In The Zone
Killzone 3 is an especially good example of keeping what worked and fixing what was broken and this becomes apparent within the first couple of minutes of the game. The campaign – as before – is a mixture of your core first person shooting mechanics combined with cinematic set pieces including areas of the game that will have you in or controlling vehicles or mounted weapons.
A lot of gamers complained of laggy, heavy controls in Killzone 2 and in response, Guerrilla have tightened up the feel of the shooter gameplay significantly while somehow still keeping the trademark weighted feeling of the combat intact. This includes the cover system (not available in multiplayer) that feels better than ever and really needs to be stolen by other games already.
Luckily, Killzone 3 allows you to choose between different controller layouts and as someone who never liked the default controls of the first game, I opted for the second preset option that will feel instantly familiar to… well, let’s just be frank here… it’s the one that’s the most similar to the Call of Duty layout which has pretty much become the standard in shooters these days.
Controls feel sharp and the pace of the gameplay has quickened slightly thanks to the changes that have been made and the cover system feels better than ever, despite a few niggles here and there. What did get on my nerves though is the decision to not lower the controller sensitivity when aiming down the sights. It only seems logical to be more accurate down the sights and I hope that something like that gets added in a patch later on.
The silly use of the six-axis controller somehow made it back into the game, requiring you to mimic the turning of wheels to open gates or activate bombs. I didn’t like it in Killzone 2 and I still don’t like it now and it really feels like it should have just been replaced with a button press.
Of course, you also have the exciting new option of playing Killzone 3 with a Playstation Move controller for extra immersion, not to mention intuitive, accurate controls. We are however, very sad to report that while we did the best we could following up and hassling our contacts, the Playstation Move units that were promised to us for the review by our local distributor were never sent to us and our previous Move review unit had to be returned after our hardware review and so we were unable to review the setup for you. We do apologize and hope that we can bring you an update in the near-future (maybe even a community discussion comparing the control methods will be in order).
Guerrillas In The Mist – Multiplayer
Disclaimer: At the time of reviewing Killzone 3, the multiplayer servers had not yet been activated as the open multiplayer beta was still in progress (patch already incoming). The game does however come with an offline “Botzone” mode which allows you to play against bots with fully kitted out multiplayer classes over all of the maps. We have therefore combined our experience with the online open beta as well as all of the options available in the offline mode for the review.
Killzone 2’s multiplayer component was a little hit-and-miss for most folks. I personally found it to be an absolute blast, but found that it generally lacked any major interest from the masses. A shame really, as those who stuck around didn’t have to be told what they were missing.
You have three online modes to choose from in total which are Guerrilla Warfare (16 players / team deathmatch), Warzone (24 players / alternating modes) and Operations (16 players / team-based).
As with most online shooters these days, you start as a level-nothing nobody and have to earn your way towards the real goodies. You have classes that range from assault to support so those of you who are not so hot at headshots can better spend their time reviving buddies or building turrets. The more you play the more you unlock while you level-up and so on.
Thanks once again to the tightened gameplay mechanics, the new multiplayer modes feel fantastic. There is enough strategy involved thanks to the modes and map layouts but the combat itself feels fluid and fun. It does sometimes feel like it takes a few too many bullets to kill folks (sniper rifle definitely excluded) but besides those exceptions the guns all have a nice meaty, solid feeling to them allowing you to feel like a true bad-ass as you make lead deposits into the International Bank Of Faces.
While killing each other is good and all, the real fun really comes in with the Warzone and Operations modes, which will have you working together to complete objectives, hunt down specified targets, collect objects and there are also the inclusion of toys like jetpacks and mechs to spice things up as well.
I liked Killzone 2’s multiplayer… it felt fun to hop into every now but with Killzone 3 the multiplayer component feels way more solid and demanding of your attention. Thanks to some major issues with certain other shooters on the PS3, I can see a whole load of folks keeping the Killzone 3 multiplayer servers full for a long time to come (the bot A.I isn’t all that bad for offline mode either).
Last Updated: February 21, 2011
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