It turns out that real soldiers don’t regenerate and machine guns don’t have unlimited ammo. Who knew?

It’s no secret that first-person shooters — in all their Hollywood-inspired clamor and spectacle — don’t simulate the realities of war very well. From basic rules of engagement, to gun safety (such as “don’t flag your buddies”), and the dynamics of combat, first-person shooters are more akin to interactive action flicks than a proper re-creation of armed conflict.

Of course, no one wants to play a hyper-realistic military simulator, as this hilarious Onion sketch illustrates.

No one wants to fill out endless paperwork, take mandatory sexual harassment training, write NCOERs (noncommissioned officer evaluation reports), sit through Powerpoint presentations with the potency of 10 Valiums, or stand 12-hour watches. No one wants to experience “hurry up and wait.”

Because that would be boring. Too realistic.

People want an escape from the mundane. But surely we can find a happy medium between silly action flicks and boring reality.

With the recent release of what will probably be the best-selling video game of the year, Call of Duty Black Ops II (for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, and PC), I thought it instructive to get the low-down from a real soldier, a veteran who deployed in support of the Global War on Terror. Sergeant Dave Mull deployed to Iraq in support of the Global War on Terror three separate times: ’04-’05, early ’07-late ’07, and ’08. His Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) is Cavalry Scount (19D), which essentially means that his job is enemy, area, and route reconnaissance. Altogether, he served 12 years.

Our conversation yielded some fascinating insights, and some of it may surprise you.

GamesBeat: What are some of the most basic details that your average military shooter gets wrong?

The author firing the M249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon). The barrels get really hot and have a tendency to overheat.

GamesBeat: What inaccuracies seem the most jarring? Is there anything that would prevent you from playing such a game?

Dave Mull: Hmm … they seem to be trying far too hard to make everything “epic” in campaign mode. It can sometimes be a chore trying to figure out which enemies actually count and which ones are the infinitely respawning cannon-fodder bots.

It won’t stop me from playing it, but you’d think they could remember that sometimes nothing happening can be just as, if not much more, suspenseful.

GamesBeat: It does seem like the goal of many shooters — Call of Duty especially — is bigger setpieces, bigger explosions, and bigger bodycounts. Which naturally makes them more like a Michael Bay movie than anything resembling reality.

Dave Mull: Remember in the Metal Gear Solid games, it’s intended that you don’t kill anyone. Of course, you can, but it’s not the way [series creator Hideo] Kojima envisioned it.

GamesBeat: Indeed. And a reader on Bitmob, GamesBeat’s sister site, pointed out that MGS4 is one of the few games to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder. In many ways, it’s a more realistic depiction of war than any first-person shooter.

Dave Mull: Very much so — specifically toward the end with Adam’s adoption of Liquid Snake’s personality and with the four gals of the Beauty and the Beast unit.

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If you missed the original Killzone back in 2004 and have spent the last eight years praying for a chance to play it in glorious high-definition, your wait will be over soon. Today on the Official PlayStation Blog, Sony announced their next multi-game PlayStation 3 collection: The Killzone Trilogy.

Maintaining a pattern established by releasing HD remakes of all of their other popular franchises that began on the PlayStation 2, the Killzone Trilogy will feature an updated version of the original game with 720p graphics and Trophy support, as well as Killzones 2 and 3 and all the multiplayer map packs that Sony released for the two games. Plus, if you already have the sequels (or refuse to own them for some reason), the first game will be available as a separate download on the PlayStation Network.

The collection’s box art (which you can see below) proudly touts PlayStation Move and 3D TV compatibility, but it isn’t clear if that refers to all three games or only Killzone 3 (which already supported Move and 3D). We’ve reached out to Sony for clarification but have not yet received a response.

I’ve also asked Sony whether or not the Killzone Trilogy will allow Remote Play on PS Vita (like the God of War and Shadow Of The Colossus/Ico collections) and will update this story when we have an answer.

