WR: Killzone 3 (PS3)

March 16th, 2011 by

Developer: Guerrilla Games
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Players: 1  (2-24 online)
Console: PS3
ESRB Rating: M (Mature)
Hours Played: 15
Progress: Finished the campaign on hard

The original Killzone (released for PlayStation 2) was a good concept but the franchise really didn’t take its place amongst the upper echelons of FPS games until the sequel arrived on the PS3. With stunning visuals, intense shooter combat and a comprehensive multiplayer mode it became a flagship title for Sony’s console. Two years later lo and behold, the third iteration is finally here! With new environments, 3D-compatible graphics and PlayStation Move support can Killzone 3 best its predecessor? Read on to find out…

Killzone 2 saw the forces of the ISA go after the evil Helghast on their home planet of Helghan after repelling an invasion of earth in the first game. While Killzone 2 saw a small, elite unit of ISA lead by Corporal Tomas “Sev” Sevchenko and Sergeant Rico Velasquez, eliminate the the Helghast Emperor Visari, it ended with remnant of the ISA army being stranded on a hostile planet with enemy forces closing in from all sides. Now in Killzone 3 you’re tasked with fighting your way through the Helghast army and off the planet. While a logical continuation of the series, the story is pretty bare bones with little thought-provoking narrative or plot twists. Your band of ISA strays is flung from conflict to conflict with few story developments to keep things interesting. Intertwined with this are cut scenes of power struggles amongst the Helghast high council, the main instigator being a new character in the form of Jorhan Stahl, head of a major weapons manufacturing company. As an attempt to put a more human face on a faction which resembles a cross between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, it doesn’t fall completely flat.  Having said that, though, the Helghast cut scenes have little to do with your missions and as such feel disjointed. The FPS action is intense and satisfying enough to stand on its own, however the story seems thin compared to the past games.

Dutch developer Guerrilla Games managed to push the PS3 to new levels with Killzone 2 so it’s remarkable to note that Killzone 3 manages to improve on them to the point where it takes its place as one of the best looking games on the PS3, which is saying something. The game starts at a Helghast weapons facility owned by Stahl Arms Company and impresses instantly with large, detailed environments, draped in stunning lighting effects. The polygon count and architectural detail in the levels are what make the visuals so pleasing to behold. There is always something to look at and Guerrilla ensured that anything that could be labelled as being “generic” was kept to a minimum. Frame rate issues were virtually non-existent during the single player campaign, which is impressive considering the massively detailed environments gamers find themselves in, although there was some occasional slowdown during multiplayer matches.

Guerrilla Games is renowned for attentively listening to their fan community’s feedback and one of the most obvious alterations is the added variety in the environments. Although the gloomy, war-torn cities we found ourselves in while playing previous games are still present, the player now experiences Helghan’s twisted version of a jungle, snow-covered coastal facilities and a scrap yard too. Not only does the variety in environments add more eye candy to the game, it also shows off Guerrilla’s mastery of the PS3 hardware and their ability to create lush and detailed levels. Animation isn’t as flamboyant as in some other games (say, Uncharted 2) but this somehow seems appropriate for the majority of heavily armed characters in Killzone 3. Lighting and particle effects are top notch, explosions look incredible and whether its the ominous glow of the eye slits in the Helghasts’ helmets or the ceiling lights in a high tech weapons facility reflecting off the polished floors, the lighting effects are always impressive. Killzone 3 has to be one of my favorite games for ambient effects, whether its dust, fog or blowing snow, the environments look very lifelike. I couldn’t stop staring at the waves in the ocean while playing in one of the game’s snow levels, the way ice floats were tossed around by the dark, foam covered waves was incredibly realistic. As Sony makes a bid to enhance its profile as a 3D games company it’s worth noting that Killzone 3 is 3D compatible and along with Gran Turismo 5 is one of the best 3D gaming experiences available today.

Voice acting is solid, with the addition of big-name actors like Malcolm McDowell (voicing Jorhan Stahl) and Ray Winstone (as Admiral Orlock) the voice talents of Killzone 3 are significantly strengthened. The character of Rico Velasquez still seems over the top and like a characterized version if Ice Cube, but his presence is tolerable and mostly an exception among otherwise capable performances.

