Returning to the industrial grime of Killzone 3’s Helghan home world after over 70 hours in the bright clear Middle Eastern maps of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is initially a disorienting experience. Killzone 3, like its predecessor, is a game that at times has an almost suffocating atmosphere. Heavy orange and blue lights punctuate the superbly textured warehouses and military facilities while snow and ash particles continually waft through the landscape…
With so many intricate effects and textures vying for your attention the look is sometimes overwhelming. However one could argue this also serves to enhance the feeling that you are in a hostile and alien environment. It must be stated that, though even in Alpha form, Killzone 3 is one of this generation’s most beautiful games. That the game will look even better in final form is truly mind boggling. Weapon modelling and reload animations in particular are highly impressive.
With everyone united in praising its graphics, Killzone 2 was divisive in its controls. Some loved the weighty movement and heavy feedback from weapon recoil, others found the game to be sluggish and painfully unresponsive. The significant controller lag came in for severe criticism from all quarters. These issues were further accentuated for players accustomed to the fast arcade precision of Modern Warfare.
Guerrilla Games have clearly taken this criticism on board. As I load the beta up I’m instantly aware of how quick it is to navigate through the game menus. It’s a small point to make, but Killzone 2 had very sluggish menus which often made the whole experience feel like wading through toffee.
What’s also instantly apparent when in game is that controller lag is now gone and as a result, the game feels much more responsive. I still play through Killzone 2 single player on occasion and yet found it increasingly difficult to go back to after Battlefield: Bad Company 2. However the Killzone 3 beta seems much more closely aligned to Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare control wise. The heavy recoil also seems to have been toned down on all weapons. Above all, it still seems to feel like a Killzone game and not a clone of Modern Warfare which is the fine line developers now tread when incorporating aspects of the genre lead.
With new and expanded classes and a slew of new weapons the multiplayer feels much more fleshed out that the previous title. It still feels a little frantic at times; the tight corridors and complex interiors don’t often allow you to put distance between yourself and the enemy. But then I suppose I am accustomed to Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s wide open landscapes and the space you are given to establish yourself. Killzone 3 isn’t worse because of it, but it does take a while to get into the more intense combat. Without access to the final product its impossible to say at this point whether there will be expansive maps for a happy camper to establish on.
It all seems very encouraging so far. Guerrilla Games seem to have genuinely taken on board some of the sometimes stinging criticism of Killzone 2 and worked hard on the controls, while still striving to retain that Killzone feel. It’s much slicker and the graphics are truly astounding. The final product should be a must buy when it hits stores in February.
This article was submitted by guest writer Warren Thompson.
Ah excellent, I was wondering when this was going to crop up 😉
Good to hear your thoughts Warren and I’m glad they’ve addressed the controls issues because I felt they were a little too heavy at times from my experience with the Killzone 2 demo. Did you say there was a co-op campaign mode as well for Killzone 3? That’s something I’d be very much interested in.
Excellent write-up, Warren, thank you very much for the contribution.
I admit I’ve never played a Killzone game, though it seems like the franchise would be up my alley. I didn’t have a PS3 when the first one came out, Tom Chick’s scathing review of the second drove me off, and I just sort of assumed I’d skip this one since I missed the first two. But based on your enthusiasm I think I might have to pick it up in February.
Thanks again, and welcome to the site!
Oddly enough, I have never had problems with KZ2’s purported lack of response when it comes to controls. Yes, they have felt heavy but not sluggish. I thought that gave the game a proper physical feel,a sense of being grounded and fighting for dear life, especially compared to CoD’s cocaine lightheadedness. Then again I have never played it online so I imagine there might be an issue worth complaining about in relation to multiplayer.
Just to set the record straight for Steerpike: the original Killzone was a Playstation 2 game and it was supposed to be some kind of Halo killer (haven’t heard THAT one before, eh?). Needless to say: it wasn’t. But the developer took criticism to heart and worked really hard on the sequel (there was a PSP only, isometric shooter in the meantime though, not bad at all, too). I know I was pretty negative about it, especially after the E3 target video fiasco, but the game actually managed to completely turn me around and I love it today (even having never played it online!!!). It’s a very well designed FPS with just about enough variety to never go stale and unparalelled production values. Also, while the story itself is barely there, the feel of it is great: the world is convincing, the cliched characters and enemies are cliched in a good way and the art direction is excellent. So, I don’t know what Tom Chick wrote about it (I’m off to read it now) but trust me, it’s one of the best FPS games of 2009, without a doubt.
Thanks for the correction, Meho. I remember the old Killzone 1 commercials now. I had it in my head that it was the launch shooter for the PS3, but of course now I remember that was Resistance: Fall of Man. Moreover, I think it might have been Resistance 2 that Tom Chick wrote such terrible things about.
So now I really feel like I owe Killzone a chance. Plus I have kind of a thing for scary gas masks.
Actually, Chicks review of KZ 2 is… what’s the word.. scathing? He couldn’t be arsed to finish it, says the fiction is horrible, criticises the cliches etc. But I really think he’s exaggerating.
Personally, the heavy, weighty control scheme to Killzone is what attracts me to it against other console shooters. Along with the grimy art direction and the Helghast, the satisfying feeling of filling an enemy with hot lead is one of my favorite things about the series.. especially when compared to other shooters that feel a little, well, “floaty” by comparison.