What we do know is that the Killzone Trilogy Collection will be available for the PlayStation 3 on October 23 for $39.99. For more information, check out the Official PlayStation Blog’s announcement, which also contains a trailer showcasing the franchise’s history of rousing space Nazi rallies.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Facebook’s Timeline lets you place an image at the top of your profile. Sure, you could add a crummy, awkwardly cropped family photo — or you can use a kick-ass cover from your favorite video game.

We’re releasing seven days’ worth of artwork, each with a different theme, that you can use to decorate your Facebook profile:

• Sunday: The Modern Era
• Monday: Modern-Retro
• Tuesday: The Indies
• Wednesday: The 8/16-bit Era
  
• Thursday: Social and Mobile
• Friday: Arcade
• Saturday: Future Games

Today’s batch of covers features 10 titles from the current generation of games. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the pictures, then right-click (or ctrl-click for Macs) them and hit “save image as” to save to your computer.

Asura’s Wrath

Battlefield 3

Rayman Origins

Killzone 3

Dead Space 2

Halo: Reach

Red Dead Redemption

Final Fantasy XIII

Mirror’s Edge

Infamous

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Fergal Gara, Managing Director of Sony Computer Entertainment UK, has been talking about sales of the Playstation Move periphal, saying, “I’d say we have a solid foothold. Could it, should it, have done more? I think so.”

In an interview with industry magazine MCV, Gara pointed out the importance of having strong software to support sales of the Playstation 3 motion sensing device. “We’ve had a widely different performance from the various Move titles. Sports Champions is by far the most successful, selling a couple of hundred thousand units, which is a healthy performance. But it does vary thereafter.“

Gara was referring to UK sales, but, with the exception of Sports Champions, sales of Playstation Move games have been generally indifferent worldwide. At the time of writing, worldwide sales for the ‘Playstation Move Heroes’ game stand at 102,111 units. Move based game ‘Start the Party’ has worldwide sales of 370,731 and ‘Eyepet and Friends’ has only sold 52,916 units worldwide. Sports Champions is way in front of its rival Move games, with worldwide sales of over 3M, but it must be remembered that this game comes bundled with the Move starter pack in the U.S.

Pondering the future for Playstation Move, Gara said, “We are in the market, we have got a shout. Forthcoming titles are going to be important. We take some encouragement from things we can mention, such as Sorcery which is on the schedule, and other things that we know are bubbling under. It is a focus from a studio point-of-view to bring out stronger titles.”

Sony Computer Entertainment Chief Executive Officer Jim Ryan added, “There are few things that we have got a lot more clear-minded about in terms of targeting the family, social markets, and not being all things to all men with Move.” Ryan remains positive about the future of Move, saying, “Our developers are making a step-change in their ability to do exciting things with Move software. And the fruits of that will be seen in 2012 and beyond.”

Sony has implemented Playstation Move controls in many of its games since the device launched, including core titles such as Killzone 3, SOCOM and MAG. One of 2012’s most anticipated games, Bioshock Infinite, will also be supporting the Playstation Move peripheral.

[Sales figures courtesy of VGChartz]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Total sales of game hardware, PC games, console games, and portables rose 3 percent to $1.36 billion from $1.33 billion a year ago, according to market researcher NPD. The report is encouraging since many months have been negative compared to year ago numbers. The core video game industry has been struggling with a slow recovery, aging hardware, and increased competition from gamer time from smartphone and tablet games, Facebook, and web games.  But this report shows that the industry is not necessarily doomed to ever-declining sales.

Software sales (console and portable games sold in stores) were still weak in the month, with sales down 5 percent to $601.4 million from $633.6 million a year ago. Dollar sales were down in part because of lower average selling prices for console games, said Anita Frazier, analyst at NPD.

Hardware sales, on the other hand, were healthy. And accessory sales were up thanks to sales of Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system and sales of Xbox Live point cards. The latter means that users are starting to buy lots of cards so they can purchase digital content, such as movies or Xbox Live Arcade games, online.

