What can I say; this is probably the most disappointing sequel I've ever played.
It was unbelievable. Most of the viewers that were at the announcement (E3 2005) doubted that the game could run like that on the PS3, which was quickly counted out when a few days later when Phil Harrison of Sony Europe revealed that the game was rendered with the specs of a PS3. So you could imagine that there were a lot of people who were very much looking forward to this game, and they had to wait a full two years before they actually saw what was said to be "completely CG rendered" in action.
E3 2007, Killzone 2 was demonstrated on a PS3 in its early development time. It was all there, the game looking fascinating from head to toes. Journalists had a chance of playing the early beta of the game, but it wasn't until 2008 on a day referred to as "Playstation Day" where the campaign was announced, as well as the first mission of the game, which was dubbed "Corinth River". Now everybody was able to play it, and everybody was there to marvel it.
After 2008 passed us with such titles as Metal Gear Solid 4, Little Big Planet, and Resistance 2, Sony had to start off 2009 big. What better way to do so than with a game that has been in development for little over 4 years. Enter Killzone 2, the game that was a sequel (obviously) to 2004's original title, Killzone. It wowed people who bought (might I add that it is one of the bestselling titles in Europe, and one of the bestselling titles Sony had ever published) it. It was met with critical praise, and it found itself inside many PS3 players' libraries, I included.
Killzone 2 was the first game I had boughten for my PS3, as late as April of 2010. Even though it was a year old, it was still the best game I had ever seen ever (keep in mind I had never played Uncharted 2 or Crysis). But what made it special to me was how well made it was. It was unlike anything I had ever played ever, and it felt so right to me. I must've spent at least a hundred or more hours on the game, and when I heard Killzone 3 was announced, and then I got excited.
Now I rarely hype games. This was the one exception since Soul Calibur 4, and I was hyped to hell about this game. It promised to be everything that the sequel was, and more. It continued to push the graphical envelope for sure, but watching developer diaries and gameplay, it just got better and better and better. There were going to be some "serious" changes to the formula, some of them good, some of them bad, but there was something that felt odd about Killzone 3. This oddity, to me, is the biggest flaw in Killzone 3, which in turn makes this game a very big disappointment. What is this flaw? Well…
…Killzone 3 is a very accessible game. Now I bet the average reader might be thinking "how is this flawed? Wouldn't this be considered an improvement to the series?" Well, let me explain my reasoning a bit; how else can I get this oh-so ridiculous point across. But I can't make my argument without first consulting what this game is based on; Killzone 2. Let's look at Killzone 2 on paper; the movement and gun-play are stiff and heavy, and it felt all too realistic when you were covering or blowing away a Helghan trooper. There was very little blocking the experience; it was actually stream lined in a way, with very little filler and a whole lot of satisfying shooting. In a nutshell, this game was no typical FPS, as far as mechanics and visuals go. But I'm sure there will be those "real" gamers that label it as another generic shooter, and for all I care, they can cry about it all they want and go back to playing Zelda and Half-Life (this review wasn't intended to influence anyone, might I add, so haters gonna hate). This game was a sound product that I greatly appreciated, both offline and on. So expectedly, I wanted to get to the sequel as soon as I could. So February 22, 2011, I picked up my copy from Gamestop (I learned my lesson about them, don't worry), and quickly went home, popped this "beast in", and started playing.
I reviewed this game at one point in time, calling it "superb", and I also mentioned how it fixed a lot of what made Killzone 2 rough, which I still agree with. But this game… It felt so… whack? Yeah, after my first play through, I began to realize that the game that I was playing was… boring, at least when compared to what Killzone 2 had to offer. There was only one thing to blame for this, and it was the fact that the game was more accessible.
Let me explain, the fact that Killzone 2 was so different from everything else is why I loved the hell out of that game. With Killzone 3, we are given a completely different experience all together. I wouldn't mind this, if it had been improved the right way, but it wasn't. This game was meant to appease the crowd that couldn't appreciate Killzone 2 just because they couldn't take two friggin' seconds to adjust the sensitivity. Guerrilla completely abandoned the audience that it built with Killzone 2 just to make it more main stream. Now I'm not a snotty rebel, I love me some Crysis 2 and Call of Duty, but when I see something as special as Killzone 2 stooping down to an entirely different crowd, I cringe a little bit.
So in case I haven't made myself clear (I'm writing this off the top of my head with a hell of a lot of thought put into it, mind you), the reason this game disappoints me so much is the fact that it isn't really a sequel to one of my favorite games of all time; it's something that new people will pick up on. This isn't a bad title, at all. But this is definitely not a worthy successor to something that I hyped for 4 years and absolutely loved.
So now that I have the games only true fatal flaw out of the way, how is the game by itself? I'd really love to give an honest opinion, but I find it hard due to the fact that I honestly can't get over the fact that I'm not even playing the real Killzone 3, but I'll try anyways.
