We made Killzone 3, it's our game.
Before diving into this review I went back to my review of Killzone 2 which I rated 7.5 back in the day. I felt that K2's unresponsive (pre-patch) clumsy controls and harshly inacurate weaponery hurt an otherwise well made product. Back then I was hardly the only one who felt that way and behold, Killzone 3 improves on each and every single one of K2's weaknesses.
The game literally looks and feels like someone at Guerrilla had a clipboard and checked off every bit of critisism:
reduced latency / more responsive controls...check
more diverse settings...check
more efficient weaponery...check
aiming and firing assignable to triggers instead of bumpers..check
Top stuff and something that imo more reviewers need to give these guys credit for. Killzone 3 looks and feels like it was made for it's fans.
The core Killzone material remains the same but in this case that's a good thing. The Helghast still look menacing. There's still that sense of being an underdog up against a deadly efficient futuristic nazi warmachine. And the game really succeeds in making you feel like a badass for being able to stand up to that overwhelming opposition. Something that imo games like Halo Reach and Black Ops failed to deliver in their campains.
Based on all of the above I have no trouble at all awarding this game a 9.
That doesn't mean the game is completely without flaw though. Eventhough the game is such a complete package (a lengthy campain, coöp, multiplayer, Move controls, 3D support, you name it and it's in there) all that content comes at the price of significantly reduced pollish when compared to it's predecessor.
Sound effects that go horribly wrong with dialog needlessly repeating like a broken record, graphics clipping and subtitles for non english countries that sometimes fall out of sync or pop up at random. Luckily it's all minor stuff that can be fixed with some patchwork but it's clear that Guerrilla had to work under pressure here. Some additional playtesting should have easily filtered this out.
Another thing worth mentioning is that not all efforts to change things up a bit have been met with succes. The diversity in backdrops leads to some obligatory scenery like a snowy level, a watery level and yes a jungle level.
Now while the first two serve their purpose without much trouble, the jungle level feels so horribly out of place it's borderline spoof material.
You see it looks and feels exactely like a shameless ripoff of Pandora from James Cameron's Avatar complete with carnivorous plantlife. To further make this particular section of the game feel out of place, a truly laughable stealthsystem is introduced. One particular moment which had me laughing out loud was when my NPC crouched in knee high grass exposing him from the waist up and told me to do the same so we wouldn't be seen.
Things got even funnier when a Helghast grunt arrived on the scene and stood within 3 feet of us and he indeed didn't see us.
As if all that wasn't enough, we're also told that there's only 3 ways to kill Helghast in that particular section. Shoot them in the head, shoot an exploding plant or knife them in the back. This turned out to be true because whenever you kill a soldier differently some more unintentional comedy unfolds.
You'd expect a firefight but instead a Helghast soldier dressed up like The Predator shows up and kills you instantly with his trademark wristblade. I honestly couldn't believe my eyes the first time this happened. I just sat there staring at the screen wondering if I had just been punked. Luckily this was the only section of the game that stood out as exceptionally bad since the rest of the campain is an absolute blast to play.
I'm pretty sure we all remember were Killzone started. Back then it was hyped as Sony's Halo killer. In this day and age nobody really talks about Halo-, Call of Duty-, or Battlefield "killers" anymore. Individual people just have their preference for particular AAA shooter franchises.
I'm glad to see Guerrilla delivered a Killzone game that may not "kill" other franchises but it can easily line up next to them in the heavyweight division.
Grz Darksjeik
ps The Predator guys? really?