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Killzone: Mercenary |OT| No allegiance, no honour, only money

OmegaZero

Member
I dunno if it's already been discussed, but what are your go-to ways of disabling Vanguards? Here's mine:

Mantis Drone - While shooting at it can work if you have good aim, I found it more reliable to take out a frag or incendiary grenade when you see it aiming for you. Even if it kills you, you can still take it out of the action assuming you've pulled the pin before you got spiked. Jammers work well if you don't want to resort to close-range tactics, as do Vultures if you want to take out the pilot of the Mantis Drone.

Vulture - One shot from the missile launcher or 1-shot sniper rifle can down it quickly. Any medium to long-ranged weapon can down it easily as well in less then one clip, but you'll have to work fast before you get shot. Jammers are helpful as well.

Carapace Shield - Cook a frag grenade for a second and toss it behind the user. If you're close enough and are confident in your reaction speed, go for a melee attack.

Sky Fury - Just go indoors. You are now untouchable. The Sky Fury has approximately twice the health of a Vulture, but homing missiles or Jammers can still do the trick if you have to take it out.

Ghost - If the user is moving, he's actually fairly easy to spot (similar to the cloaked snipers in campaign). If you don't have visual contact, but know the user is around, using a Jammer or Vulture will do the job. Not really a dangerous Vanguard imo.

Arc Missile - The trick to this one is never get too close. If you have no choice, pull out a frag and rush the user. Even if you die, the frag should take the user or Arc Missile out. At range, just take out the user - no need to waste ammo shooting the drone.

Jammer - Listen for that distinct humming sound it makes as you run through the level. The closer you are, the louder it gets, and the device can be easily taken out with most weapons. Instead of searching for it, a better strategy would be to stick close to your teammates unless you know the enemy uses explosives.


Personally, I have a Jammer equipped on most of my loadouts. It's helped me out in a good number of situations, especially since nobody seems to take the time to shoot down Vultures when they appear.
 

Frenden

Banned
I run with a jammer on four out of my five loadouts. The ability to totally disrupt other players' vanguards trumps the offensive capabilities of the other vanguards IMO.
 

jobeyonekenobi

Neo Member
Interesting:

I tend not to ever use the Jammer - it takes a few kills to have it available for activation. Whilst lovely to negate other peoples VANguards it's personally too much of an opportunity cost against one of the more offensive VANguards.

My go to is Vulture - quite a few kills can be had especially in levels that have large sections of enclosed space (thus leaving it more likely that the Vulture won't get shot down). Shoreline and Skyline come to mind.

My rig = M82 gun, M82 rocket launcher, Supply Armour and Prox. I use this for 80% of all games.
 

Frenden

Banned
That's similar to my second most used build. Sub gas for the proximity and the non-lock on rocket launcher for the secondary.

I'm Frenden on PSN and am looking for Mercenary folks to Party up with, too.
 

This warmed my heart a lil. I feel like people won't believe it's a legit FPS on a handheld until they play it & with all the recent next-gen systems dropping as of late Mercs kind of gets lost in the shuffle.

It's my fave Vita game to date & I'm still playing it on the daily.

Speaking of which - would be great to get an all GAF 4v4 Warzone... Anybody up for it?
 

Number45

Member
Completed this on veteran (first run) last night. I hadn't ventured out of the campaign at all, but there's a HUGE amount to do in this game if you want to get all of the medals/trophies. I don't know where to start!:eek:

I've only been buying items that are on special offer, but I guess if I'm realistic in going for the platinum then I'll have enough in the 1m pot for all of them!
 

OmegaZero

Member
Interesting:

I tend not to ever use the Jammer - it takes a few kills to have it available for activation. Whilst lovely to negate other peoples VANguards it's personally too much of an opportunity cost against one of the more offensive VANguards.

My go to is Vulture - quite a few kills can be had especially in levels that have large sections of enclosed space (thus leaving it more likely that the Vulture won't get shot down). Shoreline and Skyline come to mind.

