Sons and daughters of Helghan, get down with your bad selves!

It's been a decade since the original Killzone arrive on PlayStaton 2, and Guerrilla Games has seen fit to commemorate th??e milestone "with the people who made it a??ll possible" -- the fans.

Sure hope you guys like downloadable content! Guerrilla is rolling out a bunch of celebratory Killzone: Shadow Fall DLC over the next month. The studio has a new expansion pack out now, (free to season pass holders) giving you "unprecedented" ?personalization options, including new character and owl skins, additional voice packs, extra player card icons, and even customizable crosshairs. Customizabl??e crosshairs...

A pair of free multiplayer maps are also in the pipeline, one based off Radec Academy plus another specifically designed for the Intercept co-op expansion.

Guerrilla also plans to host "festive" livestreams of (heh) "classic" Killzone titles, Shadow Fall and Mercenary tournaments, and?? an art exhibition in Leeuwarden, Holland later this month.

Killzone celebrates its 10th anniversary [Guerrilla Games]

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Best. News. Ever.

A new patch for Killzone: Mercenary is coming in a few weeks. The patch will reduce the size of the previous patches so more ?patches can come along and patch the patches with more patches. Patches.

After releasing a pair of rather hefty updates alongside its portable first-person shooter earlier this autumn, Guerrilla Cambridge will provide PlayStation Vita owners with tiny memory cards some reprieve (at least momentarily) with a third update designed to free up around 800MB of space occupied by its predecessor??s. 

Three additional updates will arrive next year, the first of which is scheduled to drop sometime in January with matchmaking and connectivity fixes. A considerably larger one will arriv?e with two free multiplayer maps and offline Botzone for the Mercenary and Guerilla Warfare modes. The final update includes "continued refinements" and PS Vita TV support. So much for freeing up all that memory card space.

Enjoy the patches!

New Killzone Mercenary Updates Comin??g, Free Multiplaye?r Maps [PlayStation Blog]

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I hope you have a big memory card

I'm really enjoying Killzone: Mercenary -- when I can find the space t?o fit it on my Vita. I obtained the game digitally, only to find out that there was a massive 1.1 GB launch pat?ch, and even with a 32 GB memory card my capacity was hurting.

Now, Sony has announced that another 1 GB patch is live, and it needs 2GB to install. The patch is aimed at fixing connectivity issues, and making multiplayer a more overall smooth experience. The good news is that once it is applied, the old patch goes away. But still, I feel bad for anyone with a smaller memory card, and those 64 GB cards can't come soon enough.

Killzone [PlayStation Blog]

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Leading the VAN-Guard

This is the game I wanted a PlayStation Vita for. I have a long documented fondness for the Killzone series, and while Killzone: Liberation on the PlayStation Portable was enj??????????????????????????oyable enough, I truly longed for ??a genuine first-person shooter production in the handheld space. This is what the Vita promised. 

Unfortunately, that promise looked less and less savory as Killzone: Mercenary took its time and two criminal abortions -- Resistance: Burning Skies and Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified -- stepped in to make FPS experiences on the Vita look like an utter joke. While I still held out hope for Mercenary, the path leadi?ng towards its re??lease was paved in feces. 

If only Mercenary?? had released first, it would have shown its two-bit predecessors exactly how it's done. ??;

Killzone: Mercenary (PS Vita)
Developer: Guerrilla Cambridge
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Released: September 10, 2013 (NA), September 4, 2013 (EU)
MSRP: $39.99

Killzone Mercenary is an impressive attempt to preserve as much familiar Killzone content as possible and house it on a handheld system. Unlike previous attempts from lesser studios, Mercenary enjoys the distinction of being the inaugural first-person-shooter to actually get it right on PS Vita. Not only does it function with little in the way of compromise, it looks fantastic and plays exa??ctly how it ought to.

The fundamental controls are intuitive enough. You have your twin sticks for moving and aiming, your left shoulder button for iron sights and your right for shooting. Interacting with objects is performed either with the Triangle button or by touching an icon onscreen -- and I really appreciate not being forced to stretch a digit to the middle of the screen -- while sprinting can be performed either by tapping Circle while moving or double tapping the rear touchpad. Considerable effort has been made to keep the Vita's varied input options from overlapping and confusing the game, the only noticeable conflict being when crouching -- an action that required Circle to be tapped when stationary, which one often forgets in the he??at of the ??moment.

Switching between primary and secondary weapons, as well as using special VAN-Guard equipment or grenades, is all handled with virtual buttons located conveniently to the sides of the screen, a judicious use of touch controls that I always appreciate. Less convenient are melee attacks which, when initiated, require timed swipes across the length of the screen. It's gimmicky and forced, but it could have been a lot more egregious than ??it is and, once one gets used to them, they can be quite satisfying to pull off. 

