Killing Floor 2 is a Survival Horde-Mode First Person Shooter developed by Tripwire Interactive. The sequel to the hit cooperative zombie game from 2009, It brings a gory and satisfying multiplayer experience to those who wants to hunt down Zeds for the fate of humanity.
Killing Floor 2 is a solid coop survival FPS with the prime objective is to kill every zombie on each round and upgrading your weapons for the next, and most importantly survive. The gameplay is very simple and not that fleshed out as it is still in beta and will be opening its door to those who wants to hunt some Zed meat in Early Access on Steam.
Killing Floor 2 currently has 4 classes: The Berserker, A class who receives lesser damage than the other classes while they deal devastating blows with melee weapons. The Commando, Warriors who are best suited to assault weapons and can easily detect enemies even when they’re invisible. The Medic, The class whos prime objective is to keep their allies alive while dishing out damage with special grenades that heal allies and poisons Zeds. And The Support, Best with shotguns they carry more ammunition and are pretty good at welding doors to keep the Zeds where you want em. There will be more classes as the game progresses through its development as well as class-specific perks and weapons.
The more Zeds you kill the more Dosh and Experience you will gain from that round. With more Dosh at your disposal you can purchase stronger guns, more ammunition, more grenades and armor to help you survive the next wave of Zeds. True to it being a multiplayer co-op experience you can ask your teammates for extra Dosh and vice-versa. With the Experience you gain per zombie kill, it adds up to your Experience bar and when its full you gain a level. When you reach certain levels of a class you can select a certain perk that will help you in murdering Zeds. These levels and perks are permanent as it wont return to 1 every time you start a match, with higher levels and perks the easier the matches are. Depending on the difficulty chosen of course.
In every round there will be waves and waves of zombies that you will be required to defeat to progress and gain Dosh, the games currency. But they wont be your typical moaning, walking and brain eating undead. These zombies, or Zeds as the came calls them, are actually specimens with zombie-like features and there are multiple types of Zeds each with their own abilities. Currently Killing Floor 2 has 11 Zed types and 1 boss.
There are the dumb Zeds, they’re basically easy money as they don’t do much but walk towards you. There are multiple versions of these basic zombies and each with their own name and strength but closely similar in design. Then there are the special ones, the ones that sometimes take specific strategies to beat. There are Zeds that go invisible, spray acid that makes you go blind, ones that slash with blades and even ones that can charge at you and kill you in a heartbeat and more. And after multiple waves of these creatures you will battle a boss, bosses are beat with team strategies such as kiting him and dishing out damage on the opportune time.
There is one boss available right now in the current build and he is the boss that appears at the end of every game. Kind of boring since hes pretty easy to beat when the team knows his pattern and is well-equipped. This boss is Hans Volter an intelligent Zed that can throw grenades that give off poisonous gas. He also has dual automatic rifles and can regain his life when he catches you or one of your allies. Pretty hard to beat early on but can be easily defeated after encountering him multiple times, even though he can be beat easily the AI is still pretty good. Hopefully well get more interesting bosses and Zed types in the future.
There isn’t much of a story on the game yet as it only includes multiplayer games and the levels don’t even have lore or any sort of backstory. The characters have their bios and origin stories but no take on the main story of the game, its either too keep the multiplayer feel or it’ll be implemented later on as the game progresses through its development.
The game looks amazing and runs well even on lower end machines as the game is built on a heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 3. Most of the levels are atmospheric and each with their own unique setting, no level feels the same. The soundtrack is made by a Christian metal rock label and does really keep the mood for murdering multiple Zeds and running around hoping they don’t eat you. Overall the aesthetic is great and im personally excited on what the next levels are and what soundtracks they will add onto the game next.
Overall the game is pretty fun and Im pretty happy they released the multiplayer mode first as Killing Floor 2 as well as its first iteration is best experienced with other people. The game works well and the multiple zombies rushing at you gives you this feeling of dread and adrenaline. The multiplayer is pretty solid as I personally have not experienced any connection problems. The game has strong potential to be the one of the best multiplayer games for this year and hopefully the years to come with more content continuously released and with Mod support there will be. The game is really good and I’m excited to play it finished build on its official release.
This preview was based on a preview copy given by Tripwire Interactive