My rig = M82 gun, M82 rocket launcher, Supply Armour and Prox. I use this for 80% of all games.

Yeah, the Vulture is pretty useful, but I've found that most people have them equipped. So instead I tend to ensure that the enemy Vulture is never put to good use. :b

That's similar to my second most used build. Sub gas for the proximity and the non-lock on rocket launcher for the secondary.

Ooo, another gas grenade user? I just love the way gas grenades function - even if they can't take out vanguards as easily as the others.

I currently use the Infiltrator armor or Mercenary Armor coupled with the silenced sniper rifle, tranq gun, and gas grenades. Tranqing two people and then leaving them to die slowly in a cloud of gas never gets old...
Another loadout I use often is the standard armor coupled with the Sta-14 rifle, revolver, and frag grenades. I just run around meting out revolver justice wherever I can, occasionally using the Sta-14 to take out vanguards or deal with snipers.
 

Number45

Member
Really loving these contract missions (ignoring most of the timed ones at the moment though as I'm running everything on veteran and they seem... hard). Just took me forever to get the objective to take out an exo with the explosion from a barrel, but it felt so good when I managed it!

Haven't even touched the MP.
 
Is there any new info on when to new maps and offline botzone will come?

They said update #4 is due in january 2014 and update #5(the one with the maps) will follow shortly after
 

KalBalboa

Banned
I've been replaying each mission in the various modes of play and I've got to say I'm thoroughly impressed by the replay value here.

This game controls so damn well and it really feels well suited for portable gaming. Once again, great work all around- I'm definitely going for the platinum here.
 
You wanna know who nailed the "chirp" in Killzone Mercenary?
It was Jordan Pedder and heres an article about the sound and music in Killzone.

With a polyphony count of 64 ‘VAG’ voices, each being decoded at runtime with its own LPF filter, EQ, and distortion along with two instances of an I3DL2 reverb all firing through the DSP chip. This is a machine not to be underestimated.

2f84ca15b9b68cf4f66ff27255344e4bb8863683a000e1f9ca4d83e531f5e4e7.jpg


http://www.audiomedia.com/games/0007/the-sound-and-music-of-killzone-mercenary/705
 

No Love

Banned
You wanna know who nailed the "chirp" in Killzone Mercenary?
It was Jordan Pedder and heres an article about the sound and music in Killzone.



2f84ca15b9b68cf4f66ff27255344e4bb8863683a000e1f9ca4d83e531f5e4e7.jpg


http://www.audiomedia.com/games/0007/the-sound-and-music-of-killzone-mercenary/705

“Additional features were added to play with the filtering – like ray-cast occlusion, distance filter, and simulated HRTF. As most game audio developers know, streaming bandwidth from the disc is a resource that can really save the day. With the Killzone: Mercenary art team already using a fair portion of this to make the game look spectacular, we leaned heavily on Sony’s proprietary ATRAC format for a useful trade off in file size for quality. We had around 12MB of sound RAM to work with (which by any handheld standards is generous) but working with a first-person shooter it would still prove a little tricky…” - See more at: http://www.audiomedia.com/games/000...f-killzone-mercenary/705#sthash.Jy8kePkG.dpuf

12MB of sound RAM is definitely very awesome for a handheld. The audio quality in this game is stellar when using nice headphones.
 

Sora_N

Member
I finished the game on the normal difficulty, I really didn't like the last boss but actually they did it pretty well for a boss fight. I struggled a lot till I figured out what I had to do.

Overall, although I suck at FPS games I enjoyed it actually. Over the game I gradually improved, first time I really enjoyed playing an FPS game in a long time.

Not sure if I will replay on Vet for trophies, I probably won't try for Plat.

Which mode do people play online now? I tried the Guerilla Warfare one and I never seem to find enough players (2 v 4 teams wtf). I assume it's Mercenaries or the other one.
 

webkid94

Member
I finished the game on the normal difficulty, I really didn't like the last boss but actually they did it pretty well for a boss fight. I struggled a lot till I figured out what I had to do.

