While it’s only actually been a shade over 8 years since the release of Killing Floor 2, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s the same 70 years that have passed in the story for Killing Floor 3. Time has hop, skipped and jumped decades into the future, and it’s as dystopian as ever, with Horzine creating a new army of Zeds and just a small scrappy bunch of resistance fighters called Nightfall ready to oppose them. I’ve honestly no idea what Horzine could possibly gain from destroying the world, but it does seem fairly on brand for the human race.
We’ve been hands on with a closed beta of the game, ahead of a wider beta test next week, sinking back into the renewed, but familiar horde shooter. The essential format will be familiar to fans of Killing Floor and the genre in general. Your team of up to six allies will drop into a map and face off against increasingly fearsome waves of Zeds, building up to a final boss battle. It’s really a case of picking your battlegrounds, making use of both the map layout to try and funnel enemies into (re)killing zones, and using environmental elements from basic doors to turrets, giant fans and vats of molten metal to your advantage, triggering things at just the right time to do as much damage as possible.
Survive a round, and you can race over to a designated vendor station to spend dosh you’ve just earned on weapon upgrades and gear restocks to help you survive what the next round holds.
There’s a few great quirks here. Visiting a vendor also completely recharges your character’s Gadget, the special ability that comes on a cooldown and generally lets you fire off one, maybe two times per round. With a vendor recharge, there’s no reason not to use the gadget as often as possible, picking those late round moments when the heaviest Zeds are turning up and you need to do as much damage or healing as possible.
The vendor location is also always dragging you off to a new part of the map, aiding in the variety of the battles you’ll face – though obviously you can keep on the move and kite enemies if things start to look a bit desperate. While your chosen class will have a set of weapons designed for them – the medic, for example, has a beam cannon that can heal allies and charge itself from enemies – you’re actually free to purchase any weapon from any class. If a run needs you to have more firepower than healing, then you can grab one of the launchers and lay down additional explosions.
That range of weapons also ties in to the overarching player progression. Each of the six characters has a particular role – Obi is the healer, coming with a pistol that can shoot restorative darts from range, the Sanctum field projector that can heal allies within its bubble, and has purchasable weapons that can also keep your team going. Devlin is the Firebug, who brings fire and explosive weapons intended for crowd control, while Foster has a drone that fires acid attacks, and Nakata is very much a ‘rule of cool’ kind of character, turning up to a zombie apocalypse with a suite of ninja swords, bows and grappling hooks.
Each of them has thirty levels of progression, unlocking boosts and abilities in the categories of Passive, Throwable and Gadget. You’ll likely end up picking one character and role as your main, but it definitely won’t hurt to level up an alternate, even if just for a change of pace.
No matter the character and class, you’ll be fending off the hordes of Zeds that have been giving even more of a sci-fi look, melding horrifying flesh with metal, morphing the human form in frankly gross ways. There’s also returning and reimagined special Zeds, such as the series’ staple Fleshpound and Scrake – both of them big lad with spiky gauntlets or chainsaw hands that will take a lot of killing – or the screaming Siren – now with an extendable neck, for some reason – and then the intimidatingly large bosses that are an violent capstone to any mission. The Impaler rampages around with a giant Rhino-like horn coming out of its forehead, as just one example.
They all still gib, though, and this is better and gorier than ever. Tripwire has leant in on Unreal Engine 5 here, fuelling the moody lighting and atmosphere of each map, while the power of modern machines has allowed them to ramp up the number of Zeds spawned at any one time. Tie this together with the new M.E.A.T. system – I don’t know what it stands for, but it’s a convenient backronym, if ever there was one – and there’s tons of dismemberment and persistent blood and gore that will be splattered across the world.
Killing Floor 3 might not be reinventing the horde shooter wheel, but it is taking that next step with the well-established formula. There’s modern touches like being able to mantle over cover and clamber up to higher vantage points, aiding in how manoeuvrable you are and shifting some of the requirements for the level design. It also seems that Tripwire are in this for the long haul, just as they were before, with plans to support this game for years after its launch on 25th March, just as they did for the earlier games in the series.
If you want to play before then, well, there’s another beta scheduled to take place next week from 20th to 24th February, giving players a chance to sample the co-op action horror for themselves.
