Killzone 3 and the Fight Against a Giant Mech

by Michael Thomsen - IGN.com | 16 December 2010 12:00
 
Is that a canon between your legs or are you just trying to kill me?
 
In a genre that's become disappointingly homogenous, the Killzone games have always stood a little further apart from their first-person shooter kin. They've got military jargon, alpha male stereotypes, and gloomy post-invasion worlds, but they went farther than most other shooters to match mechanic to themes. I never feel like a gun on a camera dolly in Killzone games. The movement speed, sluggish aim, and dramatic gun-kick effects are aesthetic hurdles between player and objective.
 
Killzone 3 has been a scary game for me to follow because that definitive element from earlier games is the one that seems to have been de-emphasized. Guerilla Games has identified the most uniquely expressive part of its game and decided to tone it down. I had the chance to test my skepticism against a brand new single-player level at a recent press even in New York. This is what happened.
 

He'll be crying for mercy soon enough.

The level is called "The Reckoning" and takes place very close to what appears to be the end of the game. The mission was sitting at the bottom of a long list in the mission select screen and I could only see one after it. The level opens with a giant four-legged mech creeping over a ruined battlefield against a sooty orange sunset. The lighting effects and color palate make the scene especially dramatic, but the environment is very similar to the ruined battlefields of Killzone 2. You'll start with a small group of soldiers, lead by faux-hawk powered Sevchenko. You shouldn't need this explained, but the big mech is a Helghan super-weapon posing a great threat to the human resistance and it's up to your small group of dotty heroes to stop it.
 
You begin the level at a small base overrun by Helghan soldiers in a fight that will be familiar to anyone who played Killzone 2. The space is a small sunken square with a big building on one side and a smaller shack-like structure on the other side. Enemies come at you from above, around corners, and from behind cover straight ahead. It's not quite overwhelming, but there's some perceptible thought in placing enemies all around the environment to break up the tunnel vision that often plagues cover shooters.
 
After clearing the base you'll head into the trenches where Helghan soldiers rush you around blind corners and fire from planks laid across the trench. A little way into the trenches, a Helghan flamethrower soldier appears above. His range of attack is much bigger, requiring lots of appropriately stressful back-pedaling in the tight space. After a few well-placed volleys, the flamethrower's tank explodes and he catches fire. Moving past, I could hear him crying out in pain while he writhed on the ground. It's a grisly touch but one that reminded of what I most appreciate about the Killzone games. They aren't exactly alpha male simulators, but they leave little cues around the environment that provoke a player's capacity to feel something other than a simple adrenaline rush. If killing is going to be fun, it should come at a terrible price and be constrained by the heaving weight of war machinery strapped to your back.
 
Speaking of which, the controls in Killzone 3 have indeed been adjusted to lessen the aiming momentum and sensitivity. You won't feel as weighted down and imprecise as in the first games, but there's still a slippery sense of momentum that implies the guns in your hand have some heft. It's slightly disappointing to see they've greased this mechanical wheel, but it seems like the spirit behind the controls remain. Call it a compromise.
 
Next, we skipped ahead to the end of the level. After some further charging through the trenches you'll meet up with some other soldiers and be whisked upward in one of the familiar Killzone gunships. At this point, it's time to head into the broad canvas showdown with the four-legged mech who had been the cause of so much background mayhem in the earlier section of the game. As the gunship circles the mech, you'll fire at it from a mounted machine gun, going for all the small turrets that pop up across its surface. The mech's body is split in two, with the left side actually being a giant canon that fires giant blue-charged shells. The top of the mech is a big observation deck like you might see on an aircraft carrier.
 
Once you get a good angle, you can fire on a massive belt of blue energy charges that sits in between the mech's two halves. It will take a few trips around, but you'll eventually be able to cause this big belt of ammo to explode. This sends the massive cannon tumbling down and seriously immobilizes the mech. At this point, you'll keep circling and turn your fire onto the upper command deck. Once that's destroyed, the mech will collapse in a massive tangle of useless machinery.
 

Alpha man versus mech.

Killzone 3 will also support 3D, PlayStation Move, and the recently announced Sharp Shooter peripheral. I've seen Killzone 3 in 3D twice now, and it's always impressive. The screen is filled with particle effects, billowing smoke, moving clouds, bullet sparks and soft shadows, but each time, it's also easily forgettable. It's a luxury more than a game-changing necessity, at least in my limited experience so far.
 
I have long preferred to play shooters with pointers controls instead of analog sticks, and so using Move with Killzone 3 is an exciting prospect. But it seems to veer into the same essential problem many Wii shooters have faced. While the control mechanism is dramatically more subtle and precise, the game design is essentially a killbox designed first for dual analog control. Thus, while aiming feels more precise, basic movement and turning can feel quite a bit clunkier. It's not necessarily a bad constraint—certainly not any worse than the abstraction of guiding a reticule with an analog stick—but it's one that needs to be designed for. The number of enemies, their movement speed, accuracy, and the number of interactive objects in the environment should all be affected. While Move works smoothly in Killzone 3, and is probably the way I'd prefer to play it when it comes out, it leaves me still waiting for a game conceptually designed for motion controls from top to bottom.
 
I'm still skeptical about Killzone 3. Its setting, color palate, and aesthetic seem very similar to the previous game, while the controls have been subtly smoothed. There's still much to be seen in the game's story mode, but I worry the additions for the sequel have been of the "bigger and more bad ass indeed" school of thought. The first game had you fighting alongside a cynical but charming Helghan defector. The second game had you invading an industrial age hell in outer space while constrained by the weight of your guns. I don't yet know what the big new idea or feeling Killzone 3 will be. I hope I can find one.
 
Killzone 3 will be out on February 22 2011 in North America and February 28 in Europe and Australia.
 
Supplied by IGN.com