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Killzone 3

The Story

While the beta version does not have any campaign play whatsoever, anyone who has played the Killzone series knows it is the ISA versus the Helghast, a Hitler-esque race of quasi-humans who more or less hate our guts. Suffice it to say, Killzone 3 is picking up from the exact moment Killzone 2 left us. In other words, your answer to Dirty Harry's famous query had better be a wholehearted, “Why yes, yes I am feeling lucky!” Sev, controlled by you, is still back-to-back with Rico, duking it out with the world in the middle of a freshly erupted civil war within the Helghast Empire. Your main goal, barring any twists (and hopefully, unlike in the previous games in this series, there will be many), will be firstly to survive, and secondly to escape while not neglecting that pesky survival bit.

The Feel

One thing about Killzone 3 that makes it a worthy opponent to its First Person Shooter competitors is the physics of the game. Walking around is even more realistic than, say Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. You shift from left to right with each step, which is really a nice touch. When you turn quickly, much as in real life, your vision will blur slightly. This was the first thing that caught our attention when we started the game.

They put a good amount of detail into the environment. The snow falling is far more than the white blobs of yesteryear. If you cap an enemy on a snowy slope, their body will slide down to its resting place on a more level plane, where you can put the player, writhing in agony, out of his or her misery with the butt of your gun.

The guns will have about as much kick in the game as they do when you hold the physical weapon in your hands, which is impressive. It is not always about ruining your accuracy, either; they are completely fair about it. For instance, a light machine gun will not have very much recoil at all because, despite the title, those suckers are actually pretty heavy. On the flip side, trying to snipe with a pistol takes a ridiculous amount of concentration...and if you are lucky, you might put a couple slugs in your target.

The Classes

One thing that makes any FPS worth its salt (and the $70 you probably shelled out for it) is the class system in multiplayer mode. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has its customizable classes in which you have to unlock different weaponry and skillsets. Battlefield has preset classes, each with their pros and cons. We really like what Killzone does here; they kind of create a cross between the two. There are five classes, each with so many weapons and skills to choose from. Here is the catch (and what differentiates it from both its competitors and its predecessors): you can start as any class, but you have to unlock the different weapons and abilities. Nobody starts with a secondary weapon, and everyone has frag grenades and proximity mines available to them. The additional perks that any class can have are Armor (take less damage), Extra Health (start with extra health), Extra Ammo (start with extra ammunition), and Extra Primary Weapon (secondary weapon is replaced with a primary weapon).

Engineer
The abilities, much like in Killzone 2, are that of creating up to three turrets anywhere at any given time, and repairing anything, whether it be a turret or an ammo resupply stash. Eventually, you can even steal enemy turrets. You start out not with a shotgun, but a light machine gun, and can eventually unlock a variety of LMGs. The secondary weapons are a pistol, a shotgun pistol, and a battle pistol (which fires grenades!).

Marksman
The Marksman has some pretty awesome abilities. You can activate the cloak, which will eventually make you invisible unless you kill someone (and you are slightly visible if you move around or fire). Additionally, you can eventually scramble anyone's radar who comes within fifteen meters of you and not show up on radar either when you fire or when a tactician activates their spy radar. You start off with a semi-automatic rifle. You can unlock an SMG and sniper rifle as your primary weapon and a pistol, shotgun pistol, and machine pistol as your secondary weapon.

Tactician
This class is just a pure joy to play. You start out with an SMG, and eventually unlock an LMG and a semi-automatic rifle. Secondaries consist of a pistol, a revolver, and a rather intimidating missile launcher. You have two abilities: call in bots to autonomously fly around and fire on the enemies, and activate a spy radar so you can see where the enemies are on your regular radar. Additionally, you can also capture tactical spawning points, which proves indispensable in some game modes.

Infiltrator
The ninjas out there will be in love with this class. Your ability is to pose as the opposing team. It can create a massive amount of confusion as you watch a supposed team member take your face into their hands and snap your neck. Another nice thing is that you have additional stamina, which is invaluable when attempting to confuse the other team. There is nothing worse than running to stealthily melee someone and suddenly they can see that you are an enemy because you are unable to run anymore. This class starts off with a rather weak shotgun, but you can unlock an SMG and an assault rifle. Your secondary weapons will be a pistol, a battle pistol, and a rocket launcher.

Field Medic
This is potentially the biggest team player class. Your two abilities are to heal (and coincidentally resupply) both your teammates and yourself, and eventually to create Medi-Droids to accompany you until death. Did I mention you can respawn where you died with full ammunition and health? The Medic will start off with an SMG and unlock both a shotgun and an assault rifle. The backups are a pistol, a revolver, and a machine pistol.

The Weapons

As you may have gathered from the brief overview of weaponry in the description of the classes, the variety is sorely lacking, which is really pretty much unforgivable in a modern shooting game. Compiled below is a list of all of the weapons previously mentioned along with the in-game description of each.

