First Impressions of Killzone 3 Multiplayer (Open Beta)

Hello, everyone.

 

I haven't done much here on NF recently, so I decided to post my impressions of the Killzone 3 open beta to make up the fact that I probably won't be too active until the summer. Maybe.

 

So, I downloaded the multiplayer open beta on Thursday, February 3. The open beta was actually delayed one day. I don't know if Guerrilla Games said why they delayed it.

 

The open beta has two modes: Multiplayer and Botzone.

 

From what I know, both modes are same except Botzone is offline multiplayer with AI enemies and teammates.

 

Due to my terrible internet connection or maybe there's a connection issue that everyone is having, I was unable to get online to try out the online multiplayer yet. So, I reserved all my knowledge to Botzone. I guess this blog is more like impressions of Killzone 3 Botzone.

 

The open beta offers three game modes: Warfare, Guerrilla Warfare, and Operations.

 

Warfare is a bunch of different game modes stringed together as one cohesive match. It includes standard team deathmatch, a variation of capture the flag, plant and defend the bomb, assassination or bodyguard (which is kill or protect a randomly selected player), and capture and hold areas.

 

Guerrilla Warfare is just standard team deathmatch.

 

Operations is a story-driven multiplayer mode that is mostly plant the bomb type objectives.

 

I think out of the three games modes, Warfare is definitely the best. Even though it was introduced in Killzone 2, Warfare still manages to make me come back and play more of it.

 

I never played Killzone 2 multiplayer, so I can't say how much the gameplay has changed or stayed the same. But the multiplayer is pretty awesome.

 

The shooting is good as any shooters out there. Every shot you shoot feels real. The guns, even in the beta, are really varied. There are several assault rifles, pistols, submachine guns, shotgun, and sniper rifle. The movement feels very heavy, but the pacing of a match is still really fast and intense. It feels similar to Killzone 2's movements based on the demo I played.

 

There are five or six different classes that you can play: Tactician, Marksman, Engineer, Infiltrator, Medic, maybe I'm missing one, maybe not, I can't remember. Each class has its own abilities (I don't know if that's new or not since I haven't played Killzone 2) which adds a little more tactic to the game. Marksman has invisibility cloak, engineers can fix turrets and ammo boxes, etc.

 

The AI enemies and teammates are incredibly smart, I think Killzone 2 also had really good AI. The AI is probably one of the best I seen in games. The enemies react to every grenade realistically and intelligently. Although I did notice that the enemies are really good at melee kills, most of my deaths are melee kills, maybe due to my imprecise timing of my melee kill or my lack of aim when a Helghast is charging at me. The enemies also use their abilities really well. Many times an enemy infiltrator disguised as my teammate shot me in the back because I wasn't careful enough.

 

In the Botzone, you can have the option to change the number of players and the difficulty of the AI, which adds a lot of replay value, even to the beta. I played maybe about 5 hours so far, and for a demo of a game with only one map and one good game mode, that's pretty good. And I probably will play more of it, because it's really great.

 

The Open Beta goes from Feb 3 to Feb 15 i think. So downloaded it if you haven't, even if you can't connect to play with real people, you can still have as much fun play offline with bots.