Is Killzone: Mercenary the Vita's First Great Multiplayer Shooter?

August 11, 2013

Closed beta offers an early glimpse of the game's multiplayer suite.

In the year and a half since PS Vita launched, owners have been clamoring for a capable first-person shooter experience. Initially, it seemed that Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Declassified or Resistance: Burning Skies would fill that void, but as critics and fans of the franchise would soon discover, they did anything but. Now, as Killzone: Mercenary kicks off its multiplayer beta ahead of its September launch, has the PS Vita's first exceptional shooter arrived?

With 8-player multiplayer matches and both deathmatch and objective-based modes, Mercenary shares common DNA with Burning Skies and Declassified, but the similarities more or less end there. Harnessing the power of a modified version of the Killzone 3 engine, Mercenary is a significant graphical leap forward for the platform with detailed weapon models, lighting effects, and environmental textures. Most importantly, the visual experience isn't diminished or scaled back for multiplayer, even with the added load of multiple simultaneous firefights between human players.
But Guerilla Cambridge isn't just narrowing the gap between console and Vita titles with Mercenary's graphics, it's delivering a similar level of depth to its multiplayer class systems, combat, mechanics, and game types.
As we learned earlier this year, Mercenary's single player and multiplayer modes are unified by a persistent currency system. Accolades awarded while progressing through the single player campaign and during multiplayer matches contribute to a cumulative pool of cash, which in turn can be used to purchase new weapons, armor, grenades, and support technologies known as VAN-Guards. In total, the beta includes 24 unique primary and secondary weapons, 5 grenades, 8 VAN-Guards, and 6 different armor types to choose from.

Killzone: Mercenary Multiplayer Screenshot

The weapons are varied and include ranged rifles, SMGs, LMGs, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, and pistols, which should appeal to a number of different play styles. Players also have access to smoke grenades, flash grenades, frags, incendiaries, and even lethal gas. These, along with your armor selections and VAN-Guards, can be assigned to five customizable classes, which are unlocked as your rank increases.
However, gaining access to the expansive arsenal isn't cheap. Most items cost several thousands of in-game currency, which requires players consider their choices carefully, but also adds incentive to play tactically and revisit the campaign.
But the compelling visuals and robust class customization would be nothing without similarly well crafted combat mechanics — the areas Burning Skies and Declassified seemed to struggled with most.
While there are still challenges fundamental to the PS Vita's compact controls, Mercenary approaches them with creative solutions and fine tuning. Movement and aiming with the Vita's tiny thumbsticks affords a very narrow range of motion, but corresponding in-game actions feel tight and responsive. What's more, players can fine-tune the aiming systems to their preference with a wide scale of sensitivity levels, aim assists, and optional gyro controls. Perhaps most critically, the game's reliance on touchscreen or touch pad controls is extremely limited.

While players have the option to trigger their VAN-Guard power-up or swap weapons with an on-screen button, the commands are also mapped to the d-pad or action buttons. The only instances where touch controls are required are when you're toggling zoom levels on a sniper rifle or executing a "brutal melee" — which requires you to use timed swipes during hand-to-hand combat quicktime events.
Of course, even with these optimizations, there's no substituting the Vita's cramped controls for a full-sized gamepad. Small aim adjustments and quick turns can be challenging, but with time I was able to become pretty proficient with the control scheme. So long as players enter with those tempered expectations, Mercenary can be a ton of fun.
While players can cut their teeth on a traditional free-for-all gametype called Mercenary Warfare, many will likely flock to Warzone — a staple of the franchise, which offers a creative take on objective, team-based modes. Instead of isolating a specific task, Warzone combines several objectives across multiple timed segments in a single match. One round will task teams with retrieving intel from capsules dropped into the map, while another will require players to down enemies and interrogate them. Wins in each mode contributes to a cumulative score at the end of the match. The format provides recourse for teams that may not be particularly strong in one style of play, but adept at another.
For a PS Vita title — much less a pre-release beta — Killzone: Mercenary's multiplayer suite is surprisingly robust. The depth of its class customization and game types rivals that of a full-fledged console title. It grapples with the limitations of the hardware, but it's one of the best efforts I've encountered yet.