Developer: Guerrilla Games
Publisher: SCEE
Release Date: Out Now
Players: Single Player, offline split screen co-op, 24 players online
Words By:
Sony’s Flagship First Person Shooter is back, and better than before. Guerrilla Games seem to have taken on board all the feedback from Killzone 2 to improve Killzone 3 in every department; the controls have been lightened up, the range of environments has been increased from bombed out cities, to alien jungles, and even to a space station…
The story begins straight after the ending of Killzone 2, with the ISA starting their evacuation of Helghan. For those of you who haven’t played Killzone 2, although it’s not needed to play, it does help with the story. Unlike Killzone 2 whose environments were dreary and dull, Killzone 3 brings fresh new environments into the mix. The game begins with a flash forward six months, showing the Helghast mourning the loss of their maniacal leader Scholar Visari and gives a glimpse of what is to come. The first mission has you playing though the nuked remains of Pyrrhus fighting your way towards the evacuation point where the massive space cruisers are waiting. Not all the ISA manage to escape to these cruisers and the game chronicles their efforts to escape. Throughout the entire game you’ll play as Sev, our returning hero from Killzone 2, and you’ll often be accompanied by Rico, another member of Alpha squad.
The story is mainly told through the use of cut scenes, about an hour of them in total in the whole game. These cut scenes are well designed, engaging you into the story itself, and ensuring nothing is missed. Both sides are shown, with some cut scenes just of the Helghast, helping to develop the game’s plot and background. But these cut scenes also serve another purpose. While you are watching, the game is loading the next level in the background, meaning no load screens once you have started playing, except the one when you first start. While this is a good idea it does mean that you can’t skip cutscenes for a few moments while it loads.
The complaints from Killzone 2 about the story levels have clearly been taken into account, with there being a huge variety in both the scenery and the gameplay. At the start of one mission you may be running and gunning, and mid way through you’ll climb into a vehicle, or you’ll find a mounted weapon, which can be detached from its base and used on the move. This sort of thing helps break up the levels and bring you into the game more. There are a number of vehicles in the game, from Exo suits to tanks, and even to spaceships, all of which can be piloted and controlled by you. The game also features a new weapon/vehicle, the jetpack. Although it only features in a couple of levels it really is fun to use.
The range of environments is also vastly superior to its predecessor, really showing the diversity on this harsh planet of Helghan. The game will have you playing through scrapyards, with massive hulks of spaceships, and along its frozen coast, complete with blizzards and oil rigs. One surprising level comes mid way into the game, completely the opposite of all the other levels. While most levels will give you a high power machine gun, and enemies will always be firing at you, this level gives you a silenced machine pistol, with the aim being stealth. The Helghan jungle is well suited to stealth play, with all sorts of brightly-coloured plants to hide behind which allow you to take out Helghast patrols as quietly as possible. There’s also a variety of dangerous indigenous flora with which you can achieve satisfying environmental kills. The only complaint I had with the campaign itself was the length, all in all taking about 4 and a bit hours to complete, plus the cut scene time.
Killzone 3 features two controls schemes, the good old fashioned Dualshock 3 gamepad control, or the Move and navigation controller mode. Both work equally well and Move is surprisingly well equipped to work on a game such as this. The Dualshock 3 controls have been made much lighter compared to Killzone 2, making the game easier to control meaning it doesn’t feel so clunky and sluggish, but it does remove some of the realism of the added weight. The Move controller is used for most of the controls, but a navigation controller or Dualshock is still required to move around. Move is pinpoint accurate even on its default setting, and features lots of ways to modify the settings to your liking, such as how quickly you turn or how large the ‘dead zones’ are.
Graphics-wise this really is a masterpiece. Guerrilla Games really have put a lot of effort into making this one of the better-looking PS3 games out at the moment. The amount of detail on both the characters and the scenery itself is impressive. On the first mission you really do feel like you are in a warzone, with spaceships constantly flying overhead, firing their cannons into the distance. The full violence of warfare is well realised with excellent gore and ragdoll effects, and none of the smaller details have been left out, such as on the snowy levels where snowflakes swirl around you in a remarkable blizzard effect. Killzone 3 can also all be played in Stereoscopic 3D, for those of you with a compatible TV. The voice acting boasts such talent as Malcolm McDowell and Ray Winstone, and the sound and music is also suitably epic, but isn’t quite as impressive in places as seems to cut off arbitrarily. There’s no blur or screen tearing throughout the gameplay itself, but screen tearing does occur in the cutscenes which makes many of them look inexplicably terrible.
Killzone 3’s multiplayer modes have enough to keep you occupied for hours. One new feature of the multiplayer is Co-Op, only available offline split screen though. This has you playing with a friend through the campaign levels, allowing you to find new ways to outflank and beat the Helghast. In terms of Online, there are five classes (Marksman, Engineer, Field Medic, Tactician, and Infiltrator) of soldier to play as and three game modes available, and all three can also be played offline against bots if you wish, allowing you to learn the maps and game types before you venture online. There’s ‘Warzone’, those of you familiar with Killzone 2 will recognise it, it’s a mixture of game modes, such as ‘search and destroy’ and ‘assassination’. The team who win the most of the game modes wins the overall match. There’s also a ‘Guerrilla Warfare’ mode, which is pretty much just the traditional team death match. The final game mode is ‘Operations’. These are played out as multiplayer short stories, with one team playing as the ISA who have to capture or complete an objective, and the Helghast team have to stop them. After each objective is complete or the time runs out, a short cutscene is played showing the actual players in the position. As you play online you receive XP, which allows you to rank up levels and receive unlock points, which allows you access to new weapons and can be used to customise the guns and abilities of any of the five classes.
Overall Killzone 3 is one of the best First Person Shooters currently available on the PS3, although the story mode itself is a bit short and some of the checkpoints a bit mean. It’s well worth getting, even for those of you who have never played a Killzone game before. After the short campaign is complete, the multiplayer modes will help keep you occupied for hours, and with 45 ranks to go through, will keep you coming back for more. And finally, dare I say it? At long last the PS3 has a sci-fi shooter to rival Halo...
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