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Before reading my review for Killzone 3, know this. Because of my 'peculiar' stance towards the game, I decided to do two reviews, one rating the game's single player and one doing the same for the multiplayer. "Why? Why?!" You ask. "You had no problem giving a single score to a game with a similar formula, namely, Call of Duty: Black Ops". Well, What happened with Black Ops is that while its single player mode wasn't amazing, it wasn't offensive or anything of the sort, just meh. This deducted some points from the game's overall score as it reduced the appeal of the game as a 'package deal'. With Killzone 3 I cannot do that as its single player campaign seems to be a big part of this 'package' and it's also so obnoxious that I do not wish to group the marvelous multiplayer in with it.
Killzone 3: Singleplayer (PS3)
Developer: Guerilla Games
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Released: February 22, 2011 (North America)
The Killzone games' setting of space civil war and political mayhem is interesting but it has never managed to realize its full potential. The events of Killzone 3 are a bit more coherent than they were in Killzone 2, especially since I can brag that I beat Killzone 2 without even knowing what the game was about. I don't lie; Killzone 3 starts off in a way that makes me think the ending of 2 was a cliffhanger. That really caught me as a surprise as I would never have thought that.
Killzone 3 takes the player through several different environments: sea-platforms in an arctic sea, strange jungles which try too hard to look 'other-wordly' and the tried and true junkyards and ruined cities. The change of setting from one level to the next is appreciated but sometimes feels as if this constant change was made for variety's sake and nothing else.
I tried to pay attention to the story this time and figured this much out. After years of being mad at each other, the normal looking dudes ended up in the gas-masked face villains turf and are now trapped there. They must figure out a way to make it back home safely while thwarting a nefarious plan that has been plotted by the Helghast's (gas mask dudes) upper management.
Now these guys in the Helghast senate (or whatever) mean business! They are a bunch of old, evil dudes that are so delightfully villanous they should all be wearing sweet curly mustaches. Actually, a lot of them do.
Seriously, some of them look like this but with more Helghast.
They are all fun to watch although Malcolm McDowell (representing the private sector in war profiteer Something Stahl) gets the most screen time. Not a bad thing since he does a good job.
On the good guys' side we have tensions rising as Sev, Rico and friends try their darnedest to escape alive and save the world while internal struggles break out between them and Officer Narville who is by now, tired of everyone's hijinks. The conflict on this side is not as interesting as the one faced by the room of many mustached men but it's still more interesting than the save the world plot.
But who cares about all this stuff. How does the game look? How does it play? Well....
Graphically, the game is good but there are some problems.
The character models and environments look great, but apparently Guerilla must really have taken to heart criticisms that Killzone 2 was a bit brown. That it was, but at least its color palette was consistent. Killzone 3 had too much colored lightning in certain areas and the contrast seems to be whacked. At time the game looks like someone OD'd on Skittles and threw them up over an inky black canvas. The dark parts are DARK and there are all these bright colors scattered around trying to look pretty. I had to fiddle with my television's display settings more for this game than for any other game ever. EVER!
A big improvement in my opinion are the weapon sounds. In Killzone 2 they felt like big, bad space soldier guns but sounded like toys. Now all weapon sounds have that satisfying 'punch'. That was the only problem I had with the previous game so I'm glad to see it got taken care of in this sequel.
The cover system, which is only available in single-player, has been tweaked a bit and it is now easier to use. You can zoom in, which will automatically make you peek out without having to hold up or to the side on the analog stick. A slide into cover move has been added as well and while it helps in moving around firefights quicker I only used it because I remembered it was there, not because I neeeded it to survive.
The gameplay in the campaign, however, is annoying, obnoxious and frustrating. Most times you will walk forward a bit and a jillion enemies will start shooting at you. You'll rush to cover to seize up the situation and one of two things will happen: You will die before you make it or more enemies will be waiting for you where you thought it was safe and kill you. There are far too many segments like this in the game and it is frustrating as hell. This is the first game in a long time that has made me actually angry. There are one or two memorable set-pieces in the game but they do not make up for the atrocity that is everything else. Killzone 2 was about holding your ground until you decided it was smart to rush forward and mow down dudes who stood in your way. Killzone 3 is about you dying from 48,287 bullets every 2 minutes.
