Killzone Mercenary First Impressions - The Greatest FPS On A Handheld Console

I would never have guessed that a Killzone game would become the most important game for the Playstation Vita. But since the previous attempts at  making an FPS game on the system were complete hack jobs (Resistance Burning Skies and Black Ops Declassified) and very few publisher driven titles coming out before Christmas. Sony is clearly betting the farm on Killzone Mercenary and has dropped the price of the Vita (and it’s memory sticks) just before the release of this game. The good news is that Sony has picked the winning horse, because Killzone Mercenary has exceeded my expectations and hopefully yours.

Now when Killzone Mercenary was announced at Gamescom 2012, I couldn’t believe when they said it would run on the Killzone 3 engine. One of the most graphically advanced engines ported to the Vita? They must be bluffing!!! Well looks like Guerrilla Cambridge is having the last laugh, because the engine runs beautifully on the Vita. This is by far the best looking game I’ve ever seen on a handheld. The lighting, smoke effects and the sense of scale is mind blowing. Yet the game runs at native resolution and a continuous 30 frames per second. However there is a very brief one second pause when the game loads new enemies or other assets.

Loading times only exist at the beginning of each level and are covered nicely by mission briefings. Although the story really isn’t anything special, the voice acting is average at best and there really isn’t any character development to found here. But then again nobody has ever played a Killzone game for the story (although the first game did have some hilarious writing – “Are you asking did I get laid?” – ahh...I miss Luger).

The controls are fantastic and I was pleased to discover that the game lets me switch off all the motion and touch controls in the options menu. However the game does force you to use touch when doing melee attacks (one of which is stabbing a guy in the balls – Call of Duty please take notes) and interacting with certain things, like those lame hacking mini-games (see the picture below). Ok game developers listen to me, because l’m going to tell you something that will blow your mind. When gamers and critics praised Bioshock as one of the best games of all time, nobody said they liked those annoying hacking mini-games. So stop putting them in every bloody FPS game you make. Do we understand this? 

I’ve only played through three of the nine missions in the story mode. But the pacing and overall action is excellent. There's plenty of explosions and massive set pieces to make Michael Bay jizz his pants. Weapon selection is massive and all the guns have a lot of weight to them. Unlike previous Killzone games, there’s a much greater emphasis on stealth and a nifty radar system and silence weapons allow you to stay undetected.

The new experience and money system adds a great sense of progression to the game. Plus the experience you earn in the campaign is carried over to the multiplayer and vice versa. Money can be spent on weapons, armour and deadly drones at terminals dotted all over the place. This gives you plenty of options to play the game in a way that suits your style. I’ll admit I haven’t touched the multiplayer component and it seems to be online only. So that means no local matches with your buddies without an internet connection. Another blow to the online component is the game requires you to download a 1190MB patch!!! I’m not even making this is up!!!

But I can’t stay mad at Killzone Mercenary, because it’s an incredible, technical achievement that pushes handheld gaming to its limit. We finally have an FPS game on the portable console that doesn’t suck and let’s hope this is the game that will finally make people want to invest in a Playstation Vita.