Overall, although I suck at FPS games I enjoyed it actually. Over the game I gradually improved, first time I really enjoyed playing an FPS game in a long time.

Not sure if I will replay on Vet for trophies, I probably won't try for Plat.

Which mode do people play online now? I tried the Guerilla Warfare one and I never seem to find enough players (2 v 4 teams wtf). I assume it's Mercenaries or the other one.

This is coming from someone who cares little about platinum'ing (sp?) a game: I literally have one more trophy to get (the 10k kills one, ridiculous btw) and I didn't really try to get the platinum until I realized how close I was to getting it. Playing veteran wasn't too hard and this was my first FPS game, but the covert, demolition and precision contracts were tough especially one where you had to sneak
past Grey and her guards in the vault without a vanguard and with jamming on
. The other trophies aren't too bad but rather..weird? Like destroying the barnacles in the Package, those weird plant things before you
open the door for Justus
.

I always stick to Guerrilla but lately I have been seeing the same issue as you and tried moving to Warzone...no one ever does interrogations lol and Mercenary while easy (kill em' all)..I'm more of a team player.
 
Man, the new maps appear way to rarely.
Played 5 matches. Nothing. Tried to start 15 matches and quit everytime it wasn't a new map. Only once a new came up... and I was kicked due to loss of connection.

Reminds me of Battlefield4. I have the China Rising DLC since months. Played dozens of hours since then. Only 3 or 4 matches were on a new map o_O
 
Had a lot of fun on the new maps tonight. Played for about an hour and got them both once.

Have to say I was pretty surprised that this patch didn't nerf the mantis engine!! Weapon is still way too powerful. Maybe they've dropped its HP or something? All I know is that it was fast as ever...
 

Zen

Banned
Not yet. I have to say, it seems like they updated some of the games FX in a patch and I didn't notice, particularly when you have the Vulture turned on, the red effect on the enemies is glorious.
 
I hope that botzone will rank up concurrently with multiplayer or already have everything unlocked for you.

After not playing this for a few months and playing BF4 on the PS4 it is so difficult to aim and move fluidly on the tiny sticks. The aim acceleration is still part of the problem, but even max sensitivity is not enough.
 

Skyzard

Banned
Yes, it will be a free patch.

Are you sure? Last I read it was paid DLC:

Following that is the big one – Update 5, which includes two new MP maps for FREE; and the release of offline Botzone for Mercenary and Guerrilla Warfare modes (price TBC).

^ That's actually from the EU blog. The US blog didn't mention it. Let's see.

I'm totally okay with paid, personally. Game is stellar. As long as it's under £8 of course.
 

Zen

Banned
Hope the botzone stats carry over to the trophies as between this and Shadow Fall, I think I'm done again with competitive MP :/

MP has never been better for me, I just make sure to have a load out for countering the mantys drones.

Since I play mostly Guerilla Warfare, how well do the new maps work with warzone? Better than the old ones? The new maps seem to introduce a bit of a different style of gameplay to Mercenary, which makes sense because their design phyosophy is ported over from KIllzone 2, but they're a nice change of pace that alternates between the extremes of far more open space/clear sight lines and complex interior structures.

Hands down this is much better than Shadowfall. If Guerilla really is done with Killzone, I'd like to see Cambridge take up the IP in the future.
 

Zen

Banned
My PSN ID is Xenien7

Add away

It is unfortunate that you have problems as I never have to wait long to get a full game.
 

Zen

Banned
It is absurdly pick up and play, it really just depends on how good you are at FPS games to begin with.

And turn on gyro aiming with the sensitivity to max.
 

Guru-Guru

Banned
Just picked this game up on a whim, surprisingly enjoying it a lot. I'm based in Japan, and I assumed that online would be dead, but I have had no trouble matchmaking. I guess more people are playing it again due to the 2 new maps?

If anybody is playing on Japan servers, my PSN is charlie_lun. I would enjoy playing with anybody from GAF, but as this is my first handheld shooter, I kind of suck!
 
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