makingmusic476 on 17 December 2010
The level:
| After the ice-locked ships and glacier environments shown earlier this year, the latest campaign level we get to play – in single-player and surprisingly sturdy split-screen – offers a more familiar backdrop. Sev, Rico and company are still on Helghan and we pick them up trying to access a space elevator before remaining Helghast forces can use it to launch a surprise counterattack on the ISA homeworld. It's all brown trenches, rubble and metal walkways, and the overhanging skybox is a fetching shade of nuclear beige. |
Controls:
| This gives us a chance to pay attention to the moment to moment gunplay. Killzone 2 had a certain heft to it – partly because of its deliberately cumbersome cover system and partly because of the famously awful controller lag – but Killzone 3 is a considerable improvement without losing any of that distinctiveness. You still grip the left trigger to crouch or seclude yourself in cover, then pop out with the left stick and fire (using iron sights as well if you like) but control is more immediate and precise. If you found the last game a slog, you may want to take another look now your gun actually fires bullets out of it on the same day you press the button. |
Gameplay:
| There's lots of movement from the enemy and as you down Helghast and your tanks push up a hill or ISA troops swarm past you to take up advanced positions, there's a convincing sense that you're pushing the opposing force back rather than simply scrambling between trigger points, as was sometimes the case with the last game. |
Graphics:
| Whether close up or off in the distance, Killzone 3 is also an even better-looking game than its celebrated predecessor. There is a cartoonier edge to the visuals, especially character models, and the almost kaleidoscopic impact of Guerrilla Games' various visual filters continues to saturate even the greyest gun metal with flashes of unexpected colour. Facial animation is a bit dodgy in places, but animation overall is excellent and nobody else does smoke and explosions quite like this either. |
Final thoughts:
| Another hour of gameplay still leaves us with lots of questions to answer (like where is Sev getting all this hair gel?) but while the campaign appears to be offering few real surprises at this stage, it's doing so in spectacular fashion. Thanks to a few nips and tucks this is now a very playable blockbuster first-person shooter as well as a rather dashing one. |
And of course, there are new screens:
