The streets of London has become a Killing floor
Killing Floor started off as one giant mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 by a small team of hard working programmers, and over the years it evolved into one of the best zombie survival games ever made when Tripwire Interactive helped it launch into its own game. Killing Floor is a Co-op survival horror game that can be played with up to 6 players. The game has a unique Perks system for upgrades that works a lot like a class system in Role Playing games, where the more you use the same Perk the stronger you become. The Perk system has small mini challenges that you must complete such as getting twenty head shots or healing another player 400 times before you can level up to receive your special upgrade. Even after you pick a Perk at the start of the game you can still switch between perks before each wave of monsters to help balance out your team. The Perk system adds a nice twist to the FPS genre by making the game feel like you are progressing forward in a otherwise repetitive shooter game.
If you don’t feel like playing online there is also a single player mode so that you can play Offline against the evil computer zombies. If you choose to play Offline the game has special mods that you can activate such as custom player made weapons and monster types so that it doesn’t get boring hunting monsters by yourself.
Killer Game play
The thing that makes Killing floor so different from most other shooter games is that it purely focuses on being a cooperative survival game. It gives you special tools like a wielding gun and a medical tool so that you can wield doors shut to keep monsters from coming through, and use the healing tool to keep your teammates alive by regenerating their health after they get injured. To make sure that you aren’t a selfish healer Killing Floor is designed where players recover more health when a Teammate chooses to heal you instead of you healing yourself. That small little healing system reinforces the whole cooperative game play aspect of Killing Floor.
The wielding gun adds a bit of strategy to the game because it allows you to control the flow of monsters so that you can pick off smaller groups of monsters and navigate the stage to your advantage. The wielding tool helps keep you alive, but it also makes the situation a lot more intense because you know that once the monsters break through the wielded door you will be flooded by a horde of monsters that you locked all into one tight little space. If you aren’t prepared it can make the next thirty seconds of game play a nightmare trying to keep the horde at bay. The game does a great job with channeling a pulse pounding adrenalin rush that keeps you on the edge of your seat with every passing monster wave.
After every wave that you defeat a shop opens up and allows you to buy new weapons, armor and supplies to help you defeat the next oncoming wave of monsters. After you get to the end of the stage things get really intense when the boss monster arrives. He has a chain gun and a rocket launcher arm that he uses to target and annihilate players so that he can pretty much kill you in one well placed shot. Oh yeah, and did I mention that he can go invisible? Well, he can go indivisible. The only way you can really survive and defeat the boss is with lots of team work and a well thought out strategy. In terms of game play I have to give Killing Floor a 10 out of 10 because it really does a great job with the Co-op survival elements of the game.
Killing Floor New features
Killing Floor only has a single game mode- Survival, but that doesn’t mean that it gets boring. The game is fully customizable with its features and allows you to change the difficulty settings, the monster types, or for an added challenge you can also change the amount of monsters that appear within each wave to make the rounds longer and a bit harder.
If you haven’t played killing Floor for a while you may have missed some of the game’s new features. Over the years Killing Floor has been pumping out new content and upgrades to help keep their fans happy and the fun factor running high. Some of the new features include a community weapons expansion pack that is composed of all of the best player made weapon mods, a variety of new maps, new monsters, and a couple of new downloadable character packs such as the Steampunk and Urban Nightmare DLC packs. Killing Floor has also added a ton of new weapons to help you stay alive. A few of the new weapons include a Scythe, a firebug flare gun revolver, a vintage .44 Magnum that can also be dual wielded, a classic Tommy gun, a Crossbow that shoots razor discs, a new two handed claymore sword, as well as some new medic guns and explosive demolition weapons like the Medic M7A3 and Demolition L.A.W. (Yeah that’s right, a rocket launcher!). The development team has also made some other minor changes to the game such as increasing the max Perk level as well as adding special abilities like Perk bonus grenades- for example Medic grenades heal players when they explode and Firebug Grenades cause fire damage to burn enemies, ETC.
You can buy Killing Floor off of Steam for about $20 or the complete bundle pack for $40. If you love first person shooter games, survival horror games, and cooperative monster hunting action than I highly recommend that you go and give Killing Floor a try.