The only other annoying touch element is the mandatory hacking sections. Now and then, you'll be required to hack objectives by performing a banal pattern-matching touchscreen minigame. It's not especially difficult, it just feels somewhat unnec??essary, and didn't really provide anything positive to my day. When something exists just for the hell of it, I can't say I'm ever impressed. 

While Mercenary could easily have just condensed a regular Killzone experience a??nd left it at that, efforts have been made to do offer a handful of unique toys. For one thing, players constantly earn cash as they play, scoring financial rewards for various kills, for hacking computers, and even for scavenging enemy ammunition. This money can be spent at Blackjack arms dealerships, to unlock new weaponry, armor types, and VAN-Guard gear. 

VAN-Guard refers to a range of gadgets t??hat offer some new amusements during the course of battle, taking the form of temporary weapons, buffs, and o??rdnance. You can have one VAN-Guard equipped at any given moment, and most of them are useful in some way, shape, or form. The Mantys, for example, is a remote-controlled bot that can sneak up behind opponents and stab them in the temples, offering silent kills without risking yourself personally.

Less stealthy players m?ay enjoy the Porcupine, which sends locked missiles onto any opponent the player jabs with their finger, or the Arc Missile, a bot companion that hovers near the player and fries incoming foes with a blast of electricity. My personal favorite is the Vultur, which locates all enemies on the map and allows every living thing to be seen through walls and floors. It's earned me a lot of kills. 

Players earn ranks with every weapon they use, as well as general experience for kills and mission completions. As they rank up, players earn new loadout slots for multiplayer. One is also encou?raged to keep playing daily to earn Valor Cards -- personal calling cards that raise or lower in ranking based on how well the player is performing. These cards are dropped whenever an enemy is defeated in multiplayer, earning whoever collects them extra points. 

For its solo campaign, Mercenary offers a sidelong view at the conflict between Vekta and Helghan, seen as it is from the perspective of a mercenary. Soldier-of-fortune Arran Danner takes the lead role in a campaign that takes place alongside the events of both Killzone and Killzone 2, with several stages set on Vekta, and the latter half of the story told on the Helghast's home planet. While not exactly an impressive narrative, it's a decent little yarn, and manages to be one of the few sources of Killzone canon that actually portrays the ISA in a?? less-than-heroic light while making their fight ??with the Helghast morally greyer. 

It's a shame, however, that the solo game is a fairly short experience, completed in a mere few hours. It rushes through itself, as players switch fr??om fighting alongside the ISA to the Helghast and back aga??in in short order -- a far cry from the "choose your side" promises seen in earlier trailers. The final boss also pops up out of nowhere (as well as being a pain in the ass to fight) It's a linear story that offers little in the way of replay value, save the monetary incentives -- and unless you really can't decide on what your favorite gun is, there's not even that much reason to keep earning the cash. 

I wouldn't be so disappointed by the campaign if it wasn't consistently fun, however. Aside from making an FPS work on the Vita, Mercenary stands as a thoroughly entertaining shooter in its own right, giving us some unique insights into the Killzone universe while adding cool new optional stealth routes through missions, and plenty of explosive setpieces. The shooting action is solid as granite, with weapons that feel as heavy and powerful as they should, and a pleasant variety of enemies to deal with ?-- especially once you finally get to fight on the opposite side of the battlefield. 

If the campaign is somewhat thrifty, however, its online counterpart holds up an impressive amount of slack. Featuring four-on-four battles across three game types (free-for-all, team deathmatch, and the Killzone specialty Warzone), Mercenary offers lag-free,?? highly competent handheld multiplayer combat across decently sized maps. While the Vita's less robust thumbsticks make human opposition a little trickier to deal with, it ought not take long to get used to the way things operate, and one is left with a very pleasing pool of violence that can be easily ??dipped into until the Vita's battery drains to its last gasps. 

Adding touch-based interrogation obj??ectives and randomly dropped VAN-Guard capsules into each match mak??es for an online offering that stands apart from the console alternatives while retaining a familiar series feel. There are no classes to choose from this time, but one can customize a loadout using equipment unlocked at Blackjack's, with funds and progress carrying over between the online and single-player portions. 

While I can't quite see myself staying as engrossed in Mercenary's smaller-scale, simplified battles for as long as Killzone 2 had me, it's the perfect thing to crack out for the occasional bit of portable warfare, and it ought to serve fans quite well for those moments when they want to get in on some Killzone, but need something just a little different. ??;

As explained at the start of the review, Sony Cambridge did a great job with the visuals, giving a title? that easily ranks among the PS Vita's best lookers. There is the odd graphical glitch, and I did once have my character stuck in a hacking animation, but overall, things run smoothly and really look quite impressive on the OLED screen. There's some solid voice acting and a forgettable-but-suitable soun??dtrack backing things up, too. 