Starting up the game, we pick up fresh from the start of the second game, where Rico just got done capping Visari, the emperor to the entire planet of Helghan. Unfortunately, that was a very bad move on Rico's part, because now they have to worry about getting off of the planet with scarce resources and reinforcements. Yeah, Narville (the captain of the whole sha-bang) is pretty pissed about this too. The whole game is pretty much based around the idea of trying to get off the planet with as many people as they possibly can, while all of Helghan is trying to kill them.
One thing's for certain with Killzone 3; the developers obviously put a lot more time into the story this time around, and it is definitely something I commend them for. But there is just one problem with this; they somehow made it worse than what Killzone 2 had to offer. And it's not because of quality or anything of that nature, it's because it completely breaks the immersion and pacing of the game. Killzone 2 was forgettable, sure. But it never messed with the single player itself. This time around, the good people at Guerrilla made the disgusting choice of actually giving us more of something that we never really wanted in the first place, and making it coincide with the main game in the worst possible way. And what makes it even worse is the fact that the universe that the Killzone series is based off of is actually pretty neat, especially the planet Helghan and their technology. And what did they focus on? The same stupid stuff that we didn't care about in Killzone 2. I want to see new stuff, like that one gun that shot green slime at people and made them explode. Now that is something that I want to expand upon. What is it, how is it made, and how the hell does it make people explode? Well, we don't know, because the story is too busy trying to create "clever" dialogue between the ISA troops.
And this is only the start of my complaints as far as the story goes. The characters are about as interesting as wet cardboard. They are never given development, and all they do is move from point A to point B, only exposing their one-dimensional personalities occasionally. Sev's a smartass, Rico's annoying, Narville's ignorant, Jammer is also annoying, and Hooper is just there. And you see, there's a problem when you're trying to mix totally uninteresting characters into a story that is trying to be "fleshed out", they do not work together, at all. And the ending is just atrocious; I don't even want to talk about it.
But don't worry, because there's more to the single player than a pathetic story. Luckily, the single player is not bad; just okay. The game plays like a typical shooter (sigh), where you go from point A to *insert cut-scene here* point B, with no branching paths or real varying objectives; just shooting. Now this is the only thing that was kept the same from Killzone 2, and wouldn't you know it, it's the second worst aspect to the story!
Well okay it's not that bad. Thankfully, shooting is still very much fun to do in this game and thanks to some good weapons that were thrown into the mix, the overall action is solid. There are a few minor tweaks to most everything to make this game more accessible, like the elimination of the unique mechanics that made Killzone 2 such a triumph. Gone are the stiff movement controls and weighty shooting, here are the typical FPS mechanics and slightly satisfying shooting. If you're familiar with most other FPS's on the market, you should have no problem getting into what little meat this game has to offer.
The game features the same type of shooting the Killzone 2 had to offer, but again, it was tweaked in such little ways. Covering and firing feels decent, meleeing somehow manages to be stiffer than its predecessor (but satisfying as hell, I'll get to that soon), and moving around feels different. This is an FPS in a nutshell. I would have been more appreciative of it if it hadn't been for, again, one thing. The vehicle segments are very, very boring that are very, very long. But don't worry, there are lots of them. What do I mean?
Well for example, the segment where Sev is rescued from the Helghast after a particularly hilarious capture sequence by Rico, you are riding upon an aircraft, referred to as the "Intruder", and you shoot stuff while on said "Intruder". You can't die. You can only shoot, move around, and shoot some more. This might seem "fun" the first time around, but by the time you realize you aren't really doing anything, doing this for the third time might put you to sleep. There are other vehicle sequences that are boring too (see MAULAR battle for example), but they aren't as bad. Thankfully, the optional Move controller makes these segments a bit better.
Speaking of Playstation Move, that's another thing that I'd like to talk about. The optional Move controls are actually pretty good. They're responsive enough, and they work pretty well when moving around and shooting. These controls make the boring vehicle segments feel like classic arcade action, which is something that a long time House of the Dead fan can enjoy. Problem is, as I mentioned earlier, this game was marketed to the casual crowd who enjoy the occasional FPS. Now let me ask a perfectly legitimate question; how many casual gamers do you know that have a PS3 have that optional Move controller? Exactly, probably nobody, so inevitably these people are going to probably be bored out of their minds when they realize that they aren't actually getting anything done; their just being led by the hand to the next location. Again, we have the theme of taking two things that don't work together, and mashing them together in hopes of having something work.
Anyways, let's talk about meleeing. This is one of the very few things that are actually improved upon from the second game. The close up kills that you can perform on the Helghast is satisfying as hell. No matter how many times I do it, I just can't help but smile at how awesome they look. It's like knifing a dinosaur in Turok. It does get kind of old eventually, and once we realize that you can only hit once at a time, you realize that the one thing that was stiff in Killzone 2 that didn't need to be changed was changed. It's like Guerrilla knows what I like to nit-pick.
