Killzone 3 Reviews

Killzone 3 somehow manages to be both over the top and forgettable. You play as a rag tag group of douchebags who invade another planet, assassinate that planet's leader and then nuke the entire planet for good measure. It sort of makes you wonder if you're playing as the bad guys.

I've played both Killzone2 and Killzone3. The latter's story is somewhat lacking, and even dull compared to its prequel (story-wise), however, what it lacks in storytelling delivers in multi-player. The role-system is well defined, and it's more easier to ascend in one role than it was in this game's predecessor.
In Killzone2 you started off as a ordinary private (no special abilities or weapons), and by gaining more exp. points, you could unlock special roles starting from the medic over the engineer etc. to the marksman. In Killzone3 you can choose your specific role from the get-go, and by gaining experience points you can unlock weapons and advanced weapons and abilities for your favorite role.
The game modes are the same as in the second installment with one additional game mode. Guerrilla mode is your team-death-match, Warzone is a mixed, plant-bomb/defend, assassinate/protect, team-death-match, inverse-capture-the-flag (with one flag) game where the end of the timer, or achievement of a goal triggers the next round. In operations one team is on offense and the other is on defense (unlike in Warzone wherein these roles swap eventually). The maps are diverse, and fairly balanced, which some of them contain special vehicles like walkers or jet-packs.
Final words: if you've played KZ2 and concerned exclusively about the story part you may reconsider buying this, but if you're in for the multi-player it's a must have!
For more info on roles and etc. you may visit the Killzone homepage...

The Helghast, with their glowing red eyes and gasmasks, are some of the most intimidating enemies in a game. Their smart AI also means that they often put up a fair fight to stay alive, but it’s just a shame that the Helghast and the Killzone universe have been largely wasted within the series, and the back-story certainly shows that there’s a lot of potential.
The story of this third game picks up right where the second game in the series left off, and with the Helghan leader Scolar Visari dead, there’s a power struggle for leadership as the Helghast concoct a grand new plan. It’s a decent enough story and exciting at times, although the characters could certainly be more interesting than the mostly hollow shells that they are here. If anything, at least we do get a little bit of character out of the Helghan villains, with excellent performances from Ray Winstone and Malcom MacDowell as an argumentative pair of power hungry men.
As for the game itself, it’s still the same cover-based affair in which you take on clever gasmask wearing enemies, it still has the well made multiplayer, and the story still has the potential to be better than it actually is. But, Killzone 3 certainly has a number of improvements over the second game, so let’s start with the campaign.
There’s much more variation to be found throughout the campaign. Levels are more diverse in their range – very Killzone 2 esque in one instance with its urban areas, while there’s also an eye catching jungle with bright orange and deadly plant life, and another area which sees snow swirling around your head and laid beneath your feet. The diversity in areas and colour was definitely an improvement worth making, and the spectacular visuals once again puts Killzone 3 up there in the best looking games lists. If you have a capable TV, you can even play in magic 3D, which apparently looks very, very nice.
Other campaign enhancements include your AI buddies being able to revive you if they’re given the chance or you aren’t too badly wounded. What’s more is that if you have a couple of AI comrades on your side during the campaign, if one ends up incapacitated the other will help him out and bring him back to his feet. These are improvements that make playing Killzone even more pleasurable, better even.
I’m also happy to say that there’s nothing as frustrating as one of the segments towards the end of the second game, and those who have played Killzone 2 will know exactly what I’m speaking of, as will their broken controllers, possibly. So as a campaign, it’s more diverse, less frustrating and simply a better all-rounder.
Killzone 3 even has stealth, although Killzone 2 players who are concerned that it has suddenly turned into a first person Metal Gear Solid, well what can I say? There’s only a solitary stealth level in the entire game, so that is hardly the case. What begins as dumb Call of Duty style stealth becomes less of a hand holder later in the level. There are also a few vehicle sections and even a new jetpack for short bursts of flight – fun to use and a nice change of pace, but criminally underused.
The actual shooting feels quite different – the weighty feeling of the guns of previous games isn’t as obvious now, with movement speed being quicker and, as a result, this may be disappointing for those who really thought that it helped the Killzone series feel unique in what is a very busy genre. But other than this the shooting still feels excellent and as intense and as brutal as it was in Killzone 2. Well, to be honest the action is now even more brutal – violent melee attacks can be utilised, and doing such things as poking fingers through eyes gets the job done, albeit in a very nasty manner of course.
Move support is another new addition, and one which has been implemented superbly. We all know that motion controller’s such as Move have the potential to work very well in FPS games, and Killzone 3 is one of the best examples yet. It works really well and could easily become my first method of controlling the game.
The multiplayer is of course the other portion of the game. Firstly, the campaign can be played through with another player beside you in split screen, which copes just as well as split screen players would hope and doesn’t suffer from too much slowdown. The popular online multiplayer modes make a return, with Warzone being joined by the all new Guerrilla Warfare and Operations mode. Warzone gives your team randomised objectives; Guerrilla Warfare is your typical team deathmatch, and finally Operations mode has the ISA on the offensive and the Helghan soldiers on the defensive, with snippets of cut-scenes featuring your own soldier as well as those of your teammates as you attempt to complete given tasks. Once again, multiplayer, with its array of weapons, classes and well designed maps, is a strong point and deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the best of them.
I’ll almost be repeating my closing paragraph from my Killzone 2 review right here, although similarly the game is a tremendous package of a brutal, harsh and exciting campaign alongside a stunning set of multiplayer options. What’s different is that this package is almost an improvement in every single way, and just as long as you haven’t become too jaded with the standard FPS, Killzone 3 will likely hit the spot like one of those many smartly placed Helghan grenades.

