Review – Killing Floor 3

I don’t like the idea of opening this text with a wallet, but the fact is that this analysis will be antipatic, so I may have to protect myself. I played the first Killing Floor almost compulsively in its time, accumulating more than 300 hours. It was one of the most fun multiplayer experiences of my life. The second Killing Floor had its problems, but hit almost 60 hours marked on Steam here. Hardly, it will come close to it.

If you have never played a franchise title earlier or don’t care, you have received this game now as a gift or bought on impulse, there are not so many problems. You can even have fun with Killing Floor 3, as it is competent at most moments and follows several modern trends of play as a service. For those who have been following the franchise, however, it is the lowest step achieved since its birth as a mod for Unreal Tournament.

Look on the positive side!

Killing Floor 3 formula is identical to that of previous games, at least in its most basic aspect. We control a character who is an expert in a certain style of combat. It can be a sniper, it can be a doctor, it can be from some other class and these classes have been more or less intact since the beginning of the series. On a medium -sized map alone or accompanied by other players, you will need to face waves of progressively stronger creatures. Kill monsters generate money. Between a wave and the next, there is a small time to buy more ammunition and/or better weapons, until the final phase, against a much more resistant and dangerous boss.

This gameplay loop remained and is the aspect that works and addicts. Get bullet (or pump, or sword blows, or fire) against grotesque beings never tired. Gore’s level has risen a lot from the first game, although I believe the apex has been hit in Killing Floor 2. Still, each match ends with the saturated floor of the monsters’ blood and occasional pieces of bodies (including some pieces that float in the air, but then we are talking about one of the bugs of this third title).

In the audiovisual aspect, the game is not ugly. Graphically, he maintains the quality expected of a third game in the franchise. The songs keep the adrenaline throbbing, with a balanced metal and electronic mixture. A sticky and stimulating soundtrack is one of the main features of the series and Killing Floor 3 maintains this album spinning, although it doesn’t stand out as much as the unforgettable trail of the first of all.

The more the player survives, the more evolution points accumulates that will unlock passive advantages for his character class, which justifies the time investment, even if the evolution is less visible in Killing Floor 3, when compared to previous episodes.

Killing Floor 3 mutated to something bad

Technically, every bread is made of flour, yeast and milk. However, obeying this recipe in its most fundamental components does not make all bread tasty. Killing Floor 3 dilutes all this and adds ingredients that don’t mix very well, leaving aside many aspects that made the franchise get here.

There are few maps to start. This starting point would not be so problematic, mainly because all previous games had more maps added throughout their useful life, if it were not for the fact that these few maps are extremely similar to each other. We have here the same combination of rubble, flame ruins, broken glass and everything. Both it is an abandoned military base, an abandoned office building, an abandoned factory or an abandoned laboratory. If all these maps were connected to each other, the transition would be imperceptible. They lack individuality and even creativity, for a franchise that has gone through so many striking locations.

Another absence felt in Killing Floor 3 is Stalker, a monstrosity that entered and exit of invisibility and added tension to the matches. It is the only classic creature that does not return. On the other hand, other monsters underwent quite questionable aesthetic changes. Sound design makes it difficult to locate some potentially priority enemies and their models do not facilitate identification in the middle of the horde.

Stalker’s final disappearance is just one of several design decisions that contradict previous mechanics. There is no longer a server selector, for example, but a matchmaking system that does not work. The current system pushes me into the arms of chance and there were no few times when I found myself coming at the end of a match or dropped on a map with just another player, from a possible team of six.

Healing syringes now have finite loads and cannot be used to cure an ally. The door welder ceased to exist. The number of waves is fixed in only 5 (against 10 of the previous standard). Mods support is suspended until second order. The chat by text was also removed.

On the other hand, developer Tripwire Interactive has added ideas from other games that simply do not fit, such as movement ziplines (style), collection of improvement resources, battle pass and even a hub for combatants. Killing Floor 3 still commits the crime of introducing a complete system of different types of damage, which gets in the way than helps, for those who just wanted to spray zumbified meat with the good old thick lead.

Bollocks!

Of all the changes that Killing Floor 3 has gone through, the most unforgivable, in my humble opinion, is the loss of his unique sense of humor. In the traditional game, my character was a British Hooligan with painted face and I fought side by side with a cassock priest, a chicken dressed, the reaper and a guy with a gas mask on his face. Of all of them, only the gas mask man, the famous Mr. Foster, remained the “face” of the franchise.

Establishing a persona for itself in the multiplayer is in the last plan this time. All classes are locked by character. For veterans who wish to continue playing Mr. Foster, for example, they will have to play as Commandos. Through the battle pass, it is possible to unlock tiny customizations that change the color of the helmet or the color of the clothing, very limited options to stand out in the crowd.

On the other hand, weapons can receive skins, stickers, hangers and many other details too small to observe outside the menu screen. For firearms lovers, the fidelity of models and types is also gone. All weapons of Killing Floor 3 are fictional.

Killing Floor always knew it was a big joke, a dull police and thief who was not properly taken. In addition, it was endowed with a typically British mood, with unique accents and expressions of the region. Everything that had previously been replaced by absurdly generic, serious military characters on a mission to save America. For a title that was born in the UK, has had battles on the streets of Paris and even at Santa’s toy factory, passing a lunar station, it is sad to realize that all maps now exist in the United States and without any recognizable detail of real cities. The dirty climate of Grindhouse post-apocalyptic present from the beginning has given way to an aesthetics that now borders on cyberpunk. Horror comes out, science fiction is.

It would be impossible to close this analysis without mentioning bugs and crashes. In a few hours of play, I tried crashes, objects floating in the air and broken matches without warning. In addition to almost half an hour of shaders compilation in the first loading, which fortunately was not repeated.

Can Killing Floor 3 go around and win your place alongside previous games? Perhaps. It was certainly a mistake to release the game outside of early access. Your future will now depend on the willingness of Tripwire Interactive to readjust the course, add more content and open the game doors to the community. And certainly return the joy to the great zueira that Killing Floor once was.