Retail sales of console software were up 2 percent, while portable game sales declined. The portable game business was probably impacted by gamers waiting for Nintendo to launch its 3DS handheld game system in March and by sales of competing Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices.

Overall, video games as a whole were down 6 percent in 2010. But the game industry has many growing niches, including social network games, mobile games, browser-based online games, used games, game rentals, and free-to-play games on a variety of platforms.

NPD said U.S. retail game hardware sales were up 10 percent to $466.9 million from $426.4 million a year ago. Game software sales also fell 5 percent in January. Accessories were up 22 percent to $256.9 million from $210.0 million a year earlier, largely because of sales of Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing accessory for the Xbox 360, as well as Sony’s PlayStation Move wand-like controller.

The No. 1 title on all platforms was once again Call of Duty Black Ops, the hot-selling combat game from Activision Blizzard which debuted in November. Black Ops was also No. 1 in January, continuing a long streak. Call of Duty Black Ops is now the biggest-selling game in history, surpassing Nintendo’s Wii Play game.

No. 2 was Capcom’s Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, for the Xbox 360 and PS 3. Ubisoft’s Just Dance 2 for the Wii was No. 3, showing that music games aren’t dead but the trend is moving from faux guitar games to dance games. Take-Two Interactive’s NBA 2K11 was No. 4, and Electronic Arts’ Dead Space 2 was No. 5.

For new releases, there were fewer big titles released in February 2011 compared to February 2010. One of the new games that sold well, but not spectacularly, was Sony’s Killzone 3, pictured above. It came in at No. 8. Bulletstorm, also from EA, debuted this month at No. 7.

Frazier said that the best-selling hardware of the month was the Xbox 360, which had its best non-holiday month ever. The 250-gigabyte version bundled with the Kinect sensor was the driver of higher average selling prices for console hardware. Microsoft said it has now sold more than 10 million Kinect sensors. All hardware systems sold more in February than they did in January. That might be a reflection of an improving economy.

Nintendo said that its Wii console sales have now sold more than 35 million units in the U.S. since the console launched in 2006. The console sold more than 454,000 units in February. Nintendo said that Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii has now sold more than 2 million units and New Super Mario Bros. Wii has now sold more than 9 million units.

Microsoft said it sold more than 535,000 Xbox 360 consoles in February, up 27 percent from a year ago. Total spending on the Xbox 360 during the month was $475 million, the highest among the consoles.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Will Apple’s subscription plan spark a developer exodus? — For developers, it seems like it’s Apple’s way or the highway. And the highway is getting more appealing every day.

Apple iPad 2 said to be unveiled at March 2 event — Apple will finally debut the iPad 2 at a San Francisco event on March 2.

HP’s new business laptops offer up to 32 hours of battery — Hewlett-Packard announced a new family of laptops for business users with new industrial designs and one very interesting feature: a battery life of up to 32 hours.

Amazon takes on Netflix with Prime instant videos — This is Amazon’s first move to counter Netflix’s streaming video dominance.

Apple rumored to launch new Macbook Pros — Rumors said Apple was going to introduce new MacBook Pro laptops last week — and it did.

And here are five more stories we think are important, thought-provoking, fun, or all of the above:

Room 77 helps you avoid bad hotel rooms — There’s no shortage of ways to book hotel rooms online, but most services have little information about one of the most important factors — the quality of the room itself.

Grameen IT CEO on how technology transformed Bangladesh — Kazi Islam describes his job as “implementing the future”.

Apple looks towards music files that surpass CD quality — Apple, the company responsible for the widespread popularity of heavily compressed music, is looking into offering high-fidelity music files that will surpass the quality of CDs.

Google’s investment in Transphorm could be good news for electric cars — Google is backing a startup called Transphorm, whose power-conversion efficiency technology could some day help create more efficient electric cars.

Killzone 3 with Move controller: a novel but not brilliant gaming experience — Sony’s newly launched Killzone 3 video game for the PlayStation 3 promised to be a big step up in first-person shooting sci-fi combat, but it has serious shortcomings.

