I’m a bit of a sucker for anything violent, especially when it comes to games where I can watch my teammates perish, so Killing Floor 2 is a great example to use. I get to sit in the corner and survive by shooting the odd zombie now and again whilst my teammates get swarmed by thousands upon thousands of hungry monsters wanting to make a nice bowl of teammate stew. Truth be told, I do actually try in these sorts of games, but I don’t go in with 100% effort because I actually do better when I play casually.
In case you haven’t already clocked onto what I’m saying, Killing Floor 2 is the new zombie survival horror game from developers and publishers Tripwire Interactive. The game was released on November 18th and sadly for those of you who love apple, it was only for Windows, Linux and PS4, that apple a day does keep the doctor away, but it also keeps away games like this I’m afraid!
So as I said before, Killing Floor 2 is a co-operative survival horror game. So what does that mean exactly? Well the game teams you up with up to a group of other players and you’ll need to survive wave upon wave after zombies and monsters by the name of ‘Zeds’. Sounds cool huh? Well that’s because it is. You and your team mates will have to survive for ‘X’ amount of waves (depending on the length you choose) and afterward all those waves you’ll get to face a big bad boss zombie. Believe me when I say this is no easy challenge.
Before the match you’ll get to choose a class from several different sets depending on how you want to play the game and your preferences. These range from field medic, commando, gunslinger, sharpshooter, berserker, and I could go on forever. Once you pick a class it will dictate what weapons you start out with and give you some perk stats which will help you in your survival, these are all pre-set depending on the class that you choose, but are all pretty useful, think of things like more weapon damage, faster speed, more ammunition etc. Your class will also give you a melee weapon and a type of grenade, unfortunately some of them are amazing, whilst others are just… well, let’s just say I didn’t throw many grenades on one class.
During each wave you will have to kill a certain amount of zeds, from what I gather this is completely dependent upon the amount of people in your team, so if you have only two of you, then you’ll obviously only have to kill half the amount of if there was four of you. It goes without saying that as you progress through waves, the zeds will become increasingly numerous and more difficult to take down.
Fortunately though, you’ll have ways to keep yourself alive (yay). Each player has their own medical kit which will allow them to heal themselves for a small amount of health in between waves. If that’s not enough, or if you’re waves are becoming increasingly more difficult then you can always weld a door or two shut. I say this like it’s no big deal, but I was blown away when I saw this feature in the game. It’s such a simple concept, but if you was genuinely in a zombie apocalypse, then welding doors shut, would really be up there with taking your zombie vitamin pills.
If you manage to survive the wave (go you!) then you’ll be treated to a bit of cash, some time to take 5 and have a smoke. The money that you get can buy you some sweet upgrades in the shop, refill your ammunition and even buy some badass weapons to despatch of those zeds even faster. You have a certain amount of cash per round and you’ll only be able to carry a certain amount of weight, so don’t expect to running around like Rambo with 50 RPGs on your back.
Killing Floor 2 does mix it up a bit with the different zeds that you fight. Each type of zed will have different abilities and skills so you’ll have to mix it up a bit. For instance, there’s one chubby zed which just loves shooting out stomach acid from it’s mouth and exploding in your face when it’s near you, there’s zeds which go invisible, spider zeds, and a massive amount of bosses which just make survival near on impossible.
The most difficult thing about this is, whilst it’s not the hardest thing in the world to stay alive provided you can all work together, once you’re dead then you’re dead, there’s no revives, no respawns, no extra lives, so you do find moments when you have to chicken out a bit otherwise no more playing for you. On the fortunate side, when you’re dead, you can pretty much sit back, watching and laughing at your teammates running around like crazy chickens! This is genuinely a pretty difficult game, and without a good team by your side, you will struggle. The difficulty is pretty accurate though, considering it’s probably pretty difficult to stay alive in the zombie apocalypse as well…
The use of different classes is pretty welcome and makes your character feel a bit more unique, especially considering that each one has been tailor made to benefit different playstyles. If you’re the stand back, keep calm and get the headshot kind of player, then gunslinger and sharpshooter is a great choice, wanna dive right in a sledgehammer? Clearly you wanna be a berserker. There’s loads of classes to choose from, so be creative!
If your feeling like this doesn’t make you unique enough, then you can choose to play as one of several different characters within the game which you can pick as your avatar. If that still doesn’t make you happy then you can also personalize their looks and clothing to make yourself look as badass as you want. Naturally, there is a biker dude with one big ass beard, so no matter how you feel, that’s your default!
If you’re not too interested in saving the world and helping your team mates, then you can hop into the player vs player mode that the game has to offer. If this is more to your liking then you’ll be able to control one of the Zeds and all the unique skills that it has to offer. This mode is a great change of pace from the usual survival mode and kicks it up a notch with the ‘slaughter the innocent humans’ mode. Great!
Adding to this, the game also has a whole host of custom match rules that you can put in place so you can set games up the way that you want them to be. You can go into these solo via a different mode, or you can increase the amount of waves, the difficulty, number of players, the maps etc. The list goes on and on!
Graphically, the game is what you would expect. It’s not exactly the best game in the world for graphics, but it’s by far the worst. The monsters are all well created, and whilst things can get crazy, you always know what your shooting at. The environment is pretty well designed and laid out well. You’ll have a whole host of maps to choose from when you start your survival campaign and each one has it’s own unique feel and hidey holes to it.
As far as sound goes, it’s awesome, and I mean awesome. The game has it’s own rotational track system, so whilst your slaying zombies you’ll get to listen to a whole load of rock and roll, death metal, heavy rock and other genres. It’s one of few games where I’ve genuinely not put my headphones on and turned the sound off to replace it with my own music, and that’s probably the biggest compliment I could pay it. Sound effects are good, zombie noises are great, background music is the best. End of.
I have to be 100% honest and say that whilst the game is probably not “THE” best, it’s actually really fun to play. I love the idea of different classes and certain actions the game does just makes it into an enjoyable game, for example, performing an action which causes massive destruction and wipes out lots of zeds will slow time down for everyone, and it just makes you feel like such a bad ass when you launch a grenade into the middle of 50 zeds swarming you.
Overall, whilst Killing Floor 2 still has some way to go to become the best of it’s genre, it’s still pretty damn good and overall very enjoyable to play. It adds a couple of new features from your general survival horror story and really runs with them. Classes are always great, especially when they’ve been tailor made to your play styles and basic features such as welding of doors, upgrading weapons and slowing down time when you do badass things are just the icing on the cake to make it a truly enjoyable experience.
Quote: “Killing Floor 2, survive and conquer over an army of zeds!”
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