Killing Floor
Rated: M (Blood, Gore, possibly mild language, and for being the most amazingly British game I've played) Okay, the last one's made up, but it makes it awesome.
Made by: Tripwire Interactive
Platform (I played it on): PC
Alrighty, so Killing Floor is, without a doubt, following in the wake of success left by Left 4 Dead. Yes, I know it was originally a mod for Unreal Tournament or something, and still utilizes the Unreal Engine, but anyone who denies that the game was re-released as a stand-alone game because of the recent influx of zombie-survival games (with heavy multiplayer elements) has a case of the dumbzies.
What Killing Floor is, however, is what makes it somewhat unique. It mixes the RPG elements and "perk" system that is found in games like CoD: Modern Warfare (CoD4?), and mixes it with the zany "blow shit up before it kills you" antics of L4D. However, it's still remains different enough to be called its own game because of many elements that it implements that aren't quite ripoffs of other games, but they come damn close. So, a Zombie-survival game, British accents, and lots of guts flying everywhere (whether they're yours or the zombies); that's about what Killing Floor amounts to.
STORY
[img_inline caption="Mm... Zombies...'" align='right' src='http://www.co-optimus.com/images/upload/image/2009/killing_floor.jpg']
Okay, who the hell am I kidding. There is no story to Killing Floor other than you and your friends are a bunch of militant twats who have a lust for re-killing the undead. That's about all the game will throw you, and it's about all you'll care to know, because there's nothing "in depth" about this game, story wise. Each character you can chose is just a carbon copy of a useless nobody that you've probably killed half a million times in other FPS titles. Good news is; they're expendable and it sure makes you not feel bad when you fuck up and let one of them die. Well, at least you won't feel bad about them dying.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is, of course, the majority of what Killing Floor was made for. There's you and your buds killing zombies, why should something as menial as a story matter? And it is the bastard child of an old UT mod, so who's going to complain, anyway.
Killing Floor works off of you killing the undead with various weapons, just like every other game. Some of the weapons might be slightly more British than others, I'm not much of a gun-nut myself, so I couldn't tell you. Truth be told, I stick to being a close-combat sort of person and just hack my way through the hordes of the zombies, mainly because I can, and secondly because it saves me money on ammo.
Right. As I mentioned before, KF gives you the "perk" system, which is even changeable mid-game (but you have to wait for the end of the round or some bollocks). You have a medic class (Field Medic), a close quarters combatant (Berzerker), a long-range specialist (Sharpshooter), two mid-range gun users (Commando and Support Specialist), and your pyromaniac (Firebug). When you chose your "perk" list (which is easier to call "class" for me), you gain special abilities that will help you with that certain variety of damage. As you continue to do things that go along with that (whether or not you're actually that class doesn't matter), you gain experience towards the class and thus get better benefits from it as you continue the inevitable grind so you can survive harder difficulties. I've not played the game extensively enough to become overly obsessed with leveling my character's perks, and thus far have stuck to Bezerker the most because it's possibly the easiest to use solo-wise, and in a group, being able to run up and work as a shield to let my pals pick off zombies from afar while I hack them to bits, isn't a bad idea either (granted, I do absorb their shots from time to time).
After each wave of zombies (called "rounds"), you're able to buy new weapons and the like from a friendly shopkeeper who moves around the map during the time you're killing zombies. As the difficulty gets harder, the shorter she stays open, and the less time you have to chose what weapons and the like you're able to use for the next slew of baddies. Often the time you spend trying to get to the ***** also will impede your financial transactions.[img_inline caption="So... Here's the plan, you run in and get killed, and I'll back you up with my bullets, then run away when they pose a threat to me again. Alright, GO!'" align='left' src='http://www.blogcdn.com/news.bigdownload.com/media/2009/04/killingfloorapril27.jpg'] Depending on how lucky you are, or how good your friends are, you'll either be stuck with the same starter-weapons and have yourself a shiny new suit of body armor, or you'll be rolling out with the biggest, hardest hitting weapons that the trader sells. I'm going to guess it's the harder the difficulty: the less money you get from killing zombies, but considering you can always just find a spare gun on the ground to sell, it's not particularly hard to get funds most of the time, so long as you make it to her in time. Especially for the Bezerkers, who use primarily melee weaponry that doesn't require ammo, it's not very hard to keep up with things once you know what you want from her and what you can afford. Perks will sometimes lower the cost of things that your perk dictates ('zerker lowers cost of Chainsaw and Katana, the two most powerful melee weapons), but needless to say if you're using ammo: things are going to get pretty expensive pretty quick. There are pickups sprawled throughout the level, so a little searching through the corpses tends to reward you with whatever you tend to need. Except health.
