E3 2010: Killzone 3 Hands-on
Drag me to Helghan – our first look at Guerrilla's killer sequel.
There are no pre-renders, no elaborate unplayable cut-scenes and no false promises; Killzone 3's reveal is pure and simple – an extended hands-on with the fourth level of a game that we're thrilled to report is full of awesome. In a cinema a few hundred yards from Guerrilla's studio in an Amsterdam that is, thanks to an ongoing strike from the city's refuse services, looking as grimy and hostile as the surface of Helghan itself, we're given the first look at a game that's going to get PS3 owners frothing all over again.
There's much that is familiar from the outset; picking up from the cliff-hanger ending of Killzone 2, Sev, Rico and the rest of the ISA forces – severely diminished by the climactic nuke - battle with a Helghan army that finds itself in the throes of a power struggle. "It's David vs. Goliath," explains Guerrilla's Herman Hulst, "but this time Goliath has bought a thousand troops and a thermonuclear arsenal."
From a distance, Killzone 3 looks familiar too; development began just as Killzone 2 shipped and naturally it uses the same engine as that game. Not that that's a bad thing: Killzone 2 is still to this day one of the prettiest shooters, with the only game that's likely to threaten its mantle the imminent Crysis 2.
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/109/1092173/killzone-3-20100524073014348-000.jpg)
Jetpacks - they're this year's lens flare, don't ya know.
But it's not the likes of Crytek, Treyarch or DICE that Guerrilla is pitting itself against; instead, it sees its competition much closer to home. "Of course, some little games came out just after us," says Hulst, referring to the critical successes of Heavy Rain, Uncharted 2 and God of War III. "As proud as we are of our friends at Worldwide Studios, these games inspired us to step it up and deliver a full-blown sequel to Killzone 2, and one that gets better on every front. There's nothing like some friendly competition to get us to raise the bar once again."
"They both did a fantastic job," agrees Senior Producer Steven Ter Heide. "Uncharted 2 obviously did great things with storytelling and God of War III did great things with scale. It's all stuff that we take on board – obviously we're a different kind of game and it's going to be a different experience, but we look at what they do and see how we can implement those kinds of thing. They've pushed us to work harder."
It's easy to see the relationship between Killzone 3 and Killzone 2 running along similar lines to that between Uncharted 2 and the original Uncharted. Just as Nathan Drake's second outing remedied every gripe with the first, Killzone 3 sidesteps the issues with its predecessor, while at the same time making everything that was great about Killzone 2 that little bit greater.
It seems Guerrilla is wise to its mistakes and Killzone 3 certainly won't be making any of them again. A big criticism of Killzone 2 was its one-note palette – sure, the grim browns and dead yellows certainly helped the oppressive aesthetic, but over the length of the campaign they soon became wearisome. Killzone 3 answers this with aplomb. Although they're not shown up and running, concept art for several of the levels show that this will be a relative kaleidoscope of colour, with the dreary wastelands left in the wake of Killzone 2's nuke giving way to jungles filled with phosphorous light, through to the brilliant white of the snowbound level we get to play today.
They're matched by a new and impressive sense of scale too. The first three minutes we're allowed to go hands-on with has more set-pieces crammed in to it than the entire first level of Killzone 2, and it's also ten times bigger than what had gone before. It's a change that has obvious ramifications to the gunplay itself. "The biggest thing we're doing for Killzone 3 is trying to not only have variety in the environments but also in the actual gameplay experience - the stuff that you do from minute to minute," Ter Heide tells us, and that's certainly borne out in our hands-on with the game.
Titled Frozen Shores, the snow-whipped level takes place four levels into Killzone 3's single-player campaign and it sees Sev and Rico en route to an arms facility in a bid to rescue a certain Captain Narville. It opens as Sev takes point on one of Killzone's now signature flying Intruders, manning a mini-gun that's being used to rain hell onto the Helghan forces that occupy the big rigs below. Enemy airships soon swoop in to join the party, only to be shredded by the mini-gun and sent spiralling out of the sky.
It's Killzone as you know and love it: industrial landscapes being eaten up by the loudest of explosions and the absolute chunkiest of arsenals as the screen violently quivers. Set-pieces like this are Killzone's bread and butter, although there's now an added fidelity to their execution thanks to the employment of high dynamic range audio. It might sound like a meaningless technical buzzword but know this; it's one of the key reasons that DICE's Bad Company games sound so good, and it adds a perceptible new layer to Killzone 2's already rich soundscape.
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/109/1092173/killzone-3-20100524073016942-000.jpg)
Rico's more useful - he'll actually revive you when you fall.
