Killing Floor - $20 of Awesome
So I recently logged into World of Warcraft looking for something to do to pass a little time, when Kakushan says to me in guild chat, “Log off, download Killing Floor, get in vent.” It’s not often I get explicitly told to get a game, most of the time it’s a Q&A session where I might decide I actually want to get the game, but not today. If it hadn’t been Kaku I would have told them to fuck off, but since I <3 him I looked into it and ended up doing exactly what he said. Killing Floor is a great game with huge potential for expansion, though it does include a grind. OH NOES!
Killing Floor was originally a game mod for UT3, purchased by Tripwire Interactive, and turned into its own game for $20 on Steam. Now, without further ado…
IT’S TIME TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT – BREAK IT DOWN!
The Game(play) – Amazing
Take Left 4 Dead. Remove the extreme ease of victory on anything besides the highest difficulty. Remove the lack of variety in enemies. Remove the lack of variety of weapons. Add awesomeness. Instead of being a group of people trying to escape an area chased by zombies, you’re a military group dropped into a zombie infested area tasked with ridding the area of the zombies and their leader. You’re given a pistol and 3 grenades. Of course after every “wave” of zombies a trader “opens” and you can buy guns and armor. Of course every wave new types of enemies are available to spawn, and more of them. Enemy names and brief descriptions follow:
Clot – Shitter that grabs you. And holds you still. Until he dies.
Gorefast – Clot + sword arm + running. Fast running.
Bloat – Fat. Slow. Pukes on you. Explodes on death.
Crawler – Jumps. Lots.
Stalker – Invisible chick…worst kind of chick possible….until….
Siren – Yells. Constantly. Typical woman.
Skrake – Chainsaw arm. Nuff said.
Flesh Pound – Slow. Two maces for arms. Shoot him. Suddenly he is faster than you. And hurts.
Patriarch – (Stream of consciousness description) Minigun. Rockets. Healing. Stealth. Running. Pain. ONE IN THE PIPE.
Killing Floor - $20 of Awesome
The game also divides your character choices into classes instead of black guy/white guys/chick. The classes basically grant you extra damage for certain weapon(s) and a discount to purchase said weapon. You can also level up your class to further increase the damage/discount and add other “perks” as well. Leveling up certain classes is extremely annoying, but I’ll get to that in the “grind” section. Sharpshooter/Firebug/Berserker/Medic/Commander/Specialist translates into Snipers/Flamethrower/Melee/Healing/Assault Rifle/Shotguns, but each class is able to wield any weapon. The classes are purely for the perks to the weapons, not for the ability to use said weapons.
Graphics – Mediocre
Now, I’m not really a big graphics whore like some people seem to be, but this game is definitely not at the pinnacle of the graphical spear. Now, it’s not some horrendous shit-show where you can’t distinguish friends/enemies, but there are times where it’s just too dark and grainy where it shouldn’t be, and occasionally you’ll kill an enemy only to see their body completely disappear. This second issue largely seems to be a per-game issue, as the type of enemy that will disappear is largely consistent throughout a series of waves, and also may be affected by who is hosting the particular game.
Overall, the graphics do not detract from the gameplay, and it is still extremely enjoyable.
The Grind…… - Fine to Shit, depending
This section will be short. Leveling the class is based on certain objectives that just require a larger number of things as you level up. For all but 2 classes, the primary level up objective is “do damage, lots” with the typical level 5 goal being do 3.5million damage to get it. This only doesn’t hold true for the Commander and the Sharpshooter. To get level -3- of the Commander requires you to kill 600 Stalkers with the Bullpup weapon. Yeah, the invisible ones. Easy to assume over 2500 Stalkers killed to achieve level 5. At most 100 stalkers per 7-wave normal mode. Fuck. The sharpshooter requires 750 Headshots to reach level 3. Sure, sounds reasonable. Oh, they have to be kill headshots. And about 25% won’t count for no real reason. Fuck.
Overall – VERY GOOD GAME. With 6-player co-op scaling based on the number of players present, the Unreal editor making maps that already support 30+ players, and a community will to make tons of maps for a great game, the growth potential is amazing. Sure, I wish the final boss wasn’t always the same, and I sometimes wish the final boss wasn’t godly compared to the rest of the level, but I’ll deal because the game is pretty damn awesome.
