Portable first-person shooters generally suck. The controls are too limited, the screens too small for fine detail, or the stories aren't more than simple set dressing for an egregious bullet and blood ballet. Killzone: Mercenary does not feel like a portable first-person shooter.

Killzone: Mercenary has arrived to North America. What better way to celebrate than by watching gratuitous amounts of murder?

We played through a preview build of Killzone Mercenary, just for you. Turns out it's not half bad if you're looking for a way to stab some necks on your Vita. Check out the video to see how to touchscreen swipe someone to death.

The PlayStation Vita is a good, powerful handheld machine that's run some piss-poor first-person shooters. After rushed, clunky Resistance and Call of Duty shooters, the system will get a Killzone in September. It merely needs to be mediocre to improve Vita FPSing dramatically.

You can't ever put your complete trust in something until you've got your hands on it—especially when it comes to this franchise and this platform—but still. Even allowing for that, this is looking like a much better effort than other FPS games we've seen on the Vita thus far.

A new Killzone game called Killzone Mercenary is coming to PlayStation Vita, Sony said today at Gamescom.