Killzone 3
Developer: Guerrilla Games
Platform: PS3
Killzone 3 will arrive soon and after the events of Killzone 2 I don’t think the Helghast are going to want to ‘talk things out’ anymore. Guerrilla Games are hard at work on Killzone 3 and the multiplayer beta is out and people are playing the shit out of it hoping to get their fix before the full treatment arrives on February 22. I’ve made sure to play quite a bit of the beta before I wrote this to make sure I got my facts straight since it’s been through multiple updates since it’s release.
The first thing I want to get into are the vehicles. Remember that badass exoskeleton you got to pilot in Killzone 2? Yea well it’s back and ready for you to wreck other people with it. It controls pretty well and feels how a mech should, but the most important factor is that it can do a ton of damage to enemies but doesn’t feel overpowered at all since a simple infantry unit can take out an exoskeleton with a few well placed shots into the cockpit window. The jetpack is exactly what you think it is except it has a small gun hooked into it. You can jump pretty high in it and the minigun does light damage but you shouldn’t feel cocky flying through the air since you can be taken out in an instant since you’re a pretty open target in the air.
Classes return to the party but it seems the infantry and heavy weapon classes weren’t sent invitations. This time you’ve only got the tactician, engineer, medic, infiltrator, and marksman with all new abilities and some either taken away or changed. The marksman(sniper) class for example has given his spot & mark ability to the tactician in favor for a scrambler that disables the radar of enemies when they’re near you and the medic now has a drone that will follow him around shooting enemies for you and can bring you back from the brink of death if possible. Each class starts out with their ability at level 1 and there are 2 more levels to further enhance them, like the infiltrators disguise ability allows you to disguise yourself as an enemy for a brief amount of time but won’t fool turrets/drones, level 2 gets rid of the time limit and now lets you fool those silly turrets, finally at level 3 the disguise won’t go off if you manage to kill an enemy with a melee attack. There are also some extra badges you can unlock that give special bonuses like extra armor.
I’m sure you all want to know what marvelous game modes we can expect in Killzone 3 so Guerrilla Games decided to include 3 modes in the beta. The first is one you’ll remember from the previous game called Warzone where you and and an enemy team go at it in 7 different objective challenges. For all those team death-match junkies out there comes Guerrilla Warfare where you job is to crush the other team into a lifeless pulp. The most interesting mode is Operations where one team defends an objective and the other attacks it, in this case in the level Frozen Dam the ISA has to plant charges to blow up the dam and the Helghast have to stop them from soaking their newly dried uniforms. You’ll be greeted with an introduction/concluding cutscene that shows you and your teammates and the better you do during the game the more important/heroic your character will be in teh cutscene. What’s that, you didn’t do shit but twiddle your thumbs during the match? Well your character in the cutscene will most definitely be killed instantly for everyone to see. Repeat what Heavy weapons guy from Team Fortress 2 says in your head the whole match: I am credit to team.
The first thing you’ll notice when you level up is that you scored a sweet upgrade point. Guerrilla Games have replaced the previous system of leveling up in Killzone 2 where you’d have everything for that respective class available to you and only needed to acquire a certain amount of ribbons to unlock a new badge/skill. This time around all classes are upgraded separately and start out with the basic form of a skill and depending on your class either a shotgun, smg, or a rifle. Each upgrade costs a certain amount of upgrade points so if you want a pistol/sidearm you’re going to have to cough up a point to get it. This system works well for players who play a specific class but seems to basically screw over players such as myself who change class according to what’s happening in the game so I’m forced to decide whether I put my saved up points towards either my medic, engineer, marksman, tactician, or infiltrator class. Another complaint is that all the classes share a few of the same weapons so it confuses me why unlocking the pistol for one class wouldn’t unlock it for all of them so only that specific class you spend the point on will have an extra weapon to go into combat with.
My main issue so far with the game is that each map seems favored heavily towards the Helghast players. Each time I’ve played on Corinth Highway the Helghast team has always controlled the entire map within the first 2 minutes and basically leaving the ISA team trapped within their spawn while there are 4 Helghast players in the exoskeleton raining fire on anyone fool enough to try to get out. In Frozen Dam the Helghast players basically control everything outside of the factory area where the ISA spawns in which makes objective games difficult and turns into a complete cluster-fuck when the Helghast are tasked with putting explosives in one of those rooms and you have 2 teams fighting in a tight space. Finally we have Turbine Concourse but this map seems fairly balanced unless a player manages to get on top of the railings next to the turbine on the ISA side since one sniper/turret there can trap the ISA team or make it difficult for the Helghast team to get out of their respective bases.
Killzone 3’s beta shows that there’s still some pieces to iron out, but Guerrilla Games have tons of time to fix these minor issues by then. This doesn’t mean the game isn’t fun, it’s just as addictive and fun to play as the second game was. If you had any issues with the controls of Killzone 2 then I can assure you that the controls here feel a lot smoother and it doesn’t take 10 years to turn the camera around. This is definitely going to keep people playing for months after it’s release, and the best part is that there’s no Radec Academy map as far as I know so we won’t have to see 50 ‘Radec Academy TDM/Pistol Only’ maps that littered K2.