It took me about 5-6 hours to finish the campaign. Not so bad until you realize that half the game is turret/vehicle sequences. It seems to me that to give players using the move controller something to have fun with, the developer stuck turret sequences in between every level of the game. I tried out playing a couple levels using the move controller and there is a lot of settings to configure, which means with enough fiddling one can make it work. It is pretty fun if you use the move controller in easy mode as the game helps you aim a lot, and I enjoyed using the move for a while until I realized I had died 2,302 times and was obviously still playing Killzone 3's singleplayer.
Now for those jetpack sequences we saw in trailers...they are horrid. I was expecting to be able to soar over my oponents, raining death upon them from the skies. However, once I was strapped to that jetpack, as soon as my feet where a couple inches from the ground every Helghast from here to Disneyworld opened fire at once, killing me. It was both infuriating and sad that a lot of those jetpack sequences where spent jumping in and out of a pipe in the ground trying to shoot back without getting torn to shreds.
Killzone 3 is a good looking game with some questionable aesthetic choices and a horrible, horrible single-player mode. The story takes itself too seriously and fails to deliver in all aspects while the gameplay will make you angry with frustration. There. That's how I roll.
Score: 29 out of 100
(20-29%: These games are terrible; extremely few good qualities keeping them afloat)
Comments
13 years, 2 months ago
er... ok.
13 years, 2 months ago
Wow thats a low score for such a triple A title.
Now i just need to wait for the multiplayer review to see how it stands
13 years, 2 months ago
Interesting to see. I had several issues with Killzone 2 (primarily the speed at which you moved and the lack of any real motivation for what I'm doing other than go here go there objectives) and I thought most had been ironed out. I've always felt that Killzone was a slow paced, move forward slowly or die type of campaign and this seems to be true. If you try and Call of Duty it and move at a faster pace you will get surrounded and gunned down a lot. That may be a large part of the issues you had. From what I've seen I agree with the jetpacks, they are incredibly slow and while they may work in multiplayer when you have people all over the place to draw attention, AI enemies are typically honing in on the player and an AI buddy or two of yours so you get targeted instantly. I still plan on playing it eventually (GameFly most likely), but having not even finished Killzone 2 due to pacing issues and just feeling bored by the story and missions I've kept my expectations low personally.
13 years, 2 months ago
BUT BRITISH SPACE NAZIS!
13 years, 2 months ago
hope u do a review of Battlefield 3 single player....
13 years, 2 months ago
Looks like I'll be waiting for your multiplayer review to see whether i buy this or not.
13 years, 2 months ago
I totally agree with Carlos...Played it all they way through, terrible. (first time playing Killzone).
13 years, 2 months ago
I quit Killzone 2 about 2 hours in because I hated it. There arent many games that deserve a 29 though. I think superman 64 got a higher score than that.
13 years, 2 months ago
I completely agree with Carlos' review. After casting this game, I felt a sense of relief knowing that I possibly saved others 5-6 hours of that painful singleplayer.
Also, you should have explained how terrible the cover system is in the game. When you go to duck behind an object because you have 10 dudes shooting at you with dead-on accuracy (I played Normal Difficulty), you would think ducking behind cover would help you get your bearings and not die. NOPE. You're still out in the open (meaning you're still getting shot constantly) even when ducking behind cover, which makes using it pointless.
13 years, 2 months ago
Umm...
I find it hard to see a triple A title getting a 29%.
This is all my opinion of course and I have no desire nor care to play the game, but graphically and sound like you mentioned, the score needs to be raised. The review you gave it make it sound like it needs to be about 60%. And that is still being pretty punishing.
13 years, 2 months ago
I can't say I agreed with the review, I enjoyed the singleplayer immensly, on almost all points, especially the design and environments of it all, the gunplay was great, the effects were just stunning, and the turret/big gun sequences didn't bother me too much, because I thought they were pretty fun and breaks up the run and shoot gameplay fairly well.
