The plot thickens in 'Killzone 3'

The latest futuristic first-person shooter series to roll out another installment is “Killzone 3,” featuring the same grizzled good guys trading heavy fire with the same grizzled bad guys in a gripping battle over Earth.

True innovation in shooters is rare, and if a series is already a winner, any chapter can get by with being simply sufficient. And that's what “Killzone 3” is: solidly sufficient.

Gamers will get more of what they know and love: more sniper shots, more melee attacks and more skulking through alien worlds with a team of ragtag comrades.

To recap, the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance (good guys) continues to battle the Helghan army (bad guys) and its never-ending legion of glowing-eyed goons. I played primarily as the protagonist, Sev, a strong-willed special forces operative for the ISA.

Let's begin with the graphics: The vistas and battlefields are impressive, fading into the mist and smoke as gunfire pelts the surroundings. But up close, during the in-your-face encounters, it's underwhelming. There are too many jagged edges on the plants and rocks as Sev creeps through the glowing jungles, scoping out Helghast foes to frag.

Hand grenades are hard to see when you throw them. It would be nice if they had a better visual trajectory trail, like smoke or a glow of light. My body moved when I threw them and something exploded in the distance and I'm pretty sure I did it. But there wasn't enough of a visual connection there to help me aim if I wanted to throw another one.

The same goes for some alien plants called “bursters.” When I shot at these glowing orange bits of vegetation, they exploded and shot deadly nettles into nearby Helghast soldiers. But I couldn't see any of the carnage in detail. The plant explodes and the Helghast fall. There's just very little graphic representation for a pretty decent method of taking down the enemy.

Meanwhile, the cut scenes are long, beautifully crafted and do well to add drama to the next unfolding in-game battle. We learn that internal strife is buckling the knees of the Helghan military leadership.

It was nice to see they are vulnerable and with intricate personality, not simply boring automatons lurching forward to take my head off. Their infighting quickly becomes their Achilles' heel.

There's a lot of machinery on the landscape that I trudged through. Some of it working, while other pieces were in smoldering piles of rubble. This reinforces the plot that we are in the thick of a long and protracted war, but it makes it a little hard to navigate on foot.

There are some vehicles that were fun to use, including a large robotic exoskeleton that my partner and I climbed into to take down a group of Helghast soldiers hunkered down in a high-rise building. The “exo” has huge mechanical arms and legs and endured a fair bit of damage before I had to hop out and do battle on foot.

This title for PlayStation 3 is Move enabled, meaning it can be played using Sony's motion controller. Frankly, this is a messy way to control FPS game play. I found myself swinging the Move controller wildly from left to right, skimming past opponents too fast as they peppered me with bullets.

I toggled down the Move sensitivity settings to slow my movements, but it was too unwieldy to hold the Move controller in one hand to operate my weapons and its smaller navigator controller in the other to control my player movements. It felt disconnected, and I quickly abandoned it for the traditional PlayStation controller.

In total, fans of the “Killzone” series will like more “Killzone.” If they're looking for something new and improved in the world of first-person shooters, the search continues.

<b>“Killzone 3”</b>

Sony, PS3, $59.99, killzone.com