That’s a pity because Killzone 3 promised to be one of Sony’s great games for 2011, with enough potential to help swing the console war ever so slightly in Sony’s favor. And if the motion-sensing technology worked perfectly, Sony could have introduced hardcore gamers to a truly next-generation experience in first-person combat and thereby carved out an important technological leadership role for its console in the process.

The game is important because it is the first real hardcore game to exploit Sony’s Move controller, which has been outsold by Microsoft’s more casual Kinect motion-sensing system for the Xbox 360. There are dozens of game publishers and developers working on Move-related games, all of them hoping that they can create a Move game with mass appeal among hardcore and casual gamers alike. If they succeed, the PlayStation Move can become a critical part of the PlayStation economy. But if they fail, then the Move could suffer the same inevitable decline that many accessories do after their initial splash in the market. If that happens, both Nintendo and Microsoft would breathe a sigh of relief, as they’re targeting gamers who have more casual tastes.

Playing with the wand-like Move and its companion left-hand navigation device is merely a good experience, not a fantastic one. And while the motion-sensing Move and the non-stop combat won’t make you sick, the story of the otherwise-epic sci-fi combat game is very hard to stomach. I suspect that the weak story is the reason Killzone 3 received a lukewarm rating of 84 out of 100 on Metacritic, a review score aggregator. By comparison, the ground-breaking Killzone 2 received an average review score of 91 out of 100 back in 2009. At the time, I considered Killzone 2 to be the best game on the PlayStation 3, before the even-better Uncharted 2: Among Thieves game came out.

That’s why I’m disappointed to give Killzone 3 a score of 84 out of 100. It seems that developer Guerrilla Games, a subsidiary of Sony, tried to push Killzone 3 out too fast, just two years after the debut of the previous game, which took more than four years to develop. It has become fashionable for game publishers to take their biggest hits and churn out game after game, but in this case it seems to have hurt the brand. This could easily have been a 90-plus-rated game.

I played the single-player campaign all the way through and was impressed with the outstanding core combat experience. Fighting in Killzone 2 is intense, with lots of enemies challenging you at the same time, both at close range and from far away. The enemy is smart enough to hide and shoot. If you stand out in the open, you’ll easily get taken out. This is a continuation of the high-quality experience that made me believe last year that Killzone 2 had lived up to its hype. The movie-like experience of combat is as good as any of the great shooting games, such as Gears of War, Halo, Resistance, Battlefield and Call of Duty.

The problem is more with the storyline that leads you from one combat scene to another. It starts out good, but then gets a little ridiculous as characters get into a rut of stupid behavior, like an ISA commander who repeatedly refuses to commit his forces to a battle that is going to stop an invasion of Earth. I mean, what commander could be so dumb? The only thing dumber are the enemy Helghast generals, who engage in infighting to a ridiculous degree. They fight and they almost kill each other, only to drag out the uncivility to crazy levels even as the ISA becomes a mounting threat to the existence of the Helghast.

Of course, with a video game, you can put up with the story if the game play itself is fun. In Killzone 3, you can play in much larger, sweeping levels. Bullets can pierce through then metal walls and it’s quite satisfying when you score a headshot on an enemy Helghast soldier, whose haunting orange-lit helmets are spellbinding to look at. You can fly over enemies with jet packs. The sound of the Helghast screaming through their muffled helmets is riveting. The combat is as close to realistic as this generation of consoles is going to get.

Fans who can stomach the violent first-person action and foul language of this mature-rated title shouldn’t miss it. I didn’t play the game in stereoscopic 3D, largely because I don’t like that experience for games.

But I played half the game chapters with a regular game controller and half with the Move, which is very much like playing a shooting game with the Wii but more accurate. I was skeptical that the Move would work well, with a movement control in my left hand and an aiming device and trigger in my right hand. But it does the job, allowing you to shoot very accurately.

