Killzone 3 Review

Killzone 3 PS3 Review

Like any good shooter these days, the online multiplayer is where Killzone 3’s real heart lies. Guerrilla has seen fit to let players get their feet wet in an offline bot-based mode which serves as a very slick introduction to the game’s three game modes and eight maps, as well as the obligatory class system.

Farting around with AI bots has its time and place, and there’s all manner of stat tracking, leaderboards and squad management options to distract yourself with, but the real fun comes from just dropping straight into the action.

The online modes are Guerrilla Warfare, Warzone and Operations, of which Warfare is the most simple and basic – nothing more than your usual team deathmatch, in fact. Warzone, on the other hand, is a more dynamic experience where in-game objectives change as the match progresses and forces players to try their hand at multiple mission types. In Warzone you can end up jumping quickly from stealing intel to planting bombs.


The third and final mode, Operations, is the most technically interesting, however. In this mode players are rewarded through the clever use of cutscenes that laud the best players once all objectives are completed. Again, it’s team-based, with the ISA taking the offensive against the Helghast across some incredibly detailed and interesting maps. As usual, many of the multiplayer maps draw inspiration from the singleplayer, with familiar jungles and icescapes showing up with a few tweaks.

It’s the little things that make Killzone 3 such fun to play however, rather than the grandness of the level design. You get a real sense of inertia from in-game movement, for example – a trait that has served the series well up to this point and hasn’t failed to impress yet. Unloading onto foes feels brutal and visceral, with arcs of blood timing in nicely to XP counters to make it feel grimly satisfying.

XP, predictably, is useful for levelling up across the five multiplayer classes. We favoured channelling Team Fortress 2, mainly opting for the Engineer class with its repair tool, sentry guns and big-ass light machine guns. But stealth, healing, tank and sniper classes are represented too, as you’d expect. The game’s career unlock system means that you get to choose where you dump your career points, letting you unlock what you want with less grind.


Tying Killzone 3 together into one nice, neat little package are some of the best graphics we’ve ever seen on the PlayStation 3. There’s one or two moments when things chug a little too hard for our liking, but the detail, quality of modelling and texturing makes this surely one of the best looking games of the year. Guerrilla certainly knows how to provide a gorgeous, if short, experience.

Killzone 3 arrives at a time in videogaming’s history when the first-person shooter genre is possibly about as bloated as it’s ever been and it’s biggest failing is that it doesn’t really offer anything new to the genre. Still, it’s a great game for what it is and offers an entertaining slice of sci-fi bullet slinging – even if it is all over too quickly and a bit lacking in imagination.

Score Guide