The glaring flaw, at least in my opinion, of KF is the healing system. You can heal yourself, using up all your healing-magic to heal yourself 10 points or so, and then wait for it to recharge, which takes entirely too long unless you're a medic. Also, when you try to heal yourself, it takes your weapons away and takes quite a bit of time for your character to realize that he's got fifteen zombies trying to murder him, and he feels the need to flex his arm. Also, with the amount that it heals you (again, aside from the medic perks) it's almost better off just giving up and letting them gnaw your limbs off, and keep blasting the living hell out of everything that moves to survive other than trying to actually heal yourself.
Enemies are about the same as L4D gave you. You've got normal jackasses who just piss you off and block you in (Clots), more of those, but they're smaller and crawl around (Crawlers), big fat guys who spew... nasty, painful stuff at you (Bloats), and guys who get pissed off at you when you deal too much damage to them without killing them (Fleshpounds). The other flavors include bitches who do an area-of-effect scream (Sirens), guys with various weapons instead of arms (Gorefasts), same guys with chainsaws instead (Skreeks), and invisible bitches who sneak up and ambush you like a World of Warcraft Rogue, dealing way too much damage for their own damned good (Creepers?). Also, there's the obligatory end-boss of the area, the Patriarch, who has more "fuck you up" weapons and abilities than should be allowed for any zombie-survival enemy. And I'm talking like trying to solo a fucking Tank in L4D on expert difficulty hard.
[img_inline caption="The (ugly ass ************) Patriarch'" align='right' src='http://www.games-for-pc.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/killing-floor1.jpg']
Now you know the baddies: know that of all those jackasses, there are two that stick out as the biggest, most painful pricks of them all in my experience: Bloats and Crawlers. You see, Bloats vomit acid or something on you if you get too close, and chances are you'll be close. Also, if you kill them and are too close, you get yourself a nice little acid bath just because. Meanwhile, the Crawlers are arguably worse. Because they crawl along, they tend to be VERY small. Furthermore, they have the ability to crawl on ANY... SURFACE... meaning that they can be on the ceiling above you, jump down and stick their spikes into your arse before you know what's going on. When you finally get them in your sights, they jump up and down like a rabbit on speed to do their attack, making trying to hit them even more frustrating as you die a slow, painful death. They also have this nasty tendency to not only surround you, but trap you in corners at the most opportune of times. I.E. a fleshpunder will be right behind them as they chip away at your life and you can scream all you want to try and get the bastards away, but you won't be able to move a fucking inch. Half the time you won't even see them down there.
The last thing to mention here is the ZEDtime. ZEDtime makes everything slow down to a crawl as you watch your shot or whatnot gib the corpse you just decimated. This gets painfully annoying in multiplayer wherein every time your friends gets a particularly nice shot/hit, it's going to do the same... damned... thing... and thus you get what could be accomplished with shitty servers and massive amounts of laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag as a part of standard gameplay, and something listed as a gimmick to buy the game for.
MULTIPLAYER
Because KF is a mutli-player based game; it's hard to review it without covering the vast majority of this part.
