I'm a massive Killzone 2 fan. Counting the time i spent both in single player and multi player in KZ2, i have over 1500 hours on it. Over 1400 of those hours on the multiplayer. In my opinion KZ2 is the best multiplayer game i have ever played. Sure it wasn't perfect, but it was damn good.
Now here we have... Killzone 3. Obviously the multiplayer is the mode i'm most looking forward to in KZ3. The campaign in KZ2 wasn't all that great, compared to the much better multiplayer it had. In KZ3 it's the other way around... the campaign is better than its multiplayer...
Before you start the campaign you will notice the KZ3 menu... the red menu this game has is just plain ugly compared to the nice menus we had in KZ2.
When you fire up the campaign KZ3 starts right where the second game ended. Visari is dead and we need to get the hell off the planet.
The KZ3 campaign is really impressive. Some levels look more impressive than others. You will travel to many places while trying to escape Helghan... from a weird looking jungle, snow mountains, or a weapons factory. The entire game looks great, but some levels are much more impressive graphically. The graphics are much more detailed than KZ2. While i think KZ2 was more technically advanced... with smoke, grenade explosions and stuff.. KZ3 has much more detailed graphics. It's hard to say which looks better... i guess its a draw, KZ2 graphics are technically superior but KZ3 has a lot more detail. This is as of right now the best looking PS3 game along with Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2.
It took me about 7 hours to beat the campaign. It's not a long game, but the length is not so bad. I replayed it again at least 2 more times. While a bit short i did enjoy the campaign, though i wish it was more challenging like KZ2.
Well lets move the campaign aside and get to the real deal why i bought this game... multiplayer. So how is the MP in KZ3? Plain and simple... a downgrade, CoD wanna be, camping game.
People complained about the controls in KZ2. I had no problems with them, the controls in the MP were perfect compared to KZ2 campaign where gun accuracy was horrible and turning when running was a pain. KZ2 MP controls took skill to master, it took me a while before i felt good with them. They were very realistic how you could actually feel the weight of the guns, unlike CoD noob games where guns are like water pistols. So now in KZ3 they made turning the camera smoother, more easier, and well ok its cool, i can live with it, but was this the only thing they did? No. They increased accuracy on all the guns by a lot, so people can get kills easier.
Faster smoother controls (i can live with this) and increased accuracy on all guns all they did? No. They went farther and gave us a bit less health than KZ2 so getting a kill is even more easier. Why the soldiers wear all the armor? It seems pretty useless with the CoD like instant deaths in this game lol.
How could they make the game more noob friendly? Brutal melee! Get close to someone and tap L1 and get ready to watch the same old animations play out. How can you walk up to someone with a machine gun in his hand and poke their eyes.... and ugh they die? lol wtf? The melee system in KZ2 actually took skill, you had to smack someone with your weapon twice to take them down... no scripted animations like in noobzone 3. Brutal melee should of only been in campaign.
The classes are unbalanced. You got the tactician with the wall radar hack spotting most classes on the radar... wtf? How noob friendly is that? But the real problem is not him. Marksman is the biggest problem. A class the can go invisible, with assault rifles, machine gun pistols, 1 shot kill very easy sniper rifles... what were they thinking? KZ3 is a more casual noob friendly game, and on top of that they create this super camping class? Regardless of this class KZ3 would still be a camping game like COD but with Marksman its even a bigger camping game than COD.
Hit detection sucks. Sometimes you die/kill 1/2 bullets, not head shot. Is it lag? Is it the game just has terrible hit detection? Gotta be one of those. Headshots are random, sometime they register, sometimes they don't. Lag? Distance? What ever it is... it never makes sense in this game.
There are also a lot of invisible walls that block your shots, something i have never seen in KZ2. This just shows the bad job the multiplayer designers did on KZ3.
Guerrilla Games even admits they wanted to make a game casuals can get into. Man did they went far. Things like kill streaks, point pop ups just like COD and calling a mode Guerilla WARFARE really gives you away on how much they wanted to make this a noob game like COD.
KZ3 MP is not just a downgrade, but it has less features. Where are the cool battle replays like in KZ2 web site where i could watch my great KZ2 matches? Where are the custom games? They are coming in a future patch, but they will be UNRANKED private games to invite people, making them useless. There is no hope for this game...
Clan matches. For a competitive gamer like me this is very important. Now you cant challenge clans like KZ2... which ok sucks but at least now people cant boost valor like in KZ2. So now we got matchmaking, putting you up against random clans... ok that sounds cool and fast. The matchmaking is broken.... i got tiered of playing 4 vs 8 warzone games... wtf? I guess if you wanna win you better have 8 people lol. The matchmaking in guerrilla warfare clan matches is also a bit broken but not so bad, they put you in 2 vs 3 games sometimes, but since its just killing numbers don't affect it so much. Matchmaking in pub games also fails, putting you in empty games many times.
Guerrilla warfare clan matches was what i played the most and oh my god... zzzz..... get ready to camp people. Its all about our friend the Marksman. Every game is about camping, camping hard. Some people are smart and don't downgrade their Marksman with Scramble plus plus... which just tells enemy you are 15 meters away by scrambling their radar (they cant detect the marksman anyway).... yeah the dev's are that dumb. There is also the silent footsteps perk... mix that with no scramble plus plus and you got the ultimate camping class instead of a beast camp class. One time i played a CM against a 2k rated clan, after 15 minutes no one got a kill, everyone was camping... no one moves, because if you walk into someone camping corner you are RIP. Nothing else to say.... what a horrible, boring camping game. Terrible. Biggest camping game i ever played.
Clan match rating is also fail. After playing a bunch of games we start getting less points for beating a higher/lower rating clan than ours. When we started with the clan we were getting loads of points and almost reached #1 in the world at GW, even when beating lower rank clans we were getting good points. Eventually you hardly get points.. wtf? If you wanna be #1 clan you better create new lol. Broken system.
Another downgrade is that now games are max 24 players, when in KZ2 the max was 32. It's cool to play smaller games than 32 players, but not having the option to play with more is a downgrade. Nice job GG.
So yeah KZ3 MP is fail compared to KZ2, but at least this is not a horrible FPS game. I rather play KZ3 than COD. Even with all the problems on the multiplayer i admit that... i enjoyed playing it online. The campaign was actually ok, though too easy. Really disappointed with the MP... the main reason i like the KZ series. KZ3 MP really was an insult to hardcore KZ2 fans. Hopefully KZ4 goes the hardcore way.
Story: 7
Graphics: 10
Sound: 8
Gameplay: 8
Value: 9
---8.4---