Killing Floor
Following the huge success of Valve's Left 4 Dead, there's been a recent spike in the popularity of cooperative multiplayer games.Killing Floor from Tripwire Interactive, the team behind the Red Orchestra modification for unreal engine, continues along the same lines with Valve's title. A team of (up to) 6 survivors must pit themselves against waves of undead that hunger for some sweet human flesh.
Something has gone terribly wrong with the experiments ... as usual.
Killing Floor is a Co-op Survival Horror FPS set in the devastated cities and countryside of England after a series of cloning experiments for the military goes horribly wrong. You and your friends are members of the military dropped into these locations with a simple mission: Survive long enough to cleanse the area of the failed experiments!
The only background story you'll need or get for this one, the steam's description pretty much sums it all up. In unavoidable comparison to it's colleague L4D, Killing Floor drops the more complex campaing story mode, but raises with greater arsenal of different enemies and weapons. The basic anatomy of a round consists from a number of waves of different enemies, with the amount of enemies and wave composition turned up notch by notch as the game progresses. All in all it plays very much like L4D's survival mode, with the major exception being the limit of the waves instead of aiming for the high-score timer in surviving as long as possible. Between each wave, the team can stock up on the ammunition and acquire new tools for the zombie genocide from the friendly store keeper, who keeps mystically teleporting around the map to sell you some goodies from multiple fixed store locations that open up after finishing up the last monsters from each horde. Kill undead, keep moving, buy a big gun to help with the former.
London - Blow my head away!
The choice of weapons isn't too wide at the time of the release, but you can definitely get the job done with the arsenal. Combat knife, machete and the all time favourite fire axe make up the melee weapons options. From the firearms you can select between 9mm or desert eagle pistols (single or akimbo, take your pick), two types of shotguns, a bolt action or assault rifle, or even a flamethrower or LAW anti-tank rocket if you really feel like doing some major damage. Standard issue granades are also very effective in handling bigger groups of enemies. And the most important part of a succesful shooter being the audio associated with the weaponry, Tripwire doesn't fail to deliver. I especially like the deep and satisfying "OOOOMPFFH" that both the 9mm and desert eagles are packing in the slow motion mode that is sometimes triggered to bring up the glory details of the kills.
In the opposition, the places of the "special zombies" have been taken by 8 different types of zombies. Clots, Gorefasts, Stalkers and Crawlers make up the bulk of the zombie force. Clots are relatively easy to deal with, but they come in great numbers, and can grab onto you to keep you at bay while the rest of the group have their fill on your buttocks. Gorefasts are faster and more powerful type of the basic zombies that pack a noticeable punch with their arm blades in close combat. Crawlers are smaller spiderlike enemies that tend to jump you from a distance, those dodgy little bastards. Luckily most of these basic enemies go down in few fellplaced shots. Stalkers are partly invisible half naked zombie chicks that try to sneak next to you to rip your throat out.
More uncommon and more dangerous types are Bloats, Flesh Pounds, Scrakes and Sirens. Bloat acts pretty much like L4D's boomer, a towering mass of fat that tries to get close enough to you to barf on you. Flesh Pounds are even more deadly than Gorefasts in melee combat, rushing in to range while taking a respectable amount of beating before falling down. Scrakes are pretty much alike Pounders, except they wield a chainsaw. A siren is an eyeless monster in restraint jacket, and it's scream will deal damage and make your head blurry for some time.
DIY Channel special - redecorating with red hue and brain tissue.
Based on the fact that the game is based on older UT engine, the graphical and aural output is more than adequate. The graphics are crisp and beautiful, and the exploding zombie heads and dismembered limbs are always a nice touch. As I foamed before, the sounds of the weapons deserve a special mention, contributing to the overall atmosphere at least as much as the visual destruction. At least for me, one of the major defining features of a shooter is to have weapons which pack a punch along with believable sounds instead of lame "pff pff" peashooter effects. KF passes this one with flying colours. Character models aren't anything special, especially the player characters which have a kind of funky "Hallo thar I have a pole up my a**!"-type of animations. Then again, the main actors are the zombies, it's not like you have that much time to gawp at your squad mates while a wave is rushing your position.
One thing that bugged me hard on the first day was the fact that the game ships with only 5 stock maps. The SDK was released one day after the game release, so it's more than likely we'll see some quality community maps being pushed out sooner or later, but untill then the choices are a bit limited.
Brainless massacre, or the massacre of the brainless?
I have to admit the gameplay lacks in depth in comparison to it's big brother, but for this pricetag it once again doesn't really matter that much. As much as I've gathered here, this is a pure adrenaline shooter, best enjoyed with one of the higher difficulty levels with a bunch of good online gaming pals. If you thought L4D's expert level to be hard, I dare you to try KF on "suicidal" level. Simply put, it's just a fun game to play, partly due to the feeling of punch and power on the weapons, partly due to challenging gameplay and relentless enemies. I don't expect to be entertained by this for the next 2 years, but next 2 months, up to dozen maps each week, why not. And if Tripwire or the modding community manages to release few quality maps or gameplay enhancing mods, even better.
Metacritics on Killing Floor
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/killingfloor?q=killing%20floor
