“Killzone 3” Demo Impressions

Old habits die hard. There’s a full five seconds between me hearing the words “PS3 exclusive” and remembering not to be disappointed. Sometimes it’s much worse. I spent days reading about the “Killzone 3” multiplayer beta before I took note of the black monolith sitting next to my television, and recalled suddenly that it had some function besides Blu Rays.

Not that talk of “Killzone” gets me particularly excited. Like PS3’s other attempt at a console-exclusive shooter that anyone cares about, “Resistance,” it’s a franchise adrift in Epic Games-aping machismo, floating free without a really great piece of iconic art or game design to make it stick. I actually enjoyed “Resistance 2” enough to buy it, and the 60 player deathmatches were a real treat, but it found its way back to GameStop once “Uncharted” got a hold of me.

Besides, I played “Killzone 3” at E3—in 3D, no less—and found myself working hard to stifle a yawn. I mean, it certainly had snow in it. I’ll be damned if there wasn’t snow in that game. I’m prepared to call Guerrilla Games “The Blizzard Kings,” and I don’t just hand that title out. If their next title was “Weather Channel: Rise of the Cold Front,” I would pre-order the crap out of it. But the shooting made no impression.

Still, I love betas, so I figured why in the hell not? The results were a pleasant surprise.

-Bombs On Your Moms. Despite my frothy remarks about Guerrilla’s propensity for inclement weather, “Killzone 3” is a lovingly rendered graphical experience, and it runs well. I suspect the flurries of snow are a clever masking technique, like a well-timed lens flare or water-on-the-screen thing, but the dog still hunts. Graphics, after all, are as much about presentation as polygons.

-Pull! The actual mechanics of running and gunning feel pretty good. “Killzone” has a reputation for a slightly too-light aiming style, and that reappears here, but it’s not a huge problem. Yes, sometimes it feels like your cursor is buzzed behind the wheel, and he’s swinging wide to get where you put him, but it can be tweaked and it’s pretty minor. Meanwhile, they’ve included jumping now, because…well…people get mad when you don’t.

-Hey I Was Watching That. The best thing about “Killzone 3,” in my opinion, is a feature already in place from the last game: multiple objective types. As you blast through a round of Warzone, the game bombs a variety of different mission objectives on you and your team: assassinate this dude, then collect this package and deposit it here, now zone control, etc. This is an ingenious idea, because the sum of all of these game types is more enjoyable than isolating them and hammering the same thing for ten minutes. The only problem with it is that “Killzone 3” brings nothing new to this: for one thing, “Killzone 2” already handled this concept well. And for another, none of the objective types it juggles are new.

-You Son of a Whore. Two points also needs to go to “Killzone” for devising the most insidious armor perk in human history: color-changing text. As is expected, friendlies have their name in green above their heads, and bad guys have red. But with the right perk, an enemy’s tag will alternate between red and green in about second and a half intervals, which is just long enough to give you pause while they put your eyebrows in their crosshairs. It’s the perfect perk: it gives you an advantage, but not an unfair one.

So I had some really positive experiences with “Killzone 3.” It’s not a perfect game, but it’s definitely a AAA shooter executed with precision. I wouldn’t say it’s a game that gets my blood boiling, but at least it holds my attention.