Killzone 3

Back with Rico and Sev on the ground, another new toy comes into play. Gathering themselves from the wreckage of their landing craft, Alpha squad tool up with the dismounted miniguns and the advantage swings back to the ISA as comrades weigh in on the ground.

The massive firepower makes short work of the initial resistance, raking down enemy troops in a section where cover seems to have been almost abandoned in favour of brutal tanking. Whilst Helghan troopers cower behind shards of ice and wasted industrial equipment, Sev lauds it over them with his overwhelming assault. It's a nice reversal of fortune, but it doesn't last long - soon the minigun is exhausted and the familiar scoped assault rifle comes back into play.

Working your way through these sections is more familiar territory, much more like the street-to-street fighting from the last episode. On more even terms, the red-eyed foes soon exact a bit of revenge on my rusty gunplay, catching me in a pincer movement. The red mist comes down, accompanied by a smidgeon of professional shame. I'm just about to try and give up my pad to the next journo without making eye contact when the developer manning the demo pod pulls me up. Trusty Rico is at my side, reviving me. Suddenly I'm back in the fray. A second chance, and a welcome gameplay addition.

Losing the minigun and its enemy chewing capacity also brings another new mechanic into play - the much-improved melee system.

Encounters have lost much of their predictability. More open design gives the AI more options, as well as freeing the player from the necessity of hide and peek. This means that's it's now a much more viable option to get up close and personal with the Higs, unleashing the multi-stage and context sensitive CQC kills with rifle butts and the trusty knife. Hit a trooper standing next to a low wall and he'll stumble over it, presenting the perfect opportunity for a finishing back stab. Engage him out of cover and you're likely to be treated to a gruesome eye-stabbing move, accompanied by a wrenching twist of the knife and a sound like a goose hitting a jet turbine.

We're shown a variety of these new moves in a third-person montage, to illustrate both their scope and the subtleties of the new and improved hit-zone system. Rifle butts land crunching blows in the back of knee-caps, knocking troopers from their feet; frontal kicks smash gas masks, stunning opponents to allow the deadly knife to work its stabby magic. We hear the word brutal used so often that it begins to lose meaning.

Back on the frontline, Sev finds another new boomstick.

It's a W.A.S.P., which MD Herman Hulst describes as a "portable weapon of mass destruction". This missile launcher spits multiple, homing projectiles, swarming from the barrel before zoning in on hapless targets with devastating results. The secondary fire is even more spectacular. Switching briefly to a green-screen zoom of the battlefield, we paint a target in the distance, one of the Helghan APCs. Release the trigger and there's a split-second's pause. Nothing's left the barrel. A misfire perhaps? The answer comes soon enough - a Javelin-like strike from above, fired by a aerial drone linked to the launcher, which obliterates the target area, using a whole clip in the process.

Killzone's weaponry still retains the sense of weight, impact and effect established in the second chapter, with the hardware feeling suitably futuristic without losing its solid military credentials. It's not quite gun-porn, but chattering away with the armaments we're given is a satisfying experience. From what I can tell, most of the arsenal from KZ2 makes a reappearance, although we're told that the behind-the-scenes numbers have undergone substantial tweaking.

For stage three of the hands-on we're introduced to perhaps the most exciting piece of new hardware - the jetpack. Initially only coming attached to a Helghan shock trooper, this insectoid assault platform is a four-winged, one-man affair, complete with a unlimited supply of ammunition for the attached large-calibre machine gun. Fighting them from the ground puts you in a precarious situation, putting you on the backfoot as you balance the necessity of looking upwards with the dangers of the sheer ice-cliffs around you.

Taking them down with brute force is a matter of pumping the requisite number of rounds into them, but a canny sharpshooter can drop a couple of slugs into their fuel packs, bringing everyone nearby together in a cosy Saving Private Ryan-style barbecue. Do this whilst they're airborne and you'll get the added satisfaction of seeing them pinwheel across the sky before impacting with a meaty explosion.

Continuing the new 'monkey see, monkey do' philosophy, it's not long before Sev and Rico come across an abandoned jetpack on the rig, Sev shouldering it manfully as Rico expresses his gruff concern. And just like that, we're off - soaring between massive chunks of floating ice towards the next objective. It's not a true jetpack, in that it assists and lengthens jumps rather than actually letting you fly, but it's another slice of stake-upping.