Although there is some good orchestral work in the game, the score is not very memorable and the in-game music does not seem to stand out all that much. Fortunately the sound effects hold much more promising. Explosions and gun rattle “boom” appropriately however its the surround sound implementation that really impresses. A huge annoyance in Killzone 3 is the lack of a grenade marker, indicating a grenade was just hurled at you and to get the heck out of dodge. The sound design is of such a level though that simply by listening to the beeping, emanated from primed grenades, you’re able to tell where it landed and which direction you need to bolt to survive. This is by no means a new feature, but considering the accuracy of the sound effects, it really adds a new aspect to the gameplay, especially considering that this carries over to enemy movement and gunfire as well, ensuring that having a good sound system and keeping your ears open definitely pays off.

Controller responsiveness, especially that of the thumb sticks, is very solid in Killzone 3, more so than many other PS3 shooters we have played. I am less excited about Killzone 3‘s button layout, which in light of other high profile shooters, seems fairly unintuitive in places. In the default control scheme, the L1 button performs the melee attack, which seems awkward.  This can be changed to the R3 (right thumb stick button) in the alternate control scheme though. I have the biggest issue with the L2 button which functions as the crouch toggle and also enables the player to hide behind cover. Not only does it feel unintuitive, the mechanism that allows the player to get in and out of cover seems “sticky”, sometimes making it difficult to tell whether your character actually is in cover or not. In addition, disengaging from cover can be a chore as your character will continue to hug an object while pulling back on the left thumb stick. Accordingly, getting and staying in cover is not as fluid as it should be, actions like reloading or crouching sometimes seem to make your character leave his cover position, often without you knowing it, resulting in frantic button presses to make your ISA protagonist duck for safety as Helghast rounds continuously pour into him. As much as you may want to (I sure know I did) you cannot customize the controller layout to match your favorite FPS configuration. The bottom line is that the overall responsiveness of the controls is balanced out by the button layout and cover issues, resulting in functional but never quite satisfying controls.

Killzone 3 is a cover-based FPS, meaning that running-and-gunning without regard for incoming fire is usually quite quickly fatal. Enemies will use their surroundings for cover effectively, toss grenades to flush you out, support each other and will attempt to flank you whenever appropriate. The result, just as in the previous game, is tense firefights against very capable enemies. Guerrilla Games decided to inject more variety into the game this time around by increasing the frequency of vehicle-based gameplay sections. These sequences can be fun, especially the one that involves the mechs, and mostly being brief, they are solid diversions that mix up the proceedings. I can’t help but think that Guerrilla games went a bit too far with this however, likely due to feedback on the previous game, as the FPS combat is a blast and the backbone of the franchise, not needing to be dialed back as much as it unfortunately was.

This theme of variety is further seen in the infusion of new environments and enemies, as mentioned in the graphics section of this review, new locales include ice levels, jungles, zero gravity sections and a scrap yard. The developer wisely decided to open up the levels, adding a sense of scale and more freedom of movement. To highlight the newly found freedom that players have in many of the game’s environments, Guerrilla Games introduced the jet pack. With a mounted machine gun, this new toy gives the player the ability to hover for a short amount of time and make much larger jumps than normally possible. With so much eye candy and things to shoot at, the larger environments offer a fun playground of destruction and are a welcome enhancement to the game.

I finished Killzone 2 on the “Hard” difficulty setting and it was quite the challenge, I can definitively say that Killzone 3 is nowhere near as difficult, consequently forcing me to recommend that all experienced FPS gamers play this game on “Hard” right from the start. Even on that setting there will only be the occasional sequences  that require a number of retries, however the firefights and confrontations with the Helghast certainly become more entertaining and tactical as you progress. Once you finish the game a fourth difficulty setting, “Elite”, is unlocked. Even with the reduced difficulty, Guerrilla Games added quite a bit of content (especially when considering the beautiful graphics) resulting in an experience that should take, on average, 10 hours to complete on “Hard”.

The multiplayer in Killzone 2 was entertaining and comprehensive, a worthy contender for your precious time fragging people online. Unfortunately it feels like the multiplayer in Killzone 3 has taken a step backwards. The large 12-on-12 skirmishes that were so much fun in the previous game have now been relegated to objective-based games only.  The maps, although large and based on the environments from the game, have few distinctive features, making it difficult to get  yourself oriented and identify points of reference. Balancing has been a big issue so far in the first few weeks after launch, but thankfully the developer has been attentive to community feedback and already has implemented improvements that have made the medic more effective and special melee kills less overpowering for instance. There are still many issues to iron out mind you, sniping is horribly overpowered due to maps with long lines of sight and “infiltrators” are a nuisance as they can disguise themselves as the opposing faction and pull off melee kills with impunity or snipe unsuspecting players with their scoped assault rifle, while disguised. Upgrading and playing as different classes is fun, however it is strange to see only support-type classes (five in total: engineer, marksman, tactician, infiltrator and field medic) and no combat-focussed ones.