Now I've read that people think that this game is pretty short, and I just can't understand it. To me, it feels like this game takes forever to finish, like literally, towards the end of my first play through I was just hoping for it to end, but it just kept dragging on. Looking back on my last play through though, it only took me about 7 hours to complete. Killzone 2 was a longer game, but it felt like it ended a lot faster than Killzone 3 did. Things are pretty much coming full circle for me, as far as criticism goes. The campaign can also be played in split-screen, but it's so laggy that it's not even worth mentioning at times. That's right; there isn't any online cooperative, a feature that would've been perfect for this game, so you can share the monotony with one of your so called "friends".
When all is said and done, most people would rely on the multiplayer to bring them back to the game, but wouldn't you know it, this is something that I have to complain about too. I remember Killzone 2's multiplayer fondly, so fondly in fact that I might pick up a copy of Killzone 2 again and see if anybody is playing it online still. Killzone 3 pretty much changes everything up.
Replaced with a clever progression system, is a completely different unlock system that lets you decide on what you want and do not want. Cool, huh? It's just another one of those changes that was made to appease other audiences instead of taking the effort to please fans of the REAL Killzone series. It isn't bad; in fact, it adds that extra longevity that Killzone 2's multiplayer was missing. So instead of keeping players playing for new goodies, players can now decide what they want from the get go, and stick with it to form some of the cheapest strategies known to man. I don't mean to brag when I say this, but I was pretty good at Killzone 2's multiplayer mode, and that's because I had to practice. I had to get good at this game, and all the while with this clever progression system, I was forming new strategies with everything I got. Both of these things are gone; you no longer need to be skilled to get a quick kill, all you need is the best perks for each category, and you can get to your favorite weapon with little to no effort.
I'm still pretty good at the multiplayer, but there are just a ton of things that bug me about what Guerrilla was thinking when designing this. I've already firmly established that newer audiences are well into what could've been an awesome multiplayer experience, which means we will have more people thinking that they're Arnold Schwarzenegger starring in "Commando". This isn't what some of the multiplayer maps intended you to do. Some of these maps are huge, like they were designed by DICE. So now we have three things that aren't working together; the missing mechanics of Killzone 2, the unwillingness of the Call of Duty players, and the maps that would be much better off in Battlefield. Oh my sweet Christ… If you can find enough of your friends that are fond of Killzone 2, then you might be able to get into the multiplayer. But whether you'll enjoy as much as Killzone 2's multiplayer or not is entirely up to whether or not your friends found out about how messed up this game is.
And on that bombshell, let's cut to something that they got mostly right, the presentation. Graphically, Killzone 3 is still quite the looker. The lighting and textures of all the environments of the game look great, and they aren't dumbed down for the multiplayer either; it's a solid looking game throughout. Only a few times in the single player campaign did I ever run into frame rate problems, but those moments were rare. Aside from that minor problem, I'm happy to say that at least there's SOMETHING that didn't totally disappoint me about this game.
The sound is also fantastic, with some of the best music I've ever heard in an FPS. From the first time I heard the opening intro song, something told me that I'd absolutely love this game, so I guess I could consider the music to be a total tease; but in a good way. The guns sound incredible, I especially love the ISA magnum, that thing made my ears orgasm the first time I unloaded it on a Helghast soldier. The voice acting is decent, but what chaps my ass is the fact that they changed the voices of everybody, everybody except the most annoying character in the game; Rico. Good job Guerrilla; you nearly had a perfect asset to this game, but you just couldn't change one more voice up when it was truly necessary; nice one.
So in the end, there were a few things that I appreciated, but as a whole, I wish this game didn't exist. No, let me rephrase that; I wish this game had more thought and heart put into it. Killzone 3 is a game without soul; a jack of all trades. I'm absolutely, 100% sure if this game wasn't called Killzone, that I'd think better of it, but the fact that it bears the name just feels like a slap in the face to both me and a ton of other devoted fans of the series.
Now I'm going to make two recommendations. One for the casuals, and one for people who are on the same boat as me, as far as the second game goes. For the casual bunch, this is a great game, and a worthy investment. And if you haven't already, pick up Killzone 2 as fast as you can. Now, for people like me… Buy this game. It's an experience like many others, and there are a few things to appreciate about this game. But I'm going to leave you with a challenge; I dare you to play this game through to the end three times and think this is a better game than Killzone 2. I DARE you.
Now, if you read this damn book of a review, I hope that you can see where I'm coming from. It felt like the more I wrote and thought, the more I began to dislike this game, but let me make one thing perfectly clear. This is not a bad game, this is a decent one. I could care less if you disagree with me, and if you want to call me out on some of the points, then go ahead, I have a blog that I update regularly on this site. Some will brush by this review, others will shake their heads in disgust at it, but at the end of the day, I guess you could call this more an "opinion" than a "review". Take what you want from that and think about whether you really enjoyed this game or not.
Review by Cal Burkhart
P.S. I feel like it'd be pointless to have a good/bad points list this time around, so don't be hatin' if you just want to get straight to the point; I'm not going to let you do that.