The 1.4GB download opens right up to a four panel touch menu. Your options are Campaign, Multiplayer (not available in this build), Career Data (not available in this build), and Settings. In the upper right corner, a symbol representing your current rank (Private, Lieutenant, etc) is shown, alongside another symbol that looks like a playing card. In this build, it’s a Joker, but this Valor Card, as it’s officially known, may change as early as tomorrow a pop-up message informed me. Your Valor Card is based on how well you’re playing compared to other players who are connected. It’ll be interesting to see where that particular feature goes.
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Anyway, as I do with any new game, I went into the Options or Settings to see what was available. KZM breaks things down into controls, preferences, and sounds. You can disable subtitles (enabled by default) and adjust different volume levels. Under the Analog Sticks menu, you can soft-swap the sticks, adjust their inversion, and their sensitivity. The Motion Sensing area allows you to enable the motion sensor, which is off by default (I left it that way). Under Preferences, you can change whether aiming down the sights is a toggle action or one that requires you hold down LT. Similarly, grenade actions can be adjusted such that pressing the grenade icon on the front touchscreen throws a grenade, or just arms it. You can also set whether or not the rear touchpad is used to enable sprinting. I had my doubts about using the rear touchpad for something as important as sprinting, but it actually worked out smoothly.
Settings tweaked, it was time to dive in. After selecting Campaign, I was given the choice of three difficulty settings: Recruit, Trooper, and Veteran. I chose Trooper and was immediately greeted with a cutscene. The video was a briefing on the upcoming mission. In it, Grey, a high ranking official of the ISA, talked about how we need to disable the Helghast air defenses. After her blurb, Anders Benoit, the “voice in your ear” for this mission, takes over. He cuts to the chase and runs you through the mission plan, which includes a really sweet fly-by animation of the facility you are dropping into. The plan is for you and another NPC merc to use personal gliders to sail in after being taken as far in with an Intruder craft as possible.
As the mission starts, your NPC help gets killed, so Benoit informs you of what you more or less figured already — you’re on your own. At first glance, there is a lot going on in the HUD, but it’s well organized and very functional. The lower right corner is where you tap to use your grenade-class weapon. Above it is ‘next weapon’ toggle button that switches you between equipped primary and secondary arms. You can also just use ‘right’ on the d-pad, which I preferred. The lower left of the HUD has a great looking map that accounts for elevation changes as you ascend and descend areas. Icons represent enemies, including the direction they’re facing. You have to be pretty close to them for that to show up, although there is a drone you can purchase to help you locate foes at a distance. The map also has yellow smiley face circles that represent Blackjack points –more on those soon. Above the map is a icon representing your currently equipped Van Guard System device. It’s not necessarily a weapon, so I’m refraining from calling it that, but the Van Guard devices have a positive effect on the gameplay. In the upper left of the HUD is your current Balance, which is like your available spending currency; it’s important. The HUD also displays your current magazine load and total ammo for the weapon you are holding.
A quick rundown of the controls would include X for jumping, O for crouching, RT to shoot, LT to look down the sights, Triangle to interact with onscreen prompts (or you can touch the front screen), and Square to reload. To run, by default that function is assigned to the rear touchpad. So you press a direction with the left stick and then tap or double tap the rear touchpad to run. I managed to slide a few times as well, I think by pressing O while running. It saved my butt a few times. Oh, if you melee or are activating a switch, expect to have to draw a line on the front screen with your finger. If it’s for a melee, expect to have to do it fast. Also, during a late hacking sequence in this mission, simple touch controls were used to solve a image puzzle; it was a lot more interesting than just going up to something and pressing a button, so I hope that design gets used regularly throughout the full game.
KZM, or at least this level mind you, has all of the run-and-gun action you would expect from a Killzone game, but I was surprised at how much playing with stealth was encouraged and rewarded. In fact, not only stealth, but a bit of exploration as well. The very first encounter with multiple Helghast happens within just a minute or two of when the player lands from his glider. This encounter can be really difficult if played loosely, but I noticed after clearing the area that there was an alternate path that would have proved far more tactical had I noticed it first. This path actually involved climbing up a pole to get to high ground. Climbing up poles, ladders, and using a zip-line is, or in some cases optionally can be, done several times in Lightning Strike. I’m sure the hidden collectibles, known as Intel, will require being very thorough in exploring the levels, so keep your eyes peeled. On that note, I believe the collectible intel, all six pieces, were left out of this preview build — at least I hope so, I didn’t find a single one of them, haha.
Getting back to the point about stealth, on several occasions you can get the jump on a Helghast operative if you move quietly enough. This requires not only crouching and moving slowly, but the type of armor you have equipped can make a difference too. Setting off alarms, be it from a guns-blazing approach or getting caught by cameras, will guarantee you a near-sudden visit from multiple Helghast. Interestingly, it can also mean certain doors will close and lock, preventing you from either back-tracking or moving forward. Areas behind you, that you have already been through, are liable to get Helghast reinforcements, too. This gives you the unique chance to score some more points, aka increase your Balance, but of course you also run the risk of getting killed. When your player dies, you automatically get docked 50 points from your Balance as you get set back to the last checkpoint. I thought that that was a pretty neat way to implement a penalty for failing without being asinine about it. Anyway, there does seem to be a sort of limit to how many times an area can be “effected” by an alarm though, which is sensible and fair. On the other hand, I was a little irked by how Benoit knew immediately when an area was clear; realistically, it just doesn’t add up. That, along with the presence of the most cliched prop in action games, explosive red barrels, gave cause for some eye rolling.
