzone website. "We've recalibrated the dead zone to be more responsive and significantly reduced the input lag, resulting in far better accuracy. Best of all, we've managed to retain that sense of weight that set Killzone 2 apart from other shooters."

The verdict? Guerrilla has delivered. By using a Ben Heck PS3 latency controller monitor board, we can re-run the same tests we carried out with Killzone 2, where we established overall input lag to be a disappointing 150ms with the game running at its optimum 30FPS.

In this video taken from the Killzone 3 multiplayer beta, we re-run that test at the same optimal 30FPS frame-rate, using the botmatch option to best simulate offline gameplay.

Latency tests demonstrate a clear advantage over Killzone 2 in the closest we could get to like-for-like conditions.

Bearing in mind that the best latency result we've had from a 30Hz shooter has been 100ms, Killzone 3's 116ms response is impressive, and with the game still months away from completion, there's every chance that Guerrilla can improve the situation still further. While a 33ms improvement may not sound like much, in the world of first person shooters, it makes a big difference. We can also confirm that the developer has done extensive work on the dead zone of the analogue controls, making the process of aiming much lighter than it was in Killzone 2. Both of these factors in combination serve to make the new game

The impression is that some of the weight and "heft" that was unique to Killzone 2 has been sacrificed, but the overall increase in terms of the quality of the gameplay experience is more than worth it.

There's much, much more to discuss in tomorrow's analysis, including our thoughts on the game's 3D support - an element not included in the public beta...

Picture of Richard.

About Richard Leadbetter

Rich has been a games journalist since the days of 16-bit and specialises in technical analysis. Commonly known around Eurogamer as the Blacksmith of the Future.

Read more articles from Richard by visiting the Richard Leadbetter archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • lcmnick #1 2 years ago

    Post deleted at 12:48:44 14-04-2012

  • fongy #2 2 years ago

    Have to say... I hate FPSs - but I'm LOVING KZ3 - the maps are so perfectly designed, the weight of soldiers is perfect (as is firing) the classes are so brilliantly balanced... I still think there's an issue of spamming respawn points - but I reckon that's more of a player thing than developer thing - 10/10 if this isn't considered the best FPS ever then I'll eat my hat! (I wonder if the U.S. reviewers will mark it down as it's PS3 only and not on their 360 baby... I suspect so...)

  • butler` #3 2 years ago

    So it's actually playable this time? :0

  • riceNpea #4 2 years ago

    thank goodness. i did not like the 'weight' of the weapons one bit. the game was great and the multiplayer superb, especially the warzone mode but in the end i got fed up with the lack of responsiveness/sensitivity affecting my accuracy. thank you Guerrilla for listening

  • scorpius45 #5 2 years ago

    I hope they haven't changed it too much because I liked the way killzone 2 controlled.

  • carreirabr #6 2 years ago

    Wow, this is the lamest test that I ever seen.

    Why dont you DF guys try to get REAL data from GG's SDK running REAL debug tools.

  • rhinoxious #7 2 years ago

    Excellent news, sign me up for another stab at the Killzone cake.

  • RKOwned #8 2 years ago

    I have no idea what any of those numbers in the video mean.

  • vmanb #9 2 years ago

    Loved the old controls myself, it's what made KZ2 different. It took a while to get use to them i admit but once you did it was great. I just hope they've not made them like MW2 that would be a bad idea. Somewhere in between would be o.k

  • super_monty #10 2 years ago

    pre-order placed.

  • GamesConnoisseur #11 2 years ago

    I absolutely loathed the control latency, not the game itself, as visually, premise and tech is very beautiful and quite distinctive with eye glowing enemies!

    Some people says they love it, that fine but I cannot get around the idea of having a simple light handgun that still have 'heavy weight' and the constant need to readjust aiming. Trying for headshot with the ever present handgun was a game killing moments for me. Finished the game on hard and that saying a lot for my patience.

    I got the beta and yes really delivered on their promises and I m over the moon and will push KZ3 higher to the claim of one of the best FPS around.

    Suggested that if Guerrilla allows options for gamer to adjust the 'latency' that cool with me but I cant understand how gamers want the 'slower' responses in communication between control inputs to on screen resultant actions?!

    To me the quicker and shorter the latency, the better control and ability to response you have. Control latency is a different beast to the frame rates or even the speed the game move at, as even with the bog standard Pac Man game, if there is a high control latency then would give rise to more incidents of deaths and failures!

    Here to Guerilla Games for listening to their fans!

  • Lucodeath #12 2 years ago

    I liked KZ2 but would have played it loads more if the controls were a bit quicker, they could have patched it. More variety of enemies and different AI would have been welcome to.

  • GreyBeard #13 2 years ago

    Objectively speaking, there's more than enough examples out there these days of how to make a console FPS that plays "right" so that it really shouldn't be an issue provided the basic tech is there, but its good to see a team who are clearly working hard to improve their game based on user feedback.

    Killzone is at heart a really smart concept - mixing the grittiness of CoD with the future-tech of Halo- so I'd quite like to see a version that lives up to its promise without the compromises and issues that have diminished their previous series entries.

  • photoboy #14 2 years ago

    I'm glad there's one dev out there reducing the amount of dead zone they set on the analogue sticks. I hate trying to aim at something only to find the dead zone is so massive I'm practically halfway towards the analogue stick's full range before the game starts responding. Ideally I'd like to see devs including settings for dead zone and acceleration in the options screen, rather than just hard coding it into the game and only offering the ability to tweak sensitivity.

  • ChocNut #15 2 years ago

    More games need this kind of review. It reminds me of misleading screenshots back in the day - thankfully we have video now to see if a game that looks amazing in screenshots has a decent framerate/tearing etc. The problem is that controller lag is very easy to hide from the customer until its too late (and they've bought it).

    When I first heard the current gen would use wireless controllers I was wary for this reason.

    One of the key joys of games is interactivity - if you take away from that immersive effect by adding delay you are destroying the connection between player and game.

  • Collymilad #16 2 years ago

    So basically they have listened to a bunch of whiners and changed it so it's like every other FPS.

    I personally liked the way KZ2 controlled, the weight was cool and it was not that hard to get used to. Shitty players were the problem :p