As usual; it'll depend a lot on who you're playing with: your good pals, or some random douche who happened to wander onto your server and be terrible. I've experienced both, unfortunately, and as usual it goes about as you'd expect. But regardless, unless you're either very good at this sort of thing, high leveled, and/or hacking, you're going to find yourself playing with your friends to stay alive, unless you go for "novice difficulty". Hope you have some good friends, because otherwise you're in for a world of hurt and zombies.
Multiplayer goes down about as it usually does in this sort of game: it's nice to have certain classes to work together to have a good outcome, but for the most part it doesn't matter. So long as the players have the ability to use the perks they're given to their intended use, you're probably going to at least get fairly well through things. It's definitely a good idea to have someone be a competent medic because, then people like me (Zerkers) can go on our merry, slicing rampage without having to worry about something as menial as health. Commandos are nice because they can see the stealthies (especially the Patriarch), but other than that, it's all just what does the person feel like playing and are they high-enough level to have the perks be effective enough.
However, I'm going to say this just once in here because it's probably the most crucial part of multiplayer, especially in the harder difficulties: STAY TOGETHER . Unless you do so, chances are you're going to get singled out and eated, especially if you're someone like me who is usually taking quite a bit of incoming damage. Regardless of how tempting it is: stay together if you want everyone to stay alive long enough to get to the Patriarch, and on him; you split up, you get royally screwed because he WILL single each and every one of you out and murder you.
WRAP UP
All in all, KF isn't a bad game, it's just a little irritating to not being able to play solo very well, and also due to the perk system (which is excruciating to level), you know that those first three days of straight gameplay (and I mean 3 days played time, not 3 days of having distractions like going to the bathroom or eating food), you might, maybe, be able to take on the "normal" mode in solo mode without getting two-shot by a Fleshpound because you're a melee class.
If you're going to play KF, bring your patience along with you and a desire to shed a lot of blood. The ZEDtime is also a little disorienting at first, but you'll get used to it quickly... or die quickly, either way. The guns range from cheap starter shite to expensive awesome, and it all just depends on how you want to play and how much you want to curse at the game or your friends.
Back to the grind...
~Sui
Rated: M (Blood, Gore, possibly mild language, and for being the most amazingly British game I've played) Okay, the last one's made up, but it makes it awesome.
Made by: Tripwire Interactive
Platform (I played it on): PC
Alrighty, so Killing Floor is, without a doubt, following in the wake of success left by Left 4 Dead. Yes, I know it was originally a mod for Unreal Tournament or something, and still utilizes the Unreal Engine, but anyone who denies that the game was re-released as a stand-alone game because of the recent influx of zombie-survival games (with heavy multiplayer elements) has a case of the dumbzies.
What Killing Floor is, however, is what makes it somewhat unique. It mixes the RPG elements and "perk" system that is found in games like CoD: Modern Warfare (CoD4?), and mixes it with the zany "blow shit up before it kills you" antics of L4D. However, it's still remains different enough to be called its own game because of many elements that it implements that aren't quite ripoffs of other games, but they come damn close. So, a Zombie-survival game, British accents, and lots of guts flying everywhere (whether they're yours or the zombies); that's about what Killing Floor amounts to.
STORY
[img_inline caption="Mm... Zombies...'" align='right' src='http://www.co-optimus.com/images/upload/image/2009/killing_floor.jpg']
Okay, who the hell am I kidding. There is no story to Killing Floor other than you and your friends are a bunch of militant twats who have a lust for re-killing the undead. That's about all the game will throw you, and it's about all you'll care to know, because there's nothing "in depth" about this game, story wise. Each character you can chose is just a carbon copy of a useless nobody that you've probably killed half a million times in other FPS titles. Good news is; they're expendable and it sure makes you not feel bad when you fuck up and let one of them die. Well, at least you won't feel bad about them dying.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is, of course, the majority of what Killing Floor was made for. There's you and your buds killing zombies, why should something as menial as a story matter? And it is the bastard child of an old UT mod, so who's going to complain, anyway.
