Killzone 3 : An “Almost” Game

NOTE:  THIS POST INCLUDES SPOILERS!  Don’t whine and cry if anything gets ruined for you.  A fair warning’s been given.

Today saw me defeat the Helghast horde with fire and steel.  Despite all the odds, a guy wearing 0 armor and wielding a sassy attitude brought down the military juggernaut that had destroyed not 1, but 2 of the best invasion armies that were ever mustered!

Sounds pretty good, right?  Well, that’s partly right!  After having played Killzone 2 (read review here), KZ 3 is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor.  The deepness of texture, the sound of the firearms, unique locations, changing gameplay, the IQ of the characters… the works!  From fighting massive walking gun platforms to fewer “bro” lines of dialogue, Killzone 3 delivers an adventurous experience (in more gameplay hours than KZ 2) that will keep you wanting to play to the end… almost.

Though the variation in action will keep you playing, the game does not age well through the play-through.  As time goes on, control is taken from the player more often, cramming the user into rail-gun shoot-everything sessions of senseless bullet storms.  The story degrades as well, with more deus ex machina elements being implemented to hurry the story along; this gives the sense that the developers didn’t think out the plot too well, and had to pull a crutch to keep the game afloat.  Lastly, the final 20 minutes are the most disappointing of all.  This almost all would be acceptable, except KZ 3 is harked as a major title of this year, so it fails the standards set for it.

The climax of the game comes in the form of raiding an orbital space station to stop the primary antagonist from launching his fleet of world-ending warships against Earth.  Boarding the station with a strike force, it dwindles to just yourself and 2 other goons to beat-back the station guards and exploding spider bots (explosives on a pressurized space station half-constructed from glass?); this isn’t a problem, except the escape cinematic from the station shows all of the original squad back in action.  Where the heck were these guys when I was murdering dudes trying to murder me?

After fleeing the destructing station, prepare to sit-back on one of the longest rail sequences of any major title.  Blowing up cookie-cutter, scripted ships of a different color (your confiscated fighter magically turns blue instead of Helghan red), after being long and tedious, brings you to shooting down the flagship of the fleet where your arch antagonist, finally dropping a nuke on it in low orbit over the planet.  This causes the world-shattering super WMDs (more deus ex machina stuff) to ignite, inadvertently wiping out everything upon the surface of Helghan, including the Helghast army, any ISA (your buddies) forces left, all Helghast civilians, and the ecosystem of the world.  But after this genocide, what does the ‘protagonist’ have to say?  “Jesus, how many people were down there?”  Hmmm… that just doesn’t seem to convey a decent appreciation for life.  Or is it just me?

Anyway, Killzone 3 set the series up for a 4^th installment.  KZ 3 did a lot I would like to see in a sequel, but I can only hope the developers will fix some of the cheapness that continues to be conveyed by the series.

Not so Killer Killzone 2

I’ve found the missing link between man and ape, and its name is Killzone 2.

Now before the raging/trolling/flaming happens, I wish to have the disclaimer that I’m judging my experience based upon factual things I can point to.  If I delve into much opinion, I hope to give you a heads-up beforehand.

Apes.  Apes is the best description of the characters in KZ2, if looking at both their graphical representations and their motives.  The heavy-browed, frowned-faced, waddling Neanderthals would be some of the ugliest humans around.  Forever in the expression I like to call, “forcing the turtle out,” the protagonists of KZ2 never convey a more complex series of emotions than arrogance and pissed-off.  For a title of this console generation, the lack-luster look (not to mention an absence of speaking animations; it’s creepy as all get-out to have someone grunt at you and see only their doll eyes coming back at you) is almost disrespectful.

Remember your favorite action figure?  Remember the plastic gun it came with?  Well, that nostalgia is brought back in Killzone 2’s armory!  No, not the fun times and imaginative play; what I’m talking about is the cheap plastic fakery behind it all, with little substance in the product as-is.  The guns are just pathetic.  There seems to be such little power behind every shot that you worry if they’ll break if you play with them too hard.  There are some cannons that fill in the rush from rifled fire (aka Electricity Gun – cook a fascist like a home barbeque!), but these weapons don’t see the light-of-day nearly enough to justify the weak nature of standard firearms.

What do apes care about?  They seem to care about food, sex, being more alpha than the next stinking primate, and testosterone.   What do the characters in Killzone 2 care about?  They care about resources (food), lusty scientists (guess), showing their bros whose more bro (alpha), and large, flashy explosions.  Are you getting the connection?  The stories of the game’s individuals would get a serious boost if only they were as deep as the person’s brow.  It isn’t the most cliché performance ever, but KZ2 certainly seems to not be trying to hard not to be.

Killzone 2 seems like it should have a lot going for it; large backstory, valiant techno-savvy heroes, and a planet full of freaky-fascists to wield unending justice on, at the end of a bullet-hose.  But alas, some things cannot come together, no matter how destined they were to workout.  KZ2 was an interesting play, but a return is not going to happen from me.