Killzone 3

[Ragdollmaster]

When I first saw this, I wasn't overly excited. Sure, I was definitely looking forward to playing through the game and having a kickass time, like I did with Killzone and Killzone 2, but I was not expecting to be addicted to KZ3 like a heroin addict.

And then I played the open beta.

30 minutes, not even with real players, but with bots, was all it took to convince me that this will be one of the best first person shooters ever. The immersion is mind-blowing, from realistically behaving guns to blood that will slowly pour out of a dying enemy and turn white in the freezing weather: I actually stood over an enemy soldier after I shot him and watched him writhing on the ground and moaning in pain (another immersive detail) as blood began to come out of the wound onto the snow, where the dark red liquid turned light and began to frost up.

Later, running through a darkened corridor behind one of my teammates, I was again shocked by the level of detail put into character actions and reactions. I watched as he sprinted down into a junction of the corridor, then stopped and smoothly brought his gun up to check the coast, slowing down and then speeding up realistically. Not that choppy Call of Duty bullcrap where the sloppiness of the animations are covered up by playing them ridiculously fast. The characters look, feel, and sound real.

The shooting itself is superb. There aren't hundreds of guns available, but there are plenty to make the game feel streamlined yet versatile- you don't have 12 assault rifles that do the same goddamn thing. One of them might be in burst fire, another might have a reflex scope, another could be silenced, a fourth could have a higher rate of fire, and so on. Every weapon feels distinctive and unique. There may be less customization than a game like CoD, but that just adds to the immersion- you feel as though you're part of the ISA or the Helghast, not some random rebel/guerilla/terrorist/special ops/soldier who has a completely different weapon set and cosmetic appearance than anyone else on his team.

This is a quality shooter, unlike the many pasty clones that the industry has been serving lately. I'm not saying it's a completely new experience or a radical change in the genre- I'm saying it's a shooter done right. Brilliant game thus far. Tomorrow I'll definitely have to try out multiplayer with human players. The beta is open and free to download from the Playstation Store.

[CommanderQ]

How much are they paying you to do this?

[Ragdollmaster]

The beta is open and free to download from the Playstation Store.

[underthedeep]

glad i have a ps3.

anyone wanna fight?
the names underthe_deep

[Renegade_Turner]

No PS3. I'll just play it at my friend's gaff.

Why can't Crysis 2 and Killzone 3 both just be on XBox 360 and PS3? That would be easier for everyone.

[Grayswandir]

Because companies want exclusive games that makes you want to buy their console.

[Indigo]

[To Ren]
Agreed. The whole exclusive thing is starting to get a bit dull.
I have a PS3 And an Xbox, and for some of the games for the xbox, i really feel like it would be cool to play on the ps3 and vice versa. Oh well.

[Renegade_Turner]

Even if you have both consoles, my friends end up buying a lot of the games for PS3 because they have both but don't want to pay the fees for XBox Live. It's clunky and gay like Medal Of Honor.

[Grayswandir]

I've also noticed that the PSN charges less in the long run for the stuff you buy from their store. Mostly because they deal with real figures instead of points.

[Ragdollmaster]

Exclusivity indeed sucks. I was pretty disappointed when I learned that the Crysis 2 beta was 360-only despite being a multiplatform game, for instance; why all of the bickering over exclusives? It's true that exclusive games usually play better on their respective consoles than multiplats, but there's no reason that a game can't be developed for multiple consoles simultaneously without the need of porting. It might not be as efficient, but it would definitely provide maximum quality.

A man can only dream.

[Grayswandir]

Its all about sales and money.

[Ragdollmaster]

Pretty much, yeah, but then again, close to every business is like that. What can you expect?

[Renegade_Turner]

The money they pay for these exclusives though...has it really been proven to work for either party in any situation? Sure, having Killzone 3 exclusive for PS3 will boost PS3 sales to a certain point, but they also have to pay the developers/publishers etc. a huge amount to have it as an exclusive on the console in the first place. Also, if Killzone 3 were sold on the XBox 360, that would be a WHOLE new pool of gamers that are able to buy the game...and who's to say that figure is going to be less than the contract pays for making it an exclusive? I just don't know because it's all guesswork. If they had all the big titles cross-platform, it would help lots of people and I'm sure not that much would change anyway.

[Ragdollmaster]

The thing is, competition breeds sales. It's a proven business tactic. Also, think about it; even though the viable buyer pool would be wider, it would cost more to develop KZ3 as a cross-platform. Coding for the PS3 and 360 is fairly different; PS3 exclusives are made in a way that take maximum advantage of the fact that the PS3 has one processor with 7 subcores, whereas the 360 just has three processors. Technically the PS3 has a higher potential processing power (which is why many exclusive games look goddamn amazing) but it's easier to utilize the 360's multicore setup; this is why you'll often notice that on ported versions of games (ie Bioshock) and on multiplatforms (ie any major shooter, really), the 360 version will always look a little better and run a little smoother; it's not the PS3's fault, it's just that it's easier and more cost-efficient to port a game as opposed to developing it from the ground up (art assets aside) to run at an optimal speed. Similarly, a game developed exclusively for the PS3, taking advantage of the single core set-up, would not run very well on the 360 when ported directly; the graphics would probably have to be noticeably downgraded and some of the coding changed to run a little better on a multicore machine. What's more, even if a game like KZ3 did get ported to the 360, the PS3 sales would still outrank it significantly; Killzone and Killzone 2 were both Playstation exclusives, so fans of the series are likely to be PS3 owners already. Any diehard 360 owners who simply could not live without the series would have probably already bought a PS3. The potential buyer pool is much smaller than it actually seems, and this begs the question, "Will expanding our audience be worth the cost?"

Even if the answer to that question is "Yes", sometimes, a developer doesn't have much of a choice as to who they make their game for. Look at Bungie: Don't you think they would have ported Halo to the PS series a long time ago if they could have? Unfortunately, being a relatively little-known company, they had to sell their souls to Microsoft, and from that point on they were Bill Gates' bitch.



...but hey, at least Metal Gear's coming to the 360?

[Kombine]

As a fan of the first 2 Killzone games (including KZ: Liberation), this will probably be a buy for me soon. I didn't really follow Killzone 3 much after the trailer at E3, but after playing the Beta, I'm definitely looking forward to it.