If Sony has proven anything this generation it's that getting off to a slow start did nothing in deterring them as the years progressed. Their immensely powerful current-generation gaming console, the PlayStation 3, was literally a laughing stock for two years. When it launched in 2006 consumers were left awe-stricken at its "outrageous" price tag of $600. Matters were made no better when many early adopters were given a software line-up that was decidedly less-than-thrilling. The PS3's sales were such a disaster that I've heard Sony has, as of last year, just begun to recoup the production costs of the reportedly very expensive PlayStation 3. By 2008 it seemed quite likely that Sony could go the way of Sega and gracefully bow out of the game console market.

But something happened. The crappy third-party ports became fewer and fewer. Sony's exclusive titles, such as the award-winning Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and the exciting Resistance 2, were met with great reviews and overwhelming praise from both gamers and critics alike. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots released to some fairly hefty fanfare, glowing reviews and increased system sales. By the end of 2008 consumers had finally stopped laughing at the PS3 and instead saw it for what it really was: a complex game console that had talented developers supporting it that were more than capable of creating true next-gen games. Other heavy-hitters like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Heavy Rain, and God of War III further cemented the notion that the PS3 was in fact a very capable console with consistent quality in its first-party games that has so far gone unrivaled.

I say that to say this. When I first purchased my PS3 back in February of 2009 I had walked right into the PS3's defining moments. I wasn't there for all of the brouhaha prior, but I was there to see the snickering stop and folks finally give the system the credit it so rightfully deserves. February of that year also brought forth another milestone for the PS3 and that was Killzone 2. It was being touted as the PS3's long-awaited savior and given the kind of hype and press attention very few exclusive games get anymore. If you owned a PS3 at the very start of 2009 you most certainly were aware of Killzone 2's imminent release. It was showered with praise upon launch and even with hard-to-master controls, that didn't stop gamers (myself included) from naming it one of the best shooters this generation. With the utter excellence of Killzone 2 we could only hope and pray that it's pending sequel would live up to that initial promise.

And Killzone 3 is precisely that kind of sequel. It is nothing short of pure gaming nirvana. There are only a handful of first-person shooters that you can’t seem to put down, that eat away at your subconscious, begging you to place that controller back into your hands until you finally complete them. Killzone 3 is one such shooter. FPS's are by design very repetitious and Killzone 3 is really no different. Its mechanics, set-pieces, and ball-numbing displays of outright intensity are what propels the game forward and leaves you wanting more. Way too many shooters spill the beans too early on and everything after that becomes a jumbled mess of everything you've played beforehand but with all previous awesomeness stripped away. Killzone 3 has been blessed with the innate ability to completely avoid this. Just when you thought you had seen everything developer Guerrilla Games could possibly show you they throw a curveball directly at your forehead that results in the biggest concussion you could possibly ever have.

One of my biggest complaints with Killzone 2 was its undying devotion to placing you in the middle of gunfights that were entirely too bleak and too underwhelming. To this day I can admit to really enjoying the game but never figuring out why I didn't love it like many other gamers seem to. I think it has a lot to do with its overall feel. It's such a dark, foreboding game that it feels less like a futuristic sci-fi shooter and more like something out of a horror film. The environments in which you fight are the darkest, most colorless damn slums I've ever seen. Killzone 2's opening mission - a beach landing - is what I wanted from the rest of the game: intense, faster-paced, and urgent. The remainder of the game saw fit to do the complete opposite. You and a squad of soldiers proceed to lone-wolf it against relatively small groups of Helghast soldiers. The beach landing places you in the middle of a huge battle whereas the rest of them are best described as moderate skirmishes. I got tired of wading through dark city streets, dark refineries, dark deserts, and dark palaces.