By itself, that’s a big technological victory. For years, game developers have been trying to deliver accessories, such as the Wii remote and the Wii Motion Plus, that allows you to shoot accurately in a game. Most of the time, the aiming doesn’t work. I’ve always been much better off using a game controller than a pointing device in shooting games. But after a short time of getting used to it, I stayed with the PlayStation Move and finished the game with it.

I had to dial down the sensitivity of the Move controller by a notch because I found that the cross hairs moved around too much. Once I changed the sensitivity to a notch below what was recommended, I was able to get a steady aim. This didn’t turn me from a couch potato into an active gamer. Rather, I just sat on the chair and moved my fingers a little. That’s important because it’s very easy to get tired playing a game where you have to hold your hands out from your body for a long time. I managed to play Killzone 3 for hours at a time with the Move controller. If you want an even more realistic experience, you can buy a PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter peripheral that turns the Move into something resembling an assault rifle.

But the story is the hard thing to abide. Killzone 3 picks up where Killzone 2 left off, with the forces of the human Interstellar Alliance (ISA) forces stranded on the planet Helghan (homeworld of the Helghast race), where they have taken out the Helghast dictator, Visari. Tomas “Sev” Sevchenko and Rico Velasquez (heroes from the last game) are back in the middle of the action. The Helghast have counter-attacked (setting off a nuclear bomb in their own capital) and driven most of the ISA off the planet, save for a small contingent that has to survive in the planet’s war-torn ruins. The dark atmosphere of planet is one of the star attractions.

The plot starts out good enough with Rico rebelling against his hesitant commander, Captain Narville, and the Helghast leaders jockeying for control of the remaining Helghast forces. But the infighting devolves into a ridiculous civil war that makes the job of the ISA easier. The problem with the civil war is that it moves the focus of the story to the Helghast leaders, which you can’t play. You can only play the ISA grunts, who seem to be treated like a sideshow in the story toward the end.

I did enjoy playing with the jet pack, which added a third dimension to tactical combat in the freezing arctic installations on Helghast. And it was a lot of fun being inside a walking tank, known as a mech, with lots of cannon and machine gun firepower. Beyond city fighting, you now get to see more of the jungles of the planet Helghan and you have to face off against some very difficult and fast-moving enemies. A lot of the game has to be played in stealth mode, where you try to avoid other soldiers rather than fight them. But there just aren’t that many great places to hide in the terrain. Also, the frame rate, or speed of animations, gets unacceptabl slow at times.

There’s an interesting battle that takes place in zero gravity. When you shoot the enemies, they start floating up into the air. But your grenades become virtually worthless in that environment, as they fly forever and you can’t really aim them. I also enjoyed the “brutal melee” system, where you can close ranks with an enemy and engage in a brutal scripted knife fight. The finishing kills are animated in a particularly gruesome way. Believe it or not. For gamers, that’s considered innovation. The game has also gotten kudos for its addictively fun multiplayer combat.

Killzone 3 takes two steps forward with all of the innovative things it tries to do. But the story takes it one step back from being a great game. You have to admire the folks at Guerrilla Games for pushing the envelope. But it’s getting very expensive to swing and miss in the age of blockbuster video games. Fortunately, Sony has a very full slate this year, with big titles ranging from Uncharted 3 to The Last Guardian. Hopefully, one of those games will knock it out of the park.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Tesla’s Elon Musk: “I ran out of cash” — Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk seems to have it all. The one thing he doesn’t have, by his own admission, is money.

The rise and fall of Microsoft’s Xbox champions, Robbie Bach and J Allard — Microsoft has initiated one of its biggest management shakeups in years, as it announced that Robbie Bach and J Allard, the masterminds behind the company’s hugely successful push into video-game consoles, are leaving the company after decades of leading the Windows giant into new markets.

The six biggest legal mistakes startups make — Attorney Scott Edward Walker weighs in on intellectual property ownership, place of incorporation, and more.

