Killzone 2 was one of the most anticipated shooters on the PS3 last year. After the hoopla surrounding the initial CGI trailer, the game had some big shoes to fill. While it was a solid shooter, many took issue with the controls and even though the multiplayer had some nice innovations, it just didn’t have the saying power online to compete with the behemoths in the industry. With Killzone 3, Sony and Guerrilla Games are looking to perfect what was already a solid base. At E3, we went hands on with a few single player levels and came away mostly impressed.

We played two levels of Killzone 3 at E3: one showing off a snowy terrain and another featuring the new jet packs. The scenes looked beautiful — about on par with Killzone 2. It’s still early in development, so I expect some tweaks and improvements in that area. Everything still has that worn-out, grayish tone which instantly makes you feel like you’re playing Killzone. The controls have been slightly tweaked based on player feedback and utilize similar speed settings as the patched version of Killzone 2, so you won’t feel as heavy and clunky walking around. The new weapons, such as the portable turrets and the jet packs, all felt fluid and definitely enhanced the gameplay. The jet packs did feel heavy, similar to how players felt with the original control scheme of Killzone 2, and I think that’s the right move. These things are huge on the characters’ backs and you should get that kind of feel from schlepping around such huge armaments.

The story picks up literally where Killzone 2 left off, as you stand over the dead body of Emperor Scolar Visari. While Guerrilla Games wouldn’t divulge any more info, they did say that environments would be much more diverse this time around, from snowy mountains to broken down cities to space combat. Yup, you’ll be fighting out in space (whether that’s space craft vehicle based combat or you out in space suits is yet to be seen). Definitely a step ahead in the single player front. And with Move support, there might be a decent amount of replayability there, but we can’t comment yet on that as we didn’t get a chance to play the game with the Move.

Sony is keeping quiet on the multiplayer front for now. My hope is that they go balls out for this title and make it the PS3′s version of Halo. No, I am not in any way comparing the two titles — I’m simply saying that I hope Sony puts the effort into Killzone 3′s multiplayer to give it solid matchmaking and staying power so gamers will play it for months and years post release. Only time will tell, and with more than six months left in development, some fine tuning is sure to happen. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go replay Killzone 2.