There are of course problems that I had with it: mainly your problem with too many dudes (I don't see you complaining about them call of duty, which I found incredibly frustrating, even more so than killzone) the main problem I had with the enemies was their positioning, combining the fact that they're many, they're also pretty smart in combat, and I felt many of em flanked you from tight spaces such as behind doors or a close cover, making it sometimes it's too hard to react, and you die fairly quickly in the game.
as for jetpacks I thought they were awesome if you use them correctly, to get to higher points, to flank enemies from above, and to dodge and escape from the heat, flying up and shooting from the sky may not be the best option, but it's defiently and option in the right situations.
also a jarring issue with the game overall was the cut in cut-scenes (seewhatIdidthere?) just the transition between cutscenes and gameplay was pretty janky and choppy, and it bothered me a lot from some reason.
overall I enjoyed the game, I think I am only one level away from finishing it, but I've enjoyed it greatly throughout, especially the stealth sequence which I think was well done as far as shooters and first person stealth goes, it wasn't hard to know when you were visible and when you were, but sometimes I did say to myself "why the hell can't they see me in this light two feet long seagrass?"
To be honest I can't see how you can slap a score of 29% on this, but you're of course entitled to your opinion.
13 years, 2 months ago
To everyone enraged by the low score review: a game's high budget doesn't automatically raise it's score, especially if the game was as heavily advertised as this one. It seems game review scores nowadays start from 60%, with 50%-60% reserved to utter failures. The score is supposed to show how you feel about the game after playing it, and it doesn't get a free boost for having good graphics if the gameplay was annoying as fuck in overall.
13 years, 2 months ago
The Single-player was dreadful, I never wanted a game to be over already my first day playing it. (When i made it to the Junkyard level, I really just wanted it to end). This was my first time playing a Killzone though, So i was never a fan and now never will be..
13 years, 2 months ago
Yikes, didn't expect that at all. But see, that's why I like 4pp. Y'all are honest.
13 years, 2 months ago
Oh, I see the mistake here. Carlos thought it was April 1st when he posted the review but it was actually March 1st.
After seeing that you gave Black Ops a 70/100 it's clear that the review for Killzone 3's single player was just a joke review. Either that, or you really REALLY love CoD.
13 years, 2 months ago
Damn, I guess I'm not picking this one up.
13 years, 2 months ago
haha ouch tough but honest
13 years, 2 months ago
wow. its not like the campaign was mw2 caliber. it was much stronger with numerous epic moments. enemy AI is brutal (though not omniscient, so it is possible to sneak up on them) and if youre stupid enough to sprint around a corner, 2 are plenty to take you out. control was tight and it feels more like theres a body behind the gun. sound design was INCREDIBLE. visuals are the best in the business for now minus some clipping and awkward in-game animation. cutscene animation on the other hand is virtually flawless. environments are varied and contain high levels of detail. the campaign deserved at LEAST an 85, deductions mainly for some audio glitches, the sometimes questionable voice acting.
13 years, 2 months ago
[...] is surprising how a game that is so bad in it’s single player only needs human players and some objectives to become bonafide [...]
13 years, 2 months ago
Tough review but i trust you guys. If I'm to check it out it'll only be for the multiplayer it seems. :/
13 years, 2 months ago
I've always hated the campaigns in Killzone.
13 years, 1 month ago
nejinaji, the sound was not that great, almost wretched even. I have to agree with the review, I got the game for free in a contest and I'm considering selling it after 4 days of trying to play the single mode and getting so annoyed that I'm quiting after 30 minutes. If you are going to buy this game, make sure that it is NOT for the single player mode
13 years, 1 month ago
What? 29? Omg ,carlos.
13 years ago
Well, I really cannot see this campaign getting a 29% I TOTALLY agreed with you Carlos about getting frustrated. I played through the campaign on normal mode, and I have to tell ya, I died like a million times during singleplayer, and that's not because I'm a noob. Otherwise, I thought that the gameplay was great, and so was the storyline. I must also say, after playing the first Killzone (I haven't played KZ2, yeah, I know, it's sad) after it came out, I was really impressed, and happy because I was playing a game that's campaign was very different than others, and that it had a really interesting storyline. After reading this, and playing KZ3 for myself, I would probably give this campaign a 72%.
12 years, 11 months ago
please someone tell me that which game has more missions in the single player campaign - CALL OF DUTY:MODERN WARFARE 2 or KILLZONE 3 ? (means wich game takes more time to complete or which is more lengthy game) PLEASE REPLY AS SOON AS POSSIBLE