Sony’s Killzone 3 looks amazing but its 3D TV version disappoints — Sony showed off the full glory of its upcoming Killzone 3 video game for the PlayStation 3 at a press event in San Francisco. The game looks outstanding, with intense and movie-like combat scenes, but we weren’t impressed with its attempt to tie the game to 3D TV and 3D viewing glasses

How to nail the five-minute pitch — SlideRocket chief executive Chuck Dietrich said he sees thousands of startup presentations every year, and he offers his tips on what works and what doesn’t.

And here are five more articles we think are important, thought-provoking, or fun:

How Facebook worked out its new privacy changes — Facebook unveiled a new basic dashboard for managing privacy and provided a way for users to turn off all third-party applications. Vice president of product Chris Cox (pictured) explained how the company came to terms with the problems users pointed out in their privacy controls.

Tony Blair is Khosla’s answer to Kleiner’s Gore — Venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers counts former Vice President Al Gore among its partners — now its Bay Area neighbor, Khosla Ventures, has recruited a super star statesman of its own to add heft to its cleantech practice: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Gaga and Bieber’s managers: MySpace is dead, we make videos for YouTube — In one of the more intriguing panels to come out of the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Troy Carter (Lady Gaga’s manager, and Founder & CEO of Coalition Media Group) and Scooter Braun (Justin Bieber’s manager, and Founder & Chair of SB Projects) discussed how the Web is impacting the music industry.

House passes increased tax on carried interest, and VCs hate it — The U.S. House of Representatives has passed HR 4213, a bill that will double the tax on carried interest — that’s “carry” if you’re a venture capitalist — which many VCs factor in as part of their long-term investments in startups.

Box.net CEO: HTML5 could kill desktop software — Document-sharing and collaboration startup Box.net is joining the growing wave of companies embracing the HTML5 Web format.

Sony showed off the full glory of its upcoming Killzone 3 video game for the PlayStation 3 last night at a press event in San Francisco. The game looks outstanding, with intense and movie-like combat scenes, but I wasn’t impressed with its attempt to tie the game to 3D TV and 3D viewing glasses.

Killzone 3 is one of Sony’s flagship games for the PlayStation 3 and the fast-action sci-fi shooter is quite worthy of praise. The technical innovations in the game are important because they will set the pace for the industry and eventually make their way into many games. But game developer Guerrilla Games has a lot to do before the 3D TV version of the game becomes ready for prime time. With three-dimensional visual effects, the game becomes blurry, imprecise, and disorienting.

It’s still a work in progress, as Killzone 3 isn’t coming out until 2011. Sony itself will have to keep working on cost and quality for 3D glasses and 3D TVs.

We all know that, in a time of declining prices, TV makers are desperately hoping that 3D viewing will catch on at home. While the blockbuster 3D movie Avatar convinced audiences that 3D viewing works great in theaters, there are still a lot of hurdles before the quality becomes good enough for home viewing. Still, Sony is getting started with the launch of its 3D TVs in June, while Samsung and Panasonic have already started.

Hermen Hulst, managing director of Guerrilla Games, says his team focused on 3D TV viewing because Killzone has always been focused on epic, immersive and cinematic games. It delivers you into the heat of the action, and 3D viewing immerses you in it, he said. He contends it delivers a whole new experience and lets you read environments better, makes it easier to aim, and easier to navigate.

I would agree with that — but only when 3D TV works flawlessly. The visuals I saw last night were not finished, and Hulst said they are still early in development. The imagery did not live up to the billing because 3D TV adds secondary images known as ghosts when you are not perfectly aligned with the screen. When you’re playing a game and moving around, it’s pretty hard to stay in the perfect position. Clearly, Sony is pushing this technology hard because it is something that neither Microsoft nor Nintendo is focusing on; if it’s done right, it can differentiate Sony’s games from the pack.

