Killzone 3

Motion control technology (via Sony’s PlayStation Move controller) and visuals crafted for 3-D enabled TVs can't add depth to the banal and drab world of Killzone 3. By all accounts, these things make the experience worse.

Killzone has always been a reactionary series, responding to trends and ideas of more groundbreaking titles (Halo, Call of Duty) a year too late. If there is a magic formula for merging the sandbox battlegrounds of Halo with the controlled, roller coaster pace of Call of Duty, Killzone 3 developer Guerrilla Games has yet to find it.

First and foremost, the series is Sony's platform for marketing a given year's agenda. Gurrilla Games' efforts, no matter how earnest, feel like an embellishment.

The original Killzone (2004) was pushed by publisher Sony as being a "Halo-killer." If sales and reviews are any indicator, it wasn't this time. The sequel, released in 2009, was initially introduced by a stunning in-engine trailer in 2005. The gameplay clip turned out to be a fabrication, no different than a Pixar film. Even Killzone 3 underwhelms visually in comparison. Now we have PlayStation Move and 3-D technology being pushed on us.

This entry finds room for newer, more colorful locales that display some of the most gorgeous visuals on the system. Junkyards are filled with the detailed remains of death machines. Jungles dazzle with unpredictable, primary-colored flora. The tundra envelopes the player in a blinding snowstorm. The game is a visual treat that too often wastes the nuts and bolts of its engine on genre cliches such as crumbling cities and cold, metallic spaceships.

The sluggish controls of Killzone 2 provide the player with a tangible weight. Along with the game’s cover system, which makes it feel like a first-person Gears of War, this weight gives the game a strong aesthetic and grounds the player in its world. The problem is that it didn’t make for a fluid experience.

Killzone 3 concedes. It controls with the speed and precision of a Call of Duty title. It’s not the only thing it borrows, either. The game is filled with turret scenes, some more troubling than others and none of them thrilling. The bulk of the game is standard fare for the series: Run into a room, take cover and shoot fascist, faceless soldiers in the face. Variation is found in the weapon design and backgrounds filled with warring space ships and mortar fire.

Killzone 3 entered 2011 with one of the strongest content offerings yet. A lengthy campaign, two-player co-op and a deep multiplayer component give the game the legs that kept its previous incarnations spinning in PlayStation 3’s long after release. The addition of jet packs and snow-covered landscapes isn’t the answer to mediocrity. In a saturated genre, Killzone 3 offers little innovation or creativity to merit trudging through a war-torn apocalypse again.