Killzone: Mercenary

Killzone: Mercenary remains one of the best proofs that a first-person shooter can be played on a handheld without feeling like a compromise. Here the player doesn't side with the ISA or the Helghast, but hires out to whoever pays better — and money is also the game's central mechanic. Every hit, every silent takedown, and every completed objective brings in credits, which get spent between missions at a black-market dealer for weapons, shields, and combat drones. The campaign therefore offers several ways through each level: a loud firefight, careful stealth around guards, or a combination of both, depending on what pays off at the moment.

Guerrilla Cambridge built the controls around dual analog sticks and uses touch only where it genuinely helps — brutal close-quarters takedowns are finished with a finger swipe, and hacking terminals is a brief minigame. Technically it was a flagship of the hardware: wet streets, metallic interiors of Helghast ships, and the enemies' characteristic orange eyes glowing in the dark rank among the best things to appear on the Vita, and the game kept a smooth frame rate throughout. The sound is typically Killzone — heavy and loud, with music that underscores the industrial grime and hopelessness of war rather than any heroism.

It also included eight-player multiplayer, which kept a living community on the console for a long time and was one of the few handheld shooters that could be taken seriously. Beyond the campaign, the game also offered contract variants of already-completed missions, turning the same levels into purely stealthy or purely aggressive assignments, which significantly extended its lifespan. Reviews at the time praised it as the best shooter on the Vita while noting that the campaign is short and the story secondary. Today it's still worth booting up for how naturally it controls and how well its reward system works, pushing you to play aggressively and with style. It's a game where you forget after a while that you're holding a pocket console — something few games of its generation managed.