If they get it to work, then you’ll see more visual cues that help you. The missile being shot at your head will appear to whiz by you. Your gun’s crosshairs will focus on targets that are either close to you or further away. Objects in front of you will add depth into the middle of the picture, while weapons in your hand such as a knife will appear to pop out of the screen. I want that, but not at the sacrifice of things such as sharpness, speed, and a feeling of orientation. With 3D, it’s too easy to turn your head, lose contact with the screen, and then start seeing double images.

The good thing is that Killzone 3 will work fine on a standard high-definition TV and it will be visually breathtaking. The game franchise has always been an attention grabber. The first Killzone — which pit the human race against the scary Helghast humanoid aliens with orange glowing goggles — debuted in 2004 for the PlayStation 2 as Sony’s answer to Microsoft’s Halo sci-fi shooting game. It depicted near-future combat in a realistic way, pushing graphics to the limit.

Killzone 2 was supposed to be a curtain raiser for the PlayStation 3, and the early video of the game made everyone’s jaw drop at the E3 show in June, 2005. But Guerrilla Games struggled to finish the huge game with a team of around 130 people, and it wasn’t released until February, 2009. By that time, Nintendo had sold more Wii consoles than Sony and Microsoft combined. While Killzone 2 sold well, it wasn’t the blockbuster game Sony hoped it would be that sold tons and tons of PS 3s. Still, Killzone 2′s visual quality was so high that it was the start of a turnaround for Sony.

With Killzone 3, development has been underway for a year and a half with a team of 130 people, said Hermen Hulst, managing director of Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam. The story picks up right after the events of the last game on the home planet of the enemy, Helghan. The human forces are underdogs because their forces have been decimated by a nuclear explosion and the player has to help turn things around in environments that include arctic blizzard settings, nuclear wastelands, and jungles with terrifying monsters.

“It’s about David vs. Goliath, and there are thousands of Goliaths,” Hulst said.

The game was inspired by the success of visually arresting PS 3 games such as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and God of War III. Accordingly, Guerrilla Games is creating a brand new rev of its game engine (which governs game play and graphics quality). Hulst promises battle environments that are 10 times larger than Killzone 2′s as the developers try to push the PlayStation 3 to its absolute limit without slowing down the game. Hulst showed off the fourth level of the game, in an arctic oil rig in blizzard conditions, and it was indeed a vast level. The level is part of a big single-player campaign game with a great deal of variety in weapons, environments, vehicles and storyline. New multiplayer game modes will be revealed later on.

The game will include new weapons like some bad-ass missile launchers that you can pick up and carry as well as jet packs that you can use to fly around the battlefield (these features are being used to great effect in Halo: Reach coming this fall). It will also have a dynamic melee system where you can brutally dispatch a rival up close. If you’re near a wall, the animation will show your character slamming the enemy’s head into it, or if you’re sneaking up behind an enemy, you’ll dispatch the enemy with a knife, assassination style.

Sound quality will get better with “depth of field” audio.” It dynamically focuses the audio so that you “hear what you need to hear” in a chaotic battle, Hulst said.

In the level that Sony showed, your team lands at an arctic oil rig and runs into hordes of Helghan enemies hiding behind obstacles and shooting. You have to pick some of them off from afar, but with many of them you have to get close and engage in brutal firefights. And in the closest contests, you have to initiate the brutal melee tactics to survive. You use heavy-duty weapons, shoot flying Helghast enemies out of the sky and then take to the air yourself with a jet pack. The experience is quite exhilarating, but it looked better and played better without the 3D glasses, in my humble opinion. I would love to be proven wrong when the game ships.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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We got a chance to talk directly with Hermen Hulst, managing director at Killzone 3 developer Guerrilla Games. The pressure is on for Hulst to deliver another exclusive for Sony that will convince gamers to stick with or buy a PlayStation 3. His job is to make sure that his studio shoots high enough to show off what the PS 3 can do and keep Sony ahead of its rivals in the console war. Here’s a transcript of the interview.

VB: What convinced you that 3D TV viewing was the way to go with Killzone 3?