Primary Weapons:
M224-1A LMG
- Friend to bunkered soldiers everywhere, the LMG's iron sights and large clip size will make the enemy think twice before storming any position.
STA11 SMG
- No other automatic weapon is better suited to close-range, in-your-face encounters than the StA11.
STA3 LMG
- Accuracy is overrated. The StA3's high rate of fire and large clip size will clear out a room in seconds. A formidable close-range weapon.
STA14 Rifle
- A scoped semi-automatic rifle capable of felling most targets before they can get near you.
LS13 Shotgun
- The LS13 is a powerful semi-automatic shotgun equipped with a reflex scope. Whatever this hits stays dead.
VC32 Sniper Rifle
- With a long-range zoom (UP on D-Pad) and high accuracy, this rifle is capable of felling most foes in a single shot.
STA52 Assault Rifle
- Standard Helghast issued assault rifle equipped with reflex scope. Sturdy, easy to use and ideal for just about any combat situation.
M82 Assault Rifle
- Standard issue to all ISA combatants, the assault rifle is well-suited to most combat situations. Equipped with a reflex scope, this weapon is deadly in the hands of an experienced soldier.

Secondary Weapons:
STA18 Pistol
- Standard issue semi-automatic pistol.
VC8 Shotgun Pistol
- The best weapon for a close-quarters fight, nothing says ‘up close and personal’ like the VC8.
STA2 Battle Pistol
- Increases grenade storage capacity and fires grenades farther than a soldier could ever throw.
M66 Machine Pistol
- Equipped with a reflex scope and a silencer, the machine pistol is an ideal weapon for close-range, surprise encounters.
M4 Revolver
- One shot will severely cripple an enemy, or kill a wounded one.
VC9 Missile Launcher
- Capable of destroying turrets and drones in a single shot, the VC9 missile launcher is the very definition of an anti-armor weapon.

Explosives:
M194 Frag Grenade
Proximity Mine

The Modes

There are three different multiplayer game modes: Guerrilla Warfare, Warzone, and Operations. You might recognize Guerrilla Warfare as Team Deathmatch in virtually every other FPS. You are thrown into squads of either ISA or Helghast and you essentially have to kill so many of the other faction. There is not much to explain here. If you are still scratching your head, you may want to select a different genre of gaming altogether.

Warzone is kind of fun. You are given five missions to complete in a randomized order, and each must be completed within a predetermined time frame. You will have to assassinate someone or defend someone from assassination (Assassination), see how many kills you can rack up of the opposite faction (Body Count), capture and defend as many of the three designated regions in each level for as long as possible (Capture & Hold), plant explosives at certain points on the map or keep others from planting them (Search & Destroy), and finally a capture-the-flag type mission where the flag is actually a propaganda speaker and only one of them exists at a time and is up for grabs (Search & Retrieve).

Operations is basically a simple offense/defense set of games. Like Warzone, you are given so many missions to complete, but you are either on offense or defense for these missions, and there are only three of them. Two are borrowed from Warzone: Capture & Hold and Search & Destroy. The third is called Scavenge & Retrieve, which is an interesting (but somewhat incoherent) blend of Capture & Hold and Search & Retrieve. Basically, it is potentially two stages, where the first stage is a game of Capture & Hold and the second is a game of Search & Retrieve.

What's New

There are several things that are apparently new with Killzone 3, and some of the features leave us scratching our collective heads as to why it was never implemented in the earlier titles.

Jetpacks are not exactly new, but the first ones do not exactly count, as they were only existent on the handheld system, so they could not really be used to their full potential. Jetpacks are only available on one level in the beta game, but are pretty fun to use. You have to activate it by hitting down on your D-pad, then you can use its automatic gun with no scope and fly up high, via what's normally the crouch controls, to hit that perfect sniping spot. An entire team with jetpacks is virtually unstoppable, which will undoubtedly lead to much frustration with noobs. It is more or less Halo's energy sword – everyone hates people who use it, but it is really fun to use every now and then! In actuality, it is more comparable to the Banshee in Halo with its flying capabilities, and by extension, vulnerabilities.

I do not know why Guerrilla Games thought it would be a good idea to make the controls completely different from every major FPS. Honestly, this was a big issue with Borderlands, and they can only hurt themselves by doing the same thing with Killzone. Thankfully, you are able to switch to an alternate layout in the options menu.

The point system is different. Instead of a 1:1 ratio for kills to points, the scale is much higher. You now get 100 points for a kill, 25 for an assist, and 50 for a destroyed bot/turret.

You get ribbons for your in-game accomplishments, such as Silent Footsteps or Faster Reload. This is not a new feature itself, but there are many different ribbons in Killzone 3 than were featured in its predecessors.

Summary

This game is essentially a cross between Unreal Tournament and Battlefield. The Halo killer it was hailed to be with the release of the first title of its series might have been somewhat of an exaggeration, but it is a solid FPS, and it is definitely worth investing more than a few hours in. The replayability may be effected by the fact that, in an era of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Borderlands, you can max out all of your classes...but unless you are taking some time off of work to play this on a regular basis (or, let's be honest, trying to convince your mom that you really are too sick to go to school), it will probably be a while before you wear this game out. For future titles Guerrilla Games would do well to practice -- if not some copycatting of modern comparable games -- some real innovation. They might just be relying too heavily on this game supporting both 3D televisions and the new Playstation Move controller.

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