Killzone: Mercenary could have stood to provide more content, but that which is on offer is all very well polished and plays almost impeccably on Sony's latest handheld venture. Di??stinguishing itself as the first Vita FPS to really showcase the system's strengths, this is one of those ambitious titles the system can be proud to showcase, proving that a console experience can not only work in the handheld space, but be damn fun without su?ffering too much in the way of compromise.

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The history of these days will be written in blood

The Killzone: Mercenary open beta will be making planetfall next?? week. PlayStation Plus subscribers will have the first shot at the title's multiplayer on August 20.  

Everyone else will have to wait until August 27 for an opportunity to get in on the action. The beta program be decommissioned on September 3, giving Guerrilla Cambridge an opportunity to make any last minute tweaks ahead of the first-person shoot?er's September 10 launch. 

Surviving the Killzone: Mercenar??y Multiplayer Beta [PlayStation Blog]

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Merce-nary a concern

I initially scoffed towards every bit of this explanation of Killzone: Mercenary's multiplayer systems. I don't much care for multiplayer, so why should I care that offline singleplayer progress yields weapons and stats that can go towards multiplayer? Well, while I may not care, it's sort of a neat idea and could keep people playing Killzone offline, out and abo?ut, to abet their online performance. More important, however, are valor cards.

Mercenary does away with stagnant character rank systems, relying on daily "valor cards" which can be used to make fat stacks (of money). What's more, in multiplayer you compete for valor cards. I immediately viewed this system in ?suspicion and disdain. Wouldn't it just breed a cutthroat cli??mate centered on a vacuous, false economy, perpetuating a Skinner box mentality of collection and constant score upkeep?

Then I saw a valor card spring forth from the corpse of a dead enemy combatant and something innate and animalistic inside of me screamed, "I want that." I am going to skin you all alive and f?ashion your valor cards into ornate jewelry hung about my neck until I grow hunched under the weig??ht of my trophies.

One of the first PSP games that spoke to me was Infected and its promise of virality, of being able to defeat someone in multiplayer fisticuffs and then have your player avatar infect and haunt their single-player experience. It was a cool concept executed poorly, but I love the malicio??usness to it, the insult to injury. I don't just want to kill someone in a multiplayer game. I want to take from them. Something precious. Man, I'm awful.

Killzone: Mercenary looks really good. The multiplayer is currently in closed beta. An open beta will begin at the end of August. I won't se??ek help, but I will keep from slithering under your beds.

The post Killzone Vita’s multiplayer is poisonous and I love it appeared first on Destructoid.

Vita's showcase shooter

You want a first-person shooter on your Vita, right? Me too. Those dual analog sticks have been calling my name since the system's release, but we've got nothing to use them with. And no, that other game doesn't count.

Killzone: Mercenary swoops in to save the day with real, console-quality [I hate when people say that about portable games] FPS action. Those dual analog sticks? Put to great use with classic Killzone gameplay. ??Actually, everything ??in and on the Vita has been put to good use in this game, with everything from graphics hardware to the touchscreen working together to make what's shaping up to easily be the best shooter on the system. 

Killzone: Mercenary (PlayStation Vita)
Developer: Guerrilla Cambridge
Publisher: SCEA
Release: September 17, 2013

Wait, mercenary? Yep. As the name of the game clearly states, this Killzone outing is all about the cash and the mission. Alliances lie where the money is. You play as ex-soldier Arran Danner, and as a for-hire badass in a time and place where there's a lot of surreptitious stuff going on, you've got plenty of prime work available. Expect to aid the Hel??ghast and ??ISA during the course of this game.

The focus is so heavy on money that every si??ngle thing you do has a monetary value assigned to it. Kill a baddie and a number instantly appears, telling you how much is being added to your account balance. Kill in fancier ways (heads?hots, melee) and see that number increase. The better you play, the more you'll earn. Even reaching checkpoints and knocking out smaller mission objectives dumps more into your account. 

What's neat is that all of the money goes into one account, accessible in both single-?? and multiplayer modes. You can buy the biggest and best gear in both modes, and they'll all be available for use in both. The Van-Guard weapons system has some pretty nifty things to spend your money on, too. One of the options, the Iron Cannon, lets you call in a beam from orbit, letting you disintegrate enemies with a press of a button. Another, Mantis engine, lets you scout remotely to kill.

