Killzone: Mercenary Review: A Technical Achievement and a Narrative Shrug

Killzone: Mercenary is the rare handheld shooter that does not feel like a compromise. Guerrilla Cambridge built it for the PlayStation Vita in 2013, and it is the fifth game in the Killzone series — the first not made by Guerrilla Games. Sony Computer Entertainment published it. It is a first-person shooter, played solo or in multiplayer.

Trailer, via PlayStation.

Arran Danner takes the contract

You play as Arran Danner, a former UCA soldier turned mercenary. He has no qualms about taking paid work from the ISA or the Helghast, and the game is built around that premise. For the first time in a Killzone campaign, you can fight alongside Helghast forces as well as ISA specialists. The missions are the kind regular soldiers cannot take. As a mercenary, you decide your own tactics and loadouts to fulfill a contract. Finish the job and your employer pays you.

That money is the spine of the game. The contract structure gives every firefight a transactional edge that the mainline Killzone games never had.

The game uses the Vita’s touchscreen and rear touch panel. On a handheld with two sticks and a small screen, that could have been a gimmick. Here it is a tool.

Vekta, Helghan, and the wars in between

Killzone: Mercenary takes place on the planets Vekta and Helghan, locked in an interstellar war. It starts just after the ending of the original Killzone and revisits many key events of Killzone, Killzone: Liberation, and Killzone 2 from Danner’s point of view. He is hired to run operations for the ISA. A mysterious weapons dealer named Blackjack supplies him. His boss, Anders Benoit, aids him at times.

The story opens with the Helghast invasion of Vekta. Benoit sends Danner and his partner Damian Ivanov into the Vektan city of Diortem to rescue ISA Admiral Alex Grey. The location came from the Vektan Ambassador, Sepp Harkin. Danner and Ivanov fight through the Halls of Justice, where Grey is held. They watch Helghast Colonel Kratek try to execute her, then extract her alive.

From there the two head to a downed Helghan cruiser. It is trying to escape with stolen ISA weapons technology, and it carries the transmission codes for all Helghast forces. Those codes matter to the ISA. Danner hacks the cruiser’s computers and gets them. While sabotaging the power supply, Ivanov is caught in a booby trap and sacrifices himself to destroy the ship. The mission is still called a success.

Two years later, the war moves to Helghan

The second act shifts the theater to Helghan, the Helghast home planet. Danner disables part of the Arc Cannon system to open a window for invading ISA forces, whose invasion has stalled. He then tries to rescue the Vektan Ambassador and his family from the Vektan Embassy in Pyrrhus City. The Helghast have discovered that Grey’s location leaked. The Ambassador and his Helghast wife die in the crossfire. Their son, Justus, survives. A Helghast scientist and defector named Savic escapes the embassy in the chaos.

With help from the Ambassador’s bodyguard, Danner and Justus reach the boats beneath the embassy and get out.

That is a lot of plot, and it moves fast. The campaign is short, and the story is the weakest part of the package. Danner is a contractor with a gun, and the game rarely gives him a reason to be more than that. Ivanov’s death lands because it is sudden, not because the game earned it. The embassy sequence is the strongest stretch, mostly because Justus gives Danner something to protect.

The contract board, and what money does

Here is where Killzone: Mercenary separates itself from every other shooter on the Vita. Contracts give you reasons to replay missions with different objectives and different payouts. The money feeds back into your loadout, and the loadout changes how a mission plays. That loop is the actual game.

The controls carry it. Dual-stick aiming on the Vita works, and the touch inputs supplement rather than replace them. The visuals are the best on the platform. Guerrilla Cambridge got more out of the hardware than most studios ever did.

Multiplayer is the other half. It is fast, and it worked on a handheld. That it worked at all was an achievement. That it worked well made it the reason to own the game.

A server shutdown, and what it cost

Online servers were shut down on 12 August 2022. That date matters more than any review score now. When the servers went dark, a large part of the game went with them.

The critical reception at the time was positive, and the praise focused on its quality as a portable-console first-person shooter. The controls and visuals drew the credit. The story and the campaign length drew the complaints. That split still holds up. The aggregate critic score sits at 7.5 out of 10 across nine outlets, and that is the right number.

What the 7.5 is actually measuring

Killzone: Mercenary is a technical achievement and a narrative shrug. Guerrilla Cambridge solved the hard problem — aiming, shooting, and moving on a handheld — and then handed it a story that never rises above the setup. Danner fights for money, and the game never asks him to fight for anything else. Ivanov dies, and the plot moves on. The Ambassador dies, and the plot moves on. The campaign treats its own casualties as mission markers.

The contracts are the counterargument. They turn the campaign into a scoreboard you want to beat. That design is smarter than the writing, and it is why the game lasted as long as it did.

The 7.5 is not a knock. It is what you get when the mechanics are excellent, the presentation is the best on its platform, and the story is a delivery system for the next firefight. Killzone: Mercenary is a game whose best half is now unreachable. The score has to hold both.

If you still have a Vita and a copy, the campaign is worth the hours. The contracts are worth more. The multiplayer is worth remembering.

7.5 of 10.

first-person shooter · game review · Guerrilla Cambridge · Killzone Mercenary · PS Vita · server closure