HH: Killzone has always been about immersive cinematic experience. We went through a lot of hoops to make it as immersive as possible. We put a lot of work into concept design to create the world in a very believable way. We wanted the audio to be realistic. Everything needs to come together. This is one more layer, adding 3D viewing, like high-definition graphics was one more layer. 3D is sitting on top of that. You are no longer looking at the world. It feels like you are in the middle of it. It’s a great tool. To us, it is a lucky combination of what we already make. The games we create are already in 3D. Things come right at you as you’re being shot at. There are cool effects, and when you turn on the 3D, it’s even better.

VB: 3D is still a controversial thing. People don’t believe in 3D in the home. Before Avatar, everybody said that 3D wouldn’t be accepted in theaters. There are probably gamers who have the same attitude about 3D TVs. They may not want to spend their money on a new TV. It’s a little risky.

HH: I don’t see why it’s risky, because you can still play the game in the traditional way. As you say, there were a lot of people who were skeptical and saw Avatar and then some of them are convinced. Making a movie in 3D is a lot more difficult than making a game in 3D. I have spoken to people who were skeptical and after they see it, it’s better. I feel it puts you at the center of immersion in the game. It brings a lot to the game world.

VB: There is potential for improvement between now and 2011 when you ship.

HH: Everything we are doing is pre-Alpha code (early version). There are still Killzone 2 characters in it now. There is no facial animation. Everything will improve.

VB: You are changing a lot of things in the game. You are living up to a tradition of pushing the edge.

HH: There is that. We are obliged mostly by ourselves to raise the bar. This time, we set out initially to add variety. But with variety came bigger environments, more unique environments, and different experiences. The scale increased and a level can be 10 times bigger.

VB: If you add a jet pack to the game, you have to have room to fly around?

HH: Exactly. If you have a small map, that is not possible. With Killzone 2, we thought we were scraping the bottom of the barrel in finding more processing power. But we actually found another 30 to 40 percent more performance in the PlayStation 3 to create these bigger worlds. Raising the bar comes through variety, improving the systems we had before like adding the brutal melee system to the close combat we already had, and improving things that we thought we could have done better. We had difficulty spikes in the game that were barriers for people.

VB: You are more fully utilizing the processing power of the PlayStation 3?

HH: I think we are using every clock cycle that is available. I don’t think we can get much more. I said that after Killzone 2, and I have been proven wrong.

VB: Your team took a long time to do Killzone 2, but it is a very short time later that you are showing Killzone 3. Do you still have a long way to go?

HH: You see where we are now. We are 1.5 years into it. We have playable demos, a full level. We can work a lot faster because we have a very experienced team now. We can work a lot faster, but Killzone 3 is a much more ambitious game than Killzone 2. We are under pressure, but we work well under pressure.

VB: You mentioned Killzone 3′s inspirations as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and God of War III. What are the particular inspirations?

HH: These are the people inside Sony that we talk to most. With Uncharted 2, they had a game-changing approach to a character-driven story. You can’t get away with a lame story anymore. God of War gives you a different level of scale, with a boss fight on top of a boss fight.

VB: Fighting on top of a moving train in Uncharted 2 was a unique experience. What are your innovations?

HH: We are doing a number of things. We are taking systems that worked really well and making them better. The hit responses from your enemies, the brutal melee system, the different colors, levels, settings. There are others that I can’t talk about.

VB: How big a team is it?

HH: About 130 people. About the same as Killzone 2, which by the end was bigger. But we have started with a bigger team early on compared to Killzone 2.

VB: What do you think of the environment for high-quality console games now? Sales have been weak, on and off. And everyone is talking about Facebook games like FarmVille.

HH: I think all of those things are an indication that the industry as a whole is a lot broader than it was before. There is space for all of these areas. These core games will always be strong. I don’t see an indication it will get smaller. As a studio, we love taking a piece of great hardware and exploring ways  to get the most out of it. That’s what we love.

VB: I guess five years from now we’ll be playing Killzone 3 on Facebook.
HH: (Laughs).

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