Maintaining your Balance is important in between missions to prepare your loadout, but you’ll also be spending several thousand points during a mission as well if Lightning Strike is anything to go by. Spread throughout the mission were these large footlockers or crates. Blackjack is the dealer that can give you instant access to just about anything you can afford, and the list is substantial. Players can restock their ammo for a certain cost (dependent upon how much ammo they actually need to fill up), pay up to get your Van Guard device recharged immediately rather than waiting, as well as change out your Primary, Secondary, and Grenade weapons, and your Armor and Van Guard device. The preview build showed off a lot of goodies, and I was able to afford several throughout the mission. I was pretty quick to exchange my secondary weapon, a silenced pistol (the STA-18SE) for the LS-18 Shredder shotgun once I had the funds. Heck, I changed out my Armor, Primary weapon, and Grenades too. In this build, there were a dozen Primary weapons, eleven Secondary, eight Van Guard devices, six types of Armor, and five types of Grenades — that’s quite impressive if you ask me. Being able to change things up multiple times in a mission will make for some interesting experiences to be sure.
One of several particularly cool moments I had involved switching my Van Guard ability from the default, called Manty’s Engine (a small, light-armor drone that helps you fight nearby enemies) to the Ghost device. This allows you to be cloaked, including while running, from enemies so long as you’re not engaged in combat. Having just purchased this ability from a Blackjack, I proceeded a few steps forward and was informed by Benoit that an elevator with Helghast was about to pop up in front of me. I quickly tapped the Van Guard button on the touch screen, and Danner (finally got around to mentioning his name!) touched his wrist pad and enabled Ghost. The Helghast came out of the elevator looking for me, but I was able to slip right by them and take the elevator — it was rather cool, and certainly unusual for a Killzone game.
I had a lot of fun playing through this build but there were a few issues I had that will hopefully get addressed before the September launch. I previously mentioned how it’s just kind of reality/immersion breaking that Benoit immediately knows when an area is clear as soon as you take down the last foe. Well, he also repeats himself a lot if you’re either not moving towards a key objective or are near it, but aren’t exactly moving directly towards it. This happened to me twice in this mission. The first time was when I was trying to deactivate the shield on a communications dish. I had several Helghast looking for me, but I was close enough to the switch that Benoit kept saying the same line over and over again about hitting that switch, like, now. Tactically, it wasn’t safe to do. Late in the mission, when it was time to manually fire these cannons, he repeated the same line multiple times, “encouraging” me to get to where I needed to be. Those little glitches aren’t game-breaking by any means, but they don’t do the experience any favors.
I experienced what I think is a minor bug, too. Near the hack trigger for the first dish, there was a orange grenade icon popping up in my HUD that didn’t seem to be legit. I had just gone through a firefight in that same room and it’s likely a Hig tossed a grenade. The whole area was clear now though, and no grenade was to be found, yet I still had the indicator pop-up. Again, this is a minor bug as best I can tell or explain, and there’s no reason to think it won’t get fixed before launch.
When using the auto shotgun, the framerate would sag massively for a good second if I fired it multiple times at a foe in close range. I think it was either firing it multiple times or the animation of the enemy getting gibbed that caused the stutter that I experienced a good three or four times.
The enemy AI is actually pretty good for the most part as far as using grenades to flush you out, taking cover, blind-firing, and searching for you. There are instances where they don’t impress though. It seemed liked they were unwilling to open up a door to pursue me. On the other hand, I would use this same door, which was an automatic proximity door by the way, to make a brief attack before getting back to let the door shut automatically while I reloaded, etc. On another occasion, where I found a “hidden” path to get above several Helghast in their barracks, they didn’t seem to consider I was above them, picking them off one at a time. Instead they patrolled the area looking at ground level only. While a bit of a letdown in these instances, the AI and how the game design makes the AI “perform” is a net positive. Hopefully before launch we’ll see a little more polish to make the AI a, you know, really strong feature of the game.
A few thoughts on the presentation quality before wrapping up. Visually, this looks like you’re playing your PS3 on a 960×544 screen; and what I mean by that is that KZM is damn good looking. I didn’t feel like I was missing anything from playing this game on the Vita as opposed to the PS3 except for maybe a bigger screen. Besides those brief framerate hiccups I just mentioned, everything not only looked awesome, but it all played very smoothly. The bodies of fallen enemies seemed to stay where they fell, at least until there were some number of them in an area; then the bodies disappeared and were replaced by a splotch of blood. Oh, their ammo drops seemed to be all represented by silver cans by the way.
Playing through Lightning Strike took me roughly forty-five minutes with minimal deaths or restarts. It was a lot of fun and has reinvigorated my excitement for the game’s full release with the hopes that the minor issues I noted will be taken into account. Stay tuned for a multiplayer preview in the near future.
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