Despite the change in tone, this is a true Killzone game on a handheld. It looks and feels just like a Killzone title, running off a Vita-ized Killzone 3 engine. Compromises? I don't see them. When you finally witness this game running for yourself, I'm certain you'll be wowed. From bo?th live gameplay and in example footage of various graphical effects, using everything from HDR to dynamic lights to volumetric fog, it's clear that Guerrilla Cambridge is not jacking around when it c?omes to showing off what a high-quality Vita game can look like. There's no one out there that is going to say that this doesn't look good.

And in keeping with the Killzone-ness of it all, Mercenary is even set in the time of previous games. Series fans will find themselves in familiar situations, though the view will be quite different in playing as a gun for hire. The liberation of Vetka? You're there. You'll also play a part in the invasion of Helghan during the time of Killzone 2.

I played a bit of the single-player mission, which we're told will last some 6-8 hours in total. My little piece of the action had me taking point on a mercenary mission called Lightning Strike, where it was my job to take control of massive arc cannons that were to be used to shoot an unsuspecting fleet out of the sky. It was a hacking mission -- you know the kind. Run here, take out a wave, defend a point until the super futuristic space computer that should be fast but isn't has time to hack something, and then rinse and repeat. Heavy defense from really solid AI enemies kept things interesting. Not necessarily groundbreaking stuff, but fun, and definitely good for showcasing gameplay that felt exactly like what I would be doing in a console Killzone. 

Playing felt totally natural after I got used to the range of movement of the Vita's analog sticks. With its console-ish looks and straight-up DualShock control, after getting into the zone, I kind of forgot that I was playing a handheld game. They didn't shrink or lessen the experience, but instead perfectly translated it to something that just happens to be a more portable way of playing Killzone. Hats off to them for this.

There are some new Vita-ish aspects that have been added to the formula -- Sony won't let developers get away without at least some swiping. And that's exactly what you'll get in Mercenaries: touch in?put to do everything from throwing grenades to switching weapons. The rear touch panel will let you do things ??like zoom your sniper rifle in.

The Brutal Melee system lets you perform attacks with a swipe, too. After pressing the triangle button in close range, time slows down, and the game prompts you to swipe your finger a certain direction to kick off an animation of a head twisting or throat slitting. The input seemed sluggish, and I found myself frantically swiping everywhere to make sure my melee connected, sometimes getting crazy enough to find my fingers hitting the right analog stick and face buttons. It needs some fine tuning, but at least it looks neat. It also has an unintended bonus as it gives you a break when the action? gets heated; it felt like no other enemies could hurt me while in the process of a melee attack.

Another Vita-ism might be less welcome, though I didn't mind it. A touchscreen hacking puzzle ended up surprising me after finally hacking both stations and getting to the heavily guarded main terminal. Several hexagons with certain triangle segme?nts missing had me poking at a selection of other hexagons on the side of the screens that could be a match. A countdown timer kept the pressure on as frantically I tried to match shapes. Again, I don't mind these kind of hacking mini-games, but others looking for pure FPS ac?tion might gripe. 

I didn't get as much time with Mercenary's multiplayer, but it's clear even from my limited look that FPS fans will d??ig this. This is big game multiplayer in a portable package. Four-on-four deathmatches in tight caves kept things hot, and drops to be used in the previously mentioned Van-Guard system turned the h??eat up even higher.

New to the ?MP system are Valor cards. Kill someone and they'll drop a card, which represents the?ir their class and rank. You'll want to collect them all as they're worth money, and there are also added bonuses to hoarding them.

Expect three modes and six maps for Mercenary's multiplayer in the end.?? Gue?rrilla says that it will be fully supported by Killzone.com, with leaderboard updates, heat maps and the like.

Multplayer moved at a nice clip, with a framerate that seemed to be s?uitably smooth. The same was true for most of the single-player mission I tried, though there were a couple of instances in tight quarters where a higher enemy count had rates dropping a bit. Some touchscreen commands seemed to lag a bit behind (get that grenade out now!), but nothing too serious. 

Hopefully this preview will hold you over as we have a really long wait until release: September 2013. And Killzone: Mercenaries was impressive enough that we'll actually feel the need to gripe about this wait. It's close-to-console looks really took me by surprise -- seeing gameplay visuals displayed on a television didn't look much? different from a PS3. 

For those worried about some of the Vita-specific features mentioned above, don't. Aside from the melee attacks, which really aren't that big of a deal, and whatever other hacking mini-games that may pop up, this is a proper Killzone title with classic FPS control.

Killzone: Mercenary looks fantastic and feels natural, has a sizable single-player mission and solid multiplayer, and is??n't compromised or rushed in any way. That's?? all we've been wanting. Finally.

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