Killzone 3 remedies this and then some. I can't recall one location that could be described as "dark." The opening mission - which picks up right where Killzone 2 left off - injects tons of color and vivid detail into a location that was just a game before rust-colored and dreary. It's a harsh tonal shift that I welcomed but still had to adjust to. Guerrilla has also taken you out of the cities of Helghan. Early sections of the game find the remaining ISA soldiers fervently trying to escape the crumbling city, yes, but it looks so different in comparison I'd doubt you'd find any resemblance between the two iterations at all. Pretty much everything after that takes you into the snow-covered mountains of Helghan, its jungles, a zero gravity space station, and even the far-reaches of space itself (which I won’t spoil). The locations aren't just more varied than the second game (which wouldn't be that hard of a feat to accomplish anyhow) but more varied than 90% of FPS's currently on the market as well.

The controls of Killzone 2 were a big talking point amongst gamers. So many of them just couldn't acclimate themselves to the slothy movement and imprecise aiming. Killzone 3's controls have also become a topic of conversation but for entirely different (and better) reasons. Killzone 3 ships right out of the box with PlayStation Move compatibility. If there was ever a bigger playing field to show off what the Move is truly capable of I can't imagine it being bigger than this. I played through the entire single-player campaign with the Move and I can honestly tell you I can't imagine playing first-person shooters any other way. The Move controls are so intuitive and so damn precise you'd be hard-pressed to argue the notion that they are "just a gimmick" anymore. I played through a bit of the single-player campaign with the DualShock 3 controller and it really felt like something was missing. Playing a game as intense and visually beautiful as Killzone 3 with such responsiveness from the motion controls has completely spoiled me. You're not just shooting Helghast soldiers from the comfort of your couch, you literally feel like you're in the thick of battle with your ISA buddies. Move owners will definitely get more enjoyment out of Killzone 3 than those who aren’t. The immersive qualities of it are absolutely astounding.

The game's visuals are also of note. Killzone 2 was already a great looking game so I won't sit here and pretend that there is a night-and-day difference between the two. It's obvious from playing Killzone 3 that the textures have been improved, lighting and shading has been improved, and there's much more detail on just about everything in front of you, as well as fantastic motion-capture animation. But when you have a game that's getting compliments on its graphics two years after release there's probably not too much more you can do to it without writing an entirely new engine. The most surprising aspect of the game isn't even a case of it having better textures or more light sources than it's predecessor, it's simply the fact that the game is so impressive visually and so much more detail is present (those aforementioned colorful locales included) that Guerrilla got the game to run at such a consistent framrate even with all of the added on-screen chaos. Killzone 3 really shows us what the PS3 is capable of in that regard. It's not only a downright beautiful game, but it's packed with so much on-screen activity you'd normally expect some kind of framerate drop and that very rarely ever happens.

The game’s aural excellence also plays a big part in how much I thoroughly enjoyed blasting through Killzone 3’s top-notch single-player campaign. I’m very lucky to be able to play my games with the added benefit of a surround sound setup and this is one title that beautifully illustrates how having the advantage of a high-quality sound system increases the tension of your on-screen actions ten-fold. Hearing that triumphant orchestral score blare out of the speakers while bassy explosions and the thunderous echo of gunshots fills the air around you gets the blood pumping exponentially. Holding the Move’s motion wand directly in front of you and pulling the trigger only to hear deafening gunshots parallel to said action provides immersion like I’ve never felt before. The cut-scenes benefit from this as well while also looking sharper than most big-budget films with inherent action sequences so exciting that they could move just about any summer blockbuster action director to tears.

If you hadn’t noticed, I found Killzone 3 to be everything I wanted and much, much more. I could give two rats asses about the lack of a story or noticeably non-existent character development because, frankly, it’s something we shouldn’t have even expected in the first place. Killzone 3 promised to be a balls-to-the-wall action shooter and that’s exactly what it is. I find it difficult at times to discuss games that are this good. No matter how much I write I can’t seem to fully illustrate how absolutely essential they are. I could go on and on about how beautifully chaotic Killzone 3 is. This is an absolutely jaw-dropping spectacle of a game that is in every way better than its predecessor. If you have even the slightest interest in first-person shooters I urge you to purchase this as quickly as humanly possible. This is how you make a memorable first-person shooter. This is how you improve on an already great game. This, my friends, is how you earn your consumers hard-earned $60. Killzone 3 is nothing short of shooter near-perfection.