Review: Killzone 3

By Wayne Webb

It had been a while since I had played Killzone 2 – but my memory of it was positive.  The story starts off where the last one left off and from there you are launched into a melee of false armistices, revenge and survival battles.

So you get armed with menacing, solid and heavy weapons and you dispense damage, in the name of survival as you fight your way through a standard linear progression towards the ultimate conclusion. The graphics are stunning, the detail and depth portrayed are a step up on Killzone 2 and many other games in the market place.  If you based the total score on the fighting (a load of fun) and the graphics (a visual treat) then you’d have a 5/5 game.

There’s also a great multiplayer option, something I didn’t get into the last outing. The maps, drawn from the game, are big and varying enough to really enjoy. Also you have the options of either online multiplayer (where I got killed, a lot!) or the Botzone, essentially an offline multiplayer where you play against varying degrees of AI in staged battles in the same vein as online. I didn’t die as frequently there and it’s a great place to hone your skills as sniper and scope out positions for lying in wait or raining death from above. One small point, I didn’t get the “Infiltrator” element where you can disguise yourself and kill from within the enemy ranks undetected. I cursed my teammates (many times) for friendly fire, before I realised this. No fault of the game though, my own inattention to the details. Again if based on these elements, still a 5/5 game.

The problem, and it’s a big one – enough to take one whole point off the score – is the storyline. It is annoying and ever present. It’s so distracting and unnecessary. Killzone 2 barely had any and was a brilliant game, Killzone 3 by comparison is a brilliant game hampered by an irritatingly unavoidable storyline.  They obviously spent money on it with the likes of Malcolm McDowell and James Remar as voice actors. They should have instead saved that money and tacked on two or three more levels and dropped the storyline altogether. At several points you wait for the story to finish, play a very short time and are forced through another sequence. It really takes the shine off.

Pros: Great action, satisfying weapons, astounding graphics, great multiplayer maps, Botzone mode.
Cons: Story irritation, infiltrator deaths.

4 Shacks out of 5

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