Review: Killing Floor 2

Killing Floor 2 has spent a long time in Early Access on Steam, but has long gestation added anything to the game? If the finished product is anything to go by then this may well be the gold standard for the Early Access model. Months of open development has lead to a absolutely stellar game and one of the most fun online experiences this year.

Post apocalypses are ten a penny these days. likewise the undead who inhabit them. You can’t throw a rock into a branch of your local video game retailer without hitting some kind of reanimated corpses. Walkers-this, Clickers-that. But into this increasingly  over saturated market place comes Killing Floor 2, and its merry cast of Zeds. Technically not zombies, but rather biological abominations crafted in the labs of Horzine, a evil corporation in the Weyland-Yutani mold of companies that feel it’s a good idea to mass produce unspeakable creatures in the name of commerce.

As you might expect after all this chicanery goes horribly awry, most of Europe is left devastated and a few brave survivors attempt to fend off the horde. Not the most original premise, but Killing Floor 2 aims to be the best of a bad bunch. The core gameplay will be familiar to anyone who’s played a hoard style game before, be it Gears of War or Call of Duty. A team of players try to survive against wave after wave of enemies while accumulating money to fortify their positions. The enemies get increasingly twisted and difficult to kill but you’re able to buy more advanced weaponry from a store that opens at random map positions  in between rounds.

Players are also given a choice before the match starts to choose between one of several different classes, each with their own sets of perks, and starting weapon sets. Each class levels up by collecting XP from certain objectives. Support players get points for welding shut security doors and blasting apart nasties with a shotgun whereas Gunslingers and Sharpshooters rack up high-scores with head shots. These objectives encourage the player to stick to the strengths of the class they’ve chosen without needing to limit the weapon selection artificially. any player of any class can use any weapon, but if you’ve got your sniper hat on then the gun that explodes baddies with microwaves will still look cool, but you won’t get any experience for using it or take advantage of those perks you worked so hard to earn.

Spiderthing, Spiderthing, kill it with fire, Spiderthing!

The arsenal in Killing Floor 2 is massive and ranges from sniper rifles to the aforementioned Microwave Cannon to grenade launchers and my personal favorite, the Bone collector magnum. I’m absolutely terrible with this high accuracy, low fire rate weapon, but the boom it makes every time you pull the trigger is just too satisfying to pass up.

The enemies in Killing Floor 2 are fantastically designed, far more than the standard undead. Although there are disposable shamblers to dispatch willy nilly, enemies like the screaming Sirens and absolutely monstrous Fleshpounds all take quite a lot of punishment to put down. Ammo is a precious resource which stresses accuracy under the increased pressure of a screaming giant with chainsaw hands trying to mash you into paste. If you’ve played Left 4 Dead then you’ll recognise the enemies here, but the team at Tripwire have given them a  fresh coat of paint and remixed them just enough keep you on your toes. If it hadn’t been for DOOM earlier this year then Killing Floor would be a shoe in for most Metal video game.

This Shovel Knight sequel looks a lot darker

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in zombie land though. the game has some notable oversights that impede progress for new players. there is a tutorial, but it is laughably underwhelming, teaching only the very basics of the controls. the finer points of classes, weaponry and even enemy types is left for the player to figure out in games with given the lengthy time it can take to get into each multiplayer game and how long you can spend watching you cohorts battle against the AI while you wait for the round to end. Getting into a match can take time too. There are a lot of servers and custom maps available but the game takes absolutely no time to explain how you should go about actually finding a game to join. It takes a bit of fiddling with menus to actually start connecting to the online playlist and I’m still not sure what I actually did. Some of this undoubtedly has a something to do with the fact that gem game has spend a considerable amount of time on early access before being released. seasoned players will have long know what to expect but coming into it as a newbie is something of a daunting prospect.

Killing Floor 2 took advantage of its development time to make something new and invigorating in a genre that is becoming increasingly stale and saturated. It is  unquestionably a one trick pony but that trick is so impressive that you’ll struggle to care. Take a little while to get accustomed and ffigure out the nuances and this is an experience that will keep you coming back for more. Assuming you survive the night of course.

Tags: Hoard mode, Killing Floor 2, tripwire interactive, Zeds, Zeds dead