KillZone 3

Before you go any further, I enjoyed KillZone 2 quite a bit. The single player campaign, while featuring some less than interesting characters, at least had a good pace and felt like a decent war game. I loved the War Zone multiplayer, it was right along the same lines as the multiplayer system we had in the Black Powder | Red Earth FPS at the time, and I clocked man-months of time climbing the ladder within the game.

Enter KillZone 3. The intro movie is way too long. The menus feel cluttered. The single player...

I suppose I should pause to mention there will be minor spoilers here, but no more than the first hour of the game because I was so unengaged I just put the SP down and went straight for multiplayer.

The single player starts with a Call of Duty style shoot house level from the perspective of the Helgan only to find, wait you were the protagonist from the last game all along! How shocking. And you meet the leader of the enemy army, say some stupid one liner and then we are whisked back 6 months earlier till the end of KZ2. There's a bunch of terrible dialog, boring cut scenes and then we're dropped into a city that looks nothing at all like the cities I was fighting in during the last game. Everything has this shiny green/red tint...is that supposed to be radioactivity? When I came across my third giant hopping Helghan robot I knew I was playing a totally different game in a totally different world.

It was at this moment that I just dropped out. Why even call it KillZone?

Multiplayer while good, seems less exciting to me. I've played 4 of the War Zone maps and 2 of the Operations maps. They are good but I'm just not hooked in the way I was with KZ2. Maybe because I liked the campaign I had more attachment to the franchise but...I keep finding myself wanting to play Medal of Honor's campaign again.

I'll keep at it. If someone wants to try the campaign in co-op I'd be willing to give it another go, but 2011 is already setting me up for disappointment. I've got my fingers crossed for Crysis 2.

HaleyStrategic.com

For those who are interested, Echelon has partnered with former Magpul Dynamics founder and Magpul Industries CEO Travis Haley in his new endeavor Haley Strategic Partners. Echelon will be doing the creative heavy lifting for the Companies training and marketing packages. We have worked with Travis since 2007, during his days with Simply Dynamic Tactical. It's good to be working with such an energetic and positive individual again.

We are looking to explore photography and film on a level that is more gritty and in the moment than some of the other "war" films/games on the market. More to come :)

On a totally unrelated note, the novel is coming together. Act 1 (should I think of novel's as acts?) is just about complete. I am debating if I want to add a B and C story line to the book or should I just focus on my protagonists. I like books written both ways and I'm not sure which way to go. My graphic novel has a B storyline - which was necessary to tell the story. With the novel, I can fill in the blanks without bringing a bunch of other characters into the spotlight...but that might change.

In the novel, I am writing something a bit more personal. Then again, what started as a first person account has switched gears to a third person narrative, so you never know where things will take you.