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Killing Floor (Video Game)
Developed by Tripwire Interactive
Distributed by Steam
Rated M for Mature
Killing Floor is one of those baffling relics of PC gaming that pop up from time to time. Essentially unchanged since its release as an Unreal Tournament 2004 modification, Killing Floor is now a stand alone release powered by the Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 engine, which itself was also originally an UT 2004 mod. Veteran PC gamers will feel nostalgic booting the game up, as the minimalistic menu and populating server list with a big refresh button will break back memories of Counter-Strike LAN parties of yesteryear, in a time when 1.6 was still new and the only version. People who gamed at this time are the sorts that scoff at the idea of $15 map packs, as new maps, skins, and indeed entire new versions of the game were only a click to a new server and a 15 minute automatic download away. After they verified game files of course, and did something called “cache”.
So you can imagine the waves of nostalgic delight that washed over me when I connected to a “pirates of the carribean” map, which downloaded with a percentage tracker on the server connect screen. I will say that time has been kind to this method of peer-to-peer connection and downloads, as one no longer has to wait a whole round and a half to enter the game or risk being dropped mid download for inactivity. And heaven help you if the map changed while you were downloading! Then you’d have to be booted back to the connection screen and redownload what would inevitably be a whole new slew of modifications, map info, and announcer packs for the next map as well. High-speed internet has made the need for dedicated servers only something for console snobs and the destitute, and even with a toaster for a modem I couldn’t see any Killing Floor data taking more than a few minutes to download.
However, most of these old games that still have a following are competitive. Quake 3 might have bots, but you really want to play so you can rocket jump frag your friends and see if you can still railgun pwn noobs after over a decade of Call of Duty has dulled your reflexes. Killing Floor, on the other hand, is not competitive. Sure, it is multiplayer, but it is a co-op shooter. With no 360 no-scopes to brag about or 5v1 comebacks to cheer for, I really have no idea why people come back to this game. I’ve played KF maybe once a year for the past 4 years, and it has always been basically the same game. In preparation for this review, I fired it up again, ready to see what they had added. Other than a few new guns and an objective mode, it was still the same game.
And I would get that, if the game itself were super compelling. To briefly summarize, Killing Floor is a game where you and up to 6 other people shoot between 7 and 15 waves of zombies, each wave consisting of about a hundred undead. There are various types of zombies, and while some shoot, some stealth, and some spit at you, they all basically follow the same pattern of shamble over and try to smack you. They have varying amounts of health, and some of them enrage, but if you and your buddies put your backs to a wall and open fire, things usually turn out just fine. The character models for the undead vary between standard shamblers and creatures that look like something from a Silent Hill fan game that was trying too hard to be edgy. I don’t really get the design scheme of a game where a butcher zombie in an apron and carrying a chainsaw is part of the same undead horde as a cyber zombie with an arm cannon and proton pack.
So hold off the hordes, and at the end of it all you fight the “Patriarch,” a big goofy looking mech-zombie that has a rocket launcher/machine gun for one arm and a big goofy hand coming out of its chest. It can go invisible and heal, and soaks up a metric fuckton of damage before going down. Its pretty satisfying to finally take it down, but after the sixth time it gets kind of old.
The big reason to keep playing is that performing certain feats levels up different “perks.” Shoot enough dudes with a shotgun, and your field support skill will go up. Get 700 headshots with rifles, and your marksman skill will go up. It takes a really long time to level up the various fields, and after 2 hours of slashing away with my katana to level up my berserker perk, I took stock of my life and got a job.
To mitigate the grind, there are servers that allow you to spawn infinite enemies and give you unlimited money. This is my favorite feature of these old games. Sometimes these maps are for grinding specific achievements, sometimes these maps are for grinding levels, and sometimes these maps are just for grinding headshoting skills, but grind maps are a uniquely oldschool PC gaming set piece.
And for that no frills oldschool mentality, I kind of like Killing Floor. Yeah enemies are going to bounce around erratically and clip through the environments, thats just what happens when your game was made in 3 months by a group of highschool friends. Get over it, nerd. Hell yeah you are going to sometimes join servers where scoring kills grants you exp so you can level up your avatar like a warcraft character, get used to the random lasers flying out of everyones heads. Oh im sorry, do you not know all the key commands to “rock votes” or “votemap”? Heres an unintuitive multi-tier menu that explains things as a text overlay while you play. Good luck finding a corner dark enough to read it.
While not really a great game, Killing Floor is marvelously and unapologetically retro. It still manages to exist at a $20 price point a million years after its release, but is also kind of one of those games that almost everyone just default owns now because it was on sale for 90% at one time or another. They still release christmas and halloween maps sometimes, and every once in a blue moon a new character pack will miraculously still manage to make sales. If you check your Steam library right now, chances are you own Killing Floor and didn’t even realize it. For the rest of you, consider picking it up next time it costs less than $5 and relive/see for the first time how PC games used to be.
3 out of 5
Categorized:Horror Gaming News