Killing Floor works off of you killing the undead with various weapons, just like every other game. Some of the weapons might be slightly more British than others, I'm not much of a gun-nut myself, so I couldn't tell you. Truth be told, I stick to being a close-combat sort of person and just hack my way through the hordes of the zombies, mainly because I can, and secondly because it saves me money on ammo.
Right. As I mentioned before, KF gives you the "perk" system, which is even changeable mid-game (but you have to wait for the end of the round or some bollocks). You have a medic class (Field Medic), a close quarters combatant (Berzerker), a long-range specialist (Sharpshooter), two mid-range gun users (Commando and Support Specialist), and your pyromaniac (Firebug). When you chose your "perk" list (which is easier to call "class" for me), you gain special abilities that will help you with that certain variety of damage. As you continue to do things that go along with that (whether or not you're actually that class doesn't matter), you gain experience towards the class and thus get better benefits from it as you continue the inevitable grind so you can survive harder difficulties. I've not played the game extensively enough to become overly obsessed with leveling my character's perks, and thus far have stuck to Bezerker the most because it's possibly the easiest to use solo-wise, and in a group, being able to run up and work as a shield to let my pals pick off zombies from afar while I hack them to bits, isn't a bad idea either (granted, I do absorb their shots from time to time).
After each wave of zombies (called "rounds"), you're able to buy new weapons and the like from a friendly shopkeeper who moves around the map during the time you're killing zombies. As the difficulty gets harder, the shorter she stays open, and the less time you have to chose what weapons and the like you're able to use for the next slew of baddies. Often the time you spend trying to get to the ***** also will impede your financial transactions.[img_inline caption="So... Here's the plan, you run in and get killed, and I'll back you up with my bullets, then run away when they pose a threat to me again. Alright, GO!'" align='left' src='http://www.blogcdn.com/news.bigdownload.com/media/2009/04/killingfloorapril27.jpg'] Depending on how lucky you are, or how good your friends are, you'll either be stuck with the same starter-weapons and have yourself a shiny new suit of body armor, or you'll be rolling out with the biggest, hardest hitting weapons that the trader sells. I'm going to guess it's the harder the difficulty: the less money you get from killing zombies, but considering you can always just find a spare gun on the ground to sell, it's not particularly hard to get funds most of the time, so long as you make it to her in time. Especially for the Bezerkers, who use primarily melee weaponry that doesn't require ammo, it's not very hard to keep up with things once you know what you want from her and what you can afford. Perks will sometimes lower the cost of things that your perk dictates ('zerker lowers cost of Chainsaw and Katana, the two most powerful melee weapons), but needless to say if you're using ammo: things are going to get pretty expensive pretty quick. There are pickups sprawled throughout the level, so a little searching through the corpses tends to reward you with whatever you tend to need. Except health.
The glaring flaw, at least in my opinion, of KF is the healing system. You can heal yourself, using up all your healing-magic to heal yourself 10 points or so, and then wait for it to recharge, which takes entirely too long unless you're a medic. Also, when you try to heal yourself, it takes your weapons away and takes quite a bit of time for your character to realize that he's got fifteen zombies trying to murder him, and he feels the need to flex his arm. Also, with the amount that it heals you (again, aside from the medic perks) it's almost better off just giving up and letting them gnaw your limbs off, and keep blasting the living hell out of everything that moves to survive other than trying to actually heal yourself.
Enemies are about the same as L4D gave you. You've got normal jackasses who just piss you off and block you in (Clots), more of those, but they're smaller and crawl around (Crawlers), big fat guys who spew... nasty, painful stuff at you (Bloats), and guys who get pissed off at you when you deal too much damage to them without killing them (Fleshpounds). The other flavors include bitches who do an area-of-effect scream (Sirens), guys with various weapons instead of arms (Gorefasts), same guys with chainsaws instead (Skreeks), and invisible bitches who sneak up and ambush you like a World of Warcraft Rogue, dealing way too much damage for their own damned good (Creepers?). Also, there's the obligatory end-boss of the area, the Patriarch, who has more "fuck you up" weapons and abilities than should be allowed for any zombie-survival enemy. And I'm talking like trying to solo a fucking Tank in L4D on expert difficulty hard.