If they’ve toned that down to reach a wider audience (mostly the audience who always moaned at Killzone because they didn’t like that heavy feel), then fair play. As long as that isn’t lost entirely, I can live with the compromise.
Oh, and as for Tom Chick, I’m not really sure who he is, but I do often see his name referenced to on other blogs and gaming sites.. so he’s clearly someone of some standing.
Having read his Killzone 2 review, I’m not entirely sure why. His review is atrocious. If somebody doesn’t like Killzone 2, there are plenty of reasons why they wouldn’t. Countless things they could knock it for in a review (and this is coming from a fan) if they wanted to be constructive and detailed as to how and why they didn’t like the game.
His review says nothing. It says literally nothing about Killzone 2. If I’m a consumer wanting to read a review to inform me on my purchasing decision, that review gives me absolutely no information about what Killzone 2 is about. Just a spurious point about apparently being a midget and that, shock horror, the story telling in a first person shooter game about a team of large men killing lots and lots of faceless enemies doesn’t equate to Shakespeare’s finest works.
Without wanting to sound like a raving idiot for the sake of it, or one of those people who moans just because somebody criticizes a game on the internet, his review is garbage. Absolute trash. Not sure what the rest of his standard is like..
I’ve played none of the Killzone games and not read the review, so I can’t comment on specifics, but Chick’s been around a long time and is well respected for both being amusing and darn smart, arguably to the extent of being mastubatory in his gags.
Why respond? Because I’d recently read vicious responses on another site slamming John Clute for the same and been thinking about reviews. Both use reviews as launching pads for criticism which can royally piss off those looking for a yay/nay buy recommendation. Our own Steer, heck, all the staff on this site, often dances the same line and mostly successfully. Clute (writing about science fiction) uses reviews as a platform for broader criticism; Chick often uses them for discussion of game design. Sounds like he may have horribly misfired this time–he has before. Shooters are not his bailiwick. He’s a strategy guy.
Another example. Lester Bangs (whose writing I feel is hugely overpraised) used rock album reviews as launch pad for commentary on the music he dearly loved.
PS Clute’s a genius and not only ’cause he shares my love of Damon Knight’s Why Do Birds?, a criminally overlooked SF novel. It took Knight forty years to finally poop out a novel equal to his shorts from the 50’s but it was worth the wait. Hell, Knight’s own reviews collected in In Search of Wonder also straddled what I now dub the Chick-Bang Line.
That would be fair enough, if Chicks review was a spring board to a wider discussion about game design. But it isn’t. It says the bloke couldn’t be arsed to finish it and that there’s lots of grey textures. It’s like a forum post. It’s not intelligent, it’s not looking for a wider issue or has any deeper meaning. It’s just a shit “review”.
Not really buying it, personally. If the way to gain “respect” or attention as a writer is to put a couple of inane paragraphs down trashing the game with no substance behind it then I don’t know why the rest of us bother. Like I said, if Chick wanted to properly take Killzone apart then there is more than enough ammunition for him to do so. He didn’t and his piece just reads like a pointless, irrelevant bitch instead.
I believe Chick is doing the same thing Kieron Gillen has famously invented for games journalism – the New Games Journalism route (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Games_Journalism#New_Games_Journalism). Which I personally find very likeable and actually more than desired in relation to writing about games (in this regard, Tom Bissell’s book Extra Lives is pretty much indispensible). We need critical writing about games and we need more personality in writing, because otherwise we will just end up with a bunch of product descriptions and nobody wants that.
However, that Killzone 2 review is pretty much wide off the mark since, as Mat points out, it does not really address the existing issues the game has and is basically a rant, an amusing rant but not really useful.
I totally agree, Meho. I’m all for personality in game reviews and I’m all for the “experience” of playing a game rather than just a list of bullet points. This game has nice graphics and sound. This game has solid gameplay. Blah blah blah.
Indeed, it was only the other day that I praised and wished for more of the type of article that Gregg contributed to for Revenge of the Titans. That was entertaining and it was informative. It wasn’t too concerned with hammering huge paragraphs into a wall of text. As far as New Games Journalism is concerned, I learnt more about the subjective experience of playing Revenge of the Titans from that article than any review of any game I’ve read in a long, long time.
Like I said, I’m not totally familiar with the rest of Chicks work, but as a reader I extracted nothing from his piece on Killzone 2. It was bafflingly vague, gave me no feedback on the gameplay experience at all and said nothing about the the game as a product.
Perhaps it’s me. Perhaps I just don’t get it.
But the midget theme was funny. At least to me who can’t even say the word “midget” without adding the word “porn” at least in my head…
I picked up KZ2 months ago and do look forward to that. Maybe I will have some time over the holidays. I am completely unfamiliar with Killzone’s fiction but it was $24 and I’d heard intriguing stuff about it. So yeah.
Thanks for your impressions, Warren. If I muster the focus to do Kz2 then perhaps Kz3 lies in my future.
Or perhaps it was a lousy example of Chick’s work, as I suggested is likely. He’s written a lot and it’s not always good.
“New games journalism” is (far as I can tell) an experiational approach to reviews. Journal-form (not journalism). All three bleed together.
Played the open beta last night for the first time. Can’t work out if I like it or not.
It’s deffinently Killzone.. instantly familiar.. but yet with a few distinct differences that I’m not sure I like. The new controls and speed of movement certainly feels more responsive, but I really liked the heavier feeling of the previous 2 games and am disappointed it’s gone. This feels a little too much like COD for me.. and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not..