The interface is a bit clunky, aside from upgrading four different aspects of each class (primary ability, secondary ability, primary weapon and secondary weapon) there is no customization of your character, like appearance, icons, heraldry and so on. My biggest annoyance was the inability to go to the “unlock screen” to tweak your character classes in between matches. Both while loading and during the map voting screen (both of which can take a while) you are unable to unlock new abilities or tweak existing ones. This option only becomes available at the start of a new match, causing time to be wasted as the player is forced to tweak his load-out while others are jumping into the match. There is also preciously little in the way of stat tracking. Your personal statistics list only five different figures and ribbons you’ve earned, while there is a separate screen for the medals you can achieve, these are basically akin to “challenges” found in other games.

The first week after launch also saw a lot of  multiplayer errors and glitches. Many people got an error message when trying to go into the multiplayer mode from the main menu and even when able to log in I ran into issues where I got a notification saying the “world is full” for certain game modes. If they’re full a week in, they’ll be in trouble as more people buy the game in the months ahead. Feeling under-featured and unbalanced, Killzone 3‘s multiplayer can only be described as disappointing, that does not mean it is terrible though, simply a step back from Killzone 2‘s excellent multiplayer offering. With Guerilla Games hard at work at tweaking it and listening to the community’s feedback it is bound to get better all the time, but for now we will simply have to bear with its flaws.

It is apparent right from the start that Guerrilla Games listened to the feedback from community and press about Killzone 2‘s shortcomings. Levels are larger and more varied, while the FPS action is broken up more frequently with vehicle-based combat. The developer almost went too far with this as the first-person shooting is incredibly satisfying and stands on its own just fine. New innovations like the jetpack, massive robotic structures to take on, Playstation Move support and 3D compatible visuals, keep Killzone 3 on the cutting edge of FPS games. I was disappointed with the drop in difficulty though, on “Hard” the game had me restarting certain sections and Helghast soldiers absorbed quite a bit of fire, however for the most part I was breezing through the game without much trouble. Thankfully the levels are large and at 8-10 hours, the single player campaign is longer than many other high-level FPS games.

As mentioned in the previous section, the multiplayer is a bit of  a letdown. The objective-based matches are a mess of random deaths and being sniped in the head, while the straight-up team deathmatch skirmishes often involve trading deaths and kills at the choke points that tend to form on the maps. I still enjoyed the different abilities on offer by the available classes, like the deployable turrets, flying bots that would defend their master and the ability to capture spawn points. It all just does not seem as deep when compared to what we have seen from the Call of Duty and Halo franchises over the years. I really had the most fun with Killzone 3 during the single player campaign, the graphics are fantastic and the action is fast-paced and intense, during this time I felt like few other FPS games compared.

Killzone 3 counters a lackluster story and disappointing multiplayer mode with stunning visuals and great FPS action, resulting in a solid follow up to 2009’s Killzone 2. Although Killzone 3 doesn’t quite pack the same punch as its predecessor, it further establishes the franchise amongst the top of FPS games.

Story:

+ We get to pick up right where Killzone 2 left off

– Very thin story with little correlation between cut scenes and in-game proceedings

Graphics:

+ Bigger, more detailed levels

+ Gorgeous lighting and textures

+ Realistic ambient effects

Sound:

+ Solid voice acting

+ Masterful surround sound implementation

– Score and in-game music are forgettable

Controls:

+ Good responsiveness

– Unintuitive button lay-out

Gameplay:

+ Very satisfying shooter combat

+ Non-stop action keeps you on your toes

– Annoying cover mechanic

Multiplayer:

+ Fun, class-based abilities

+ Constant patches seek to improve multiplayer shortcomings

– Poor balancing

– Nondescript level design

– Very bare-bones interface

Usagi Factor:

+ Good length single player campaign

– Overall difficulty is a bit too easy

Rated 8.8