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Killzone: Mercenary is a game defined by its platform. Not in the sense that it makes such unique use of the Vita's features that it could only ever have worked on Sony's portable powerhouse, but because everything it gets right is sweetened by the addition of the phrase "but on a handheld" at the end.The fifth entry in Guerilla's long-running dystopian FPS saga, and the first to be developed by the studio's Cambridge offshoot, it's a handsome and confident game that nevertheless loses some of Killzone's identity in the rush to accommodate current genre trends, and that stumbles slightly when adapting to the Vita's touchscreen and stumpy dual sticks.
It certainly looks lovely, translating the oppressive Killzone visual style and applying it to a much smaller screen while keeping most of the detail and texture you'd expect from the PlayStation 3 sequels. Nor does it skimp on features - everything you could do in a big boy console shooter, you can do in this one. That, however, is also part of the problem. Killzone 3 saw the series veering sharply in the direction of the FPS herd, and that drift towards generic continues here.
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