[img_inline caption="The (ugly ass ************) Patriarch'" align='right' src='http://www.games-for-pc.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/killing-floor1.jpg']
Now you know the baddies: know that of all those jackasses, there are two that stick out as the biggest, most painful pricks of them all in my experience: Bloats and Crawlers. You see, Bloats vomit acid or something on you if you get too close, and chances are you'll be close. Also, if you kill them and are too close, you get yourself a nice little acid bath just because. Meanwhile, the Crawlers are arguably worse. Because they crawl along, they tend to be VERY small. Furthermore, they have the ability to crawl on ANY... SURFACE... meaning that they can be on the ceiling above you, jump down and stick their spikes into your arse before you know what's going on. When you finally get them in your sights, they jump up and down like a rabbit on speed to do their attack, making trying to hit them even more frustrating as you die a slow, painful death. They also have this nasty tendency to not only surround you, but trap you in corners at the most opportune of times. I.E. a fleshpunder will be right behind them as they chip away at your life and you can scream all you want to try and get the bastards away, but you won't be able to move a fucking inch. Half the time you won't even see them down there.
The last thing to mention here is the ZEDtime. ZEDtime makes everything slow down to a crawl as you watch your shot or whatnot gib the corpse you just decimated. This gets painfully annoying in multiplayer wherein every time your friends gets a particularly nice shot/hit, it's going to do the same... damned... thing... and thus you get what could be accomplished with shitty servers and massive amounts of laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag as a part of standard gameplay, and something listed as a gimmick to buy the game for.
MULTIPLAYER
Because KF is a mutli-player based game; it's hard to review it without covering the vast majority of this part.
As usual; it'll depend a lot on who you're playing with: your good pals, or some random douche who happened to wander onto your server and be terrible. I've experienced both, unfortunately, and as usual it goes about as you'd expect. But regardless, unless you're either very good at this sort of thing, high leveled, and/or hacking, you're going to find yourself playing with your friends to stay alive, unless you go for "novice difficulty". Hope you have some good friends, because otherwise you're in for a world of hurt and zombies.
Multiplayer goes down about as it usually does in this sort of game: it's nice to have certain classes to work together to have a good outcome, but for the most part it doesn't matter. So long as the players have the ability to use the perks they're given to their intended use, you're probably going to at least get fairly well through things. It's definitely a good idea to have someone be a competent medic because, then people like me (Zerkers) can go on our merry, slicing rampage without having to worry about something as menial as health. Commandos are nice because they can see the stealthies (especially the Patriarch), but other than that, it's all just what does the person feel like playing and are they high-enough level to have the perks be effective enough.
However, I'm going to say this just once in here because it's probably the most crucial part of multiplayer, especially in the harder difficulties: STAY TOGETHER . Unless you do so, chances are you're going to get singled out and eated, especially if you're someone like me who is usually taking quite a bit of incoming damage. Regardless of how tempting it is: stay together if you want everyone to stay alive long enough to get to the Patriarch, and on him; you split up, you get royally screwed because he WILL single each and every one of you out and murder you.
WRAP UP
All in all, KF isn't a bad game, it's just a little irritating to not being able to play solo very well, and also due to the perk system (which is excruciating to level), you know that those first three days of straight gameplay (and I mean 3 days played time, not 3 days of having distractions like going to the bathroom or eating food), you might, maybe, be able to take on the "normal" mode in solo mode without getting two-shot by a Fleshpound because you're a melee class.
If you're going to play KF, bring your patience along with you and a desire to shed a lot of blood. The ZEDtime is also a little disorienting at first, but you'll get used to it quickly... or die quickly, either way. The guns range from cheap starter shite to expensive awesome, and it all just depends on how you want to play and how much you want to curse at the game or your friends.
Back to the grind...
~Sui