It's a small and very welcome addition, but by the time the Intruder is sent crashing into the snow by a Helghan RPG, Killzone 3 begins to really show where the changes have taken place. Having stumbled from the wreckage, Sev picks up the mini-gun that had proved so useful just seconds ago. Naturally, its bulk slows him down but it's a handy ally when facing down swarms of Helghast.
Things soon require a little more dexterity and the mini-gun is ditched, revealing some subtly refined gunplay. Guerrilla is coy on the specifics – no doubt down to the fact that the specifics are constantly being fine-tuned and are likely to be in flux until just before the game ships – but it's certainly more responsive than before. It's put to the test by level design that seems to favour more direct shoot-outs than the cowering gunfights of Killzone 2, but when cover is required it now seems more reliable and intuitive, and snapping behind objects is a much swifter experience.
One thing that's definitely improved is the melee system, as the clumsy system of old is superseded by a much more dynamic way to stab someone in the face. It's now context sensitive: creep up on a Helghan and it's possible to kick them up against a wall before plunging the knife with a further press of the melee button. Going toe-to-toe with them enables some gruesome kills, sticking the knife in places it doesn't belong like a Helghan's ribcage or eye socket.
However, there's one particular type of Helghan that's unlikely to be on the end of a brutal melee kill. Helghan's now have jetpack troopers among their ranks and they're brilliantly agile foes. It's easy to think that, in the wake of Halo: Reach's newfound aerial acrobatics, this is a case of me-too game design, but it's worth remembering that jetpacks were a part of the PSP spin-off Liberation and have been a part of Killzone 3 well before Bungie revealed its own take on them several weeks ago. And, regardless, the more jetpacks the merrier, as the old saying goes.
Sev's first encounter with the jetpack troopers takes place on the hull of a hulking steel freighter, and one of the initial delights – beyond simply seeing them whizz through the air – is by triggering off one of their randomised kill animations. When Helghans with jetpacks die, they die spectacularly! At one point we send one careering headfirst into a rockface; another time one's malfunctioning pack sends it soaring into the sky before it comes crashing back several seconds later.
Of course, it would be criminal not to let Sev in on the fun and soon enough Killzone 3 places a jetpack in the player's hands. A simple platforming section, jumping from iceberg to iceberg introduces the basics; tapping L1 sends the player skywards, while X lends a temporary speed boost. The altitude is capped but that doesn't stop them being a delight to pilot. There's a mini-gun attached that also proves quite handy, although it's prone to overheating.
There's one more gameplay element that our first hands-on with Killzone 3 introduces, and fittingly it's the most bombastic of the lot. The WASP is Killzone 3's all-singing, all-dancing new rocket launcher, and it packs one hell of a punch. Like the mini-gun before it, the WASP slows player movement and also like the mini-gun it helps turn Sev into a one-man army. Primary fire unleashes a barrage of missiles that corkscrew their way to the intended target, with smoke wisps trailing in their path. Secondary fire sees players looking down a scope, locking on to a target and then unleashing death from above as rockets fire into the sky before plummeting down and splintering across whole areas of the battlefield. It's similar to Modern Warfare's tankbusters and it's a brilliantly over-the-top addition to Killzone 3's arsenal.
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/109/1092173/killzone-3-20100524073011786-000.jpg)
There's more visual variety this time out. And some nice furry outfits for the Helghans too.
Oh, and there's one more thing that we've declined to mention so far. Killzone 3 will be one of the first Sony titles to support 3D out of the box, and thanks to a prototype TV using active shutter glasses set up at the event we can report that it looks stupendous – bullets zip out of the screen while particles such as snow and sparks are tangible elements of the game world. It feels like much more than a gimmick as well: peripheral details such as raging seas thrashing the icebergs combine with the way the player's gun seems to hang out of the screen (and indeed people were living up to the age-old clich? and reaching out to touch what wasn't there during the presentations) to create a level of immersion that's truly beyond anything we've seen to date.
Whether it's an option that will be enjoyed beyond the privileged minority remains to be seen. "I think the TVs will be out there and, like HD adoption, if people are buying a TV now they'll be buying a 3D one," says Ter Heide, "But the game itself is the meat – if the game's shit it's not going to sell, and 3D's not going to make a bad game any better. What it does do is make a good game even better."
Of course, there's more to be shown of Killzone 3: nothing's being said of multiplayer or co-op right now and when asked whether it'll support Move, the response is tantalisingly elusive. But we're getting ahead of ourselves and on this showing Killzone 3's already proved that it's got bite to accompany its bark. There are no pre-renders and no false promises, and frankly Killzone 3 plays so well right now it doesn't need them.
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