A lingering notion in Killzone 2 remained till the very end; that you were invading someone else’s planet. For those among us who played Guerrilla’s first game, it had the benefit of seeming like a necessary course of action, but it was nonetheless a somewhat odd sensation. Helghan soldiers would yell things like “you have no right to be here!”, and while that’s pushing it a bit, mr you-totally-hit-me-first, it was a vibe quite unique to KZ2 unless you derived more narrative from the surprisingly similarly set up Quake 2 than most of us did.

“its admittedly somewhat tame payoffs were relegated to the final moments of its campaign”

But a related notion was also quite palpable, and that was one of the game’s storyline being oblivious to the fact that you were invaders. It never really reflected on that fact, seemingly content with KZ1 setting up the conflict thoroughly enough that we’d carry that with us into this new scenario. Even so, playing the aggressors and having those be the generic kind of gravely voiced, quipping army dudes without a moment’s contemplation made the entire thing feel a tad soulless and unsympathetic. The main source of drama and friction came from Rico, going from annoying am-I-supposed-to-find-this-guy-awesome? to nah-he’s-totally-an-asshole-and-we-know-it status and giving the game a semblance of memorable arc. Mostly though, all of its admittedly somewhat tame payoffs were relegated to the final moments of its campaign, joined by one in particular that more or less salvaged the entire storyline.

Killzone 3 picks up the moment its predecessor ended, continuing the thread that got started with a gunshot, and it does so remarkably well. This time the most pervasive notion is one of humility and desperation. This game starts with our protagonists in the middle of the bee hive, having just hit it with a gigantic stick, and throughout the campaign you are being hunted. Hunted while slowly realising the sheer gravity of what you did at the end of the last game. It’s a really compelling jumping off point, and the game plays that chord with excellence through to the end. The result is a more relatable story where you really start to root for the characters you play, and Rico – as with most characters that aren’t just focustested to eff quip bags of generic likeability – joins the ranks of Alan Wake and becomes a richer character that you start to warm to in a far more profound way than most protagonists.

The reason I’m going into the story and characters more than usual is because they help colour what is ostensibly a very atmosphere driven franchise. In fact, if you’re in it for the gameplay you’re probably already out of it. After the complete clusterfuck of AI problems, glitches and performance issues of the first game, KZ2 came out an absolute technical powerhouse, raping everything in sight. However, as a game, that too was riddled with downright baffling design decisions in everything from the most fundamental core mechanics and inventory handling to the level design and overall structure of the campaign. Suffice to say, KZ is more about the *other stuff* while the game is simply a shuttle taking you from one setpiece to the next.

“Again, the result is that carrying the best all-round weapon is the obvious choice every time, and therefore the shooting becomes more monotonous than it easily could have been”

That factor has been diminished some with KZ3, but not dramatically so. It still retains some core oddities like the way it handles your arsenal. You’re able to carry one pistol, one main weapon and one special weapon. Although the special weapon means you can sometimes carry a bazooka with you beyond the upcoming overtly bazooka enabling shootout – unlike KZ2 where you could only have two weapons at any given time – it still means you need to choose between carrying a shotgun or a machine gun with you as your “normal” weapon. Again, the result is that carrying the best all-round weapon is the obvious choice every time, and therefore the shooting becomes more monotonous than it easily could have been if you were given the ability to carry a dynamic setup with you. It’s this stubbornness – among other things – that prevents KZ from really taking flight proper as a shooter.

As if to counter that phrasing specifically, you do get a lot of cool stuff to play around with this time, including a funky jetpack. The jetpack in particular almost creates a Jumping Flash like sensation on the parts of levels made to utilise it fully. In fact, between the jetpack, the “exoskeleton” (a mech like thing you stomp around in) and the high speed vehicle chases on the ground and in the air, Killzone 3 is actually filled with enough sensory variety that the simplicity of the shooting becomes much less pronounced. Couple that with a better sense of *when to move the hell on* from one encounter to the next, keeping momentum up nicely with spliced in, well directed cutscenes, and you have a much more enjoyable game based on what are essentially pretty superficial changes to the formula.

But those changes totally work. They echo some of the design decisions in Uncharted 2, but from a first person perspective and with more pressure put on the player to survive, they come off more urgent and engrossing as opposed to mostly being an elaborate scripted show. Variety in surroundings aren’t exclusively just a way to vary visual feedback, but it also serves to create more varied geometry aswell. Even though the shooting on foot feels identical throughout and the enemy variety is down there with the majority of shooters on the market (ie same guy over and over with different hat) the locales have you taking cover and finding very different lines of sight to enemies. This is actually more important than it sounds, and it’s especially noticable coming off of Killzone 2 which is *incredibly* set in its flat horizontal plane ways.

“These things coupled with the more organic level design go to great lengths to leviate the trappings of an otherwise quite one-note core”

You also get some variety from how it sets up different levels – fairly obviously derived from the excellent albeit sometimes frustratingly funneled Modern Warfares 1 and 2 – in that you’re sometimes paired with another dude syncronizing your attacks, and other times you’re mostly in the shadows and hiding in tall grass to counter otherwise impossible odds. These things coupled with the more organic level design go to great lengths to leviate the trappings of an otherwise quite one-note core.

So Killzone 3 is easily the best game in the series to date. While informed enough by the others to the point where you should think about playing those first, the storyline in 3 comes off as the most compelling, too. It’s not terribly elaborate or necessarily an epic space opera taken in isolation, but that’s not what it’s going for. On the contrary it feels more intimate, approaching things on a level you can easily relate to and staying true to characters that surprisingly subtly develop over the course of the 8-10ish hours you’ll spend with them. It’s a scenario that concentrates on its one, main predicament, and overlays that with some pseudo-political drama that gives it an extra dimension. It plays to its limitations as a video game and pulls off an elegant narrative using tried and true storytelling devices. Meanwhile, intelligent ways of mixing up the gameplay with measured bouts of on rails sequences, different machinery to pilot and excellent Move implementation all gloss over what is mechanically a pretty unremarkable game.

The end result is a great sequel that is still somewhat bound by the arbitrary limitations of its core. It never comes off as a missed opportunity – in fact it possesses a very engaging sense of conviction that manages to dazzle throughout – but it definitely has a lot of wiggle room to become the superb video game it quite frankly still is not.