Killzone is a strange series for me. The original landed on the Playstation 2 and I absolutely hated it. The game was sluggish, boring, and ran at a snails pace on the PS2 hardware. When developer Guerrilla Games announced a sequel for the PS3 and showed it's controversial trailer, I was very skeptical. Luckily, Guerrilla was able to use the power of the PS3 to actually achieve their goals and create a good, yet flawed shooter with a fantastic multiplayer experience. Killzone 3 continues Guerrilla's great work but with some of the glaring flaws included.
Killzone 3 at it's core is a better game than the previous outing, mainly due to a stronger campaign and some gameplay tweaks that make the campaign more enjoyable this time around. Even though the battles are not quite as exciting until closer towards the end game, the campaign is still quite a joy to play through. The enemy A.I. is still very strong and the cover mechanics are still fairly unique for the genre. Killzone 3's story is a bit more enjoyable this time around due to the characters being fleshed out a bit more and the sense of conflict has been heightened. The graphics are gorgeous but some muddy textures on the player models hurt the presentation during cutscenes. Multiplayer is better than ever and ranks very high on my list of favorite multiplayer experiences in this generation of gaming.
The problems with Killzone 3 are similar to the same issues I had with Killzone 2. The aiming, while improved, still feels stiff and unresponsive. Grenades feel like they are a lot more useless in the campaign and enemies still take way too many shots to kill unless you hit them in the head at just the right point. Playing the game on the normal difficulty, I ran into several frustrating portions of the game where the difficulty felt a bit cheap, especially during the sequence where the series introduces jet packs into the mix. The game's ending is a bit strange too and doesn't really resolve much of the conflict for us. The game's campaign is a decent length (took me maybe 8 hours) but do not expect a 15+ hour romp through Helgast territory.
Killzone 3 is still a flawed experience, but Guerilla Games packed quite a bit into this package and created a good value for PS3 gamers. If you enjoyed Killzone 2, I highly recommend Killzone 3.
Rating:
No comments:
Post a Comment