Week 19 - It's Not Over!

Alright! Welcome back to my blog 2012 by 2012! It's a good weekend. After PSN has been down for almost a good month it finally has returned to us last night! I know I've had a lot of friends waiting on it's return, and the second it popped on they were already gaming. They didn't care it was 1 or 2 in the morning all they cared about was that satisfaction of bashing in some guys head or fragging their friends and enemies. Although I am a big fan of online gaming... I have to say this PSN outage wasn't that big of a deal to me. I had my Single player experience to hold me over, and I'm glad it was Sony's Single Player experience that kept me alive for this long :P.

Lets get started on this week episode shall we! I have completed Killzone 3! That means I have a review for ya! Also I promised to start getting out a few videos of me going through Mass Effect 2, so I have some of those for you today as well!

Lately I've been kind of lazy when it has come to trophy hunting. I've tried to sit down and just bust out some trophies or work towards Mass Effect 2 platinum. It has just gone slow and I've lost the motivation for the day and I would stop. Sadly I have to say it's because Mass Effect 2 glitches. I'm literally 4 levels away from completing this game, but it takes 3 hours (sarcastically) to beat one level due to the difficulty with the glitches/bugs tacked on to that. That is mainly why I didn't do an update last week, because I got like a whole 5-8 trophies as was just like big whoop what am I going to talk about?

We'll start with the Killzone 3 Review and leave the goods for last. Killzone 3 not a earth shattering stop the presses FPS game, especially with the market flooded with FPS it's hard to shine. What does give it that shine and little above the top and edge on other FPS is it's was created by Sony's team... is Sony the only team that knows how to make a shooter? No I'm not saying that, but what I am saying is it's not a third party shooter allowing Sony to professionally implement their new motion controller into the game correctly. I played 95% of the game using the move + sharpshooter controller combo. I must say it added some frustration at first, but once you get use to it it's quite fun! That's enough with that let's move (pun intended :P) on to the review!

Review:
Sounds: The music did an awesome job of drawing you into the firefights. When a big battle came up I was guaranteed that my blood would pumping from the intense music working with me to feel in the moment. Clean crisp sounds everywhere I would go faded sounds of explosions and gun fire in the back. Nothing to fancy for FPS today, but enough to know that your in a war driven planet trying to make it out alive. I didn't get a chance to test out the surround sound, and that was do to me using the move (couldn't where my SS headphones and play with the move). I do plan to take advantage of it when I play it through the hardest difficulty next time (which I'll give you a heads up that I will be recording that as well).

Gameplay: Average FPS you can say... run here, shoot these guys, run over there, complete objective, shoot more guys, continue on, and do other objectives and killings. It used a lot of the stuff it picked up in the second game, but nothing else really new, which kind of seems lackluster. setting the C4 and turning the valves with the movement of your controller was brought back. A lot of the same weapons were back, but they also introduced some cool new ones. Sadly though there was 1 rifle, smg, sniper, and lmg... so yea not much variety to choose from. Heavy weapons shined in this game though from flamethrowers to detachable miniguns and guide mini rockets (kind of like the Jericho from the first Iron Man movie). A new enemy joined the Helghast team, but didn't show up a lot in the game. The final boss fight was disappointing though.

Story: There was a story, but as most FPS that doesn't really show. Not very many cut scenes that relate to story in this game most of the cut scenes are just transitions to new objectives/missions.

*Spoilers*
The story is pretty straight forward your Sev and your partner in crime is Rico. You start off at a Helghast base blending in as Helghast, your there to save Narville who is scheduled to be executed. You then head back to 6 months earlier where you just left off in Killzone 2 where you killed Visari. You have to escape the city why facing heavy resistance. Rico disobeys Narville's orders and separates from the team to go save a group of soldiers. Narville abandons him there thinking he's dead (I think he does it because he's tired of him disobeying his command).

Meanwhile the Helghast leaders are having a problem with Officer in Command Orlock has takin over, but is doing a poor job, so weapons designer Stahl is trying to turn the council against him and make him leader, and eventually refusing them his weapons until they do so. Stahl eventually becomes head of the council and has designed this new weapon that basically melts whatever it passes, which he plans to use on earth.

During this Narville and Sev gets captured and is being sent to some snowy Helghast base (which is where the game first took place) Rico intercepts the plan taking Sev, and you find out Rico has been alive for 6 months working with a resistance group made of ISA's. Sev wants to save Narville, but Rico says it's suicide but eventually ends up helping Sev anyways.

Then you take place in the middle of a helghast base with 3 guys (after saving narville) that's when you find out about the WMD and decide you need to plan an offensive now. You escape the building and due to thins Stahl is made a fool of (due to not properly executing Narville when he was right in front of him but instead gloating about it). The council have turned on him and have gone back to Orlock. Sev, Rico, and Narville make there way to the orbital elevator with there team of 60. Narville says we can't go we don't have enough men where Rico and Sev say we don't have time the world will end soon. Gives this huge long spirit lifting speech and they all head up there and in the end they basically stop Stahl from unleashing the WMD on Earth. I also need to add that I'm very upset that this game wasn't left at a close. They left it open hinting another one will be made, and I was really hoping this one was going to close the trilogy.

*End Spoilers*

Replayability: After beating it once you unlock the hardest difficulty, so it has a little replayability in that aspect. This game was also equipped with Online multiplayer, which I hear is really good and resembles much like the second one. It lacks the fanbase like CoD games have had though, but that might be because of how easy CoD games are to just pick up and play.

Graphics: Didn't feel that they improved much over the Killzone 2 graphics, but still highly comparable to any other game out there. No graphic tears or rips, and didn't see any bugs or glitches. All around very well ironed out game.

DS3: The bit that I played with the DualShock 3 was really good. The response didn't feel slow like in Killzone 2, but you still had that feel that you were holding a heavy weapon. Great job by the team on revamping what was a great idea but complained a lot about. They didn't ruin the aspect of it or dumb it down and out of the game.

Move: Few problems with this... The synching is off by some bit. I haven't played any other game yet with it, but it seemed off all the time. I even synched it up in the XMB options before going into the game, but when I aimed it at the eye and the two corners it would be anywhere from 4 inches to off the whole screen from where I was aiming. It also would move when I held the controller still in the center, you could see it slowly inch away from where I was aiming. which made it a little difficult to play with having to resync it so much. All it all the controls were easy (except the melee), aiming, firing, pause, jump, reload, and etc were all easy to do/learn. Pause was out of place and the Melee was stupid IMO... jerking the controller forward would make my guy spaz out and look left or up or down due to me arm movements. at the end of the game i learned circle was my not movement melee button, but the reload on the bottom or even twisting it to reload as well as the melee were poorly implemented in this game. They probably should have froze the reticle when the controller was under sudden movement maybe that might have been better.

Overall great game to add to the Killzone story, you can beat it in a few hours which is sad so I would suggest rent if you just want the story. If you want the platinum and want this for you Killzone collection then obviously buy it. It has a great online gameplay and community especially if you want to venture away from the CoD series.

Now the moment you have all been waiting for! My Mass Effect 2 videos! I will be showing you the Intro and Freedom's Progress today.

Intro


Freedom's Progress


I would like to thank everyone for reading, and I hope you enjoyed my video help and commentary. Please let your gamer friends/family now about my blog especially if they're interested in receiving some help/info about trophy gathering, and I will hopefully see you all next week! I should have more Mass Effect 2 videos for ya (hoping to get caught up so that would be a good 5 or so videos).

Trophy Counter:
Trophies: 1340/2012 Platinum Trophies: 21/32