- 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 27/Jul 03:48

Killing Floor 3 – Review

Although we occasionally wrote content updates for Killing Floor 2, we actually have very little experience with the franchise. Nonetheless, before digging into Killing Floor 3, we dove down a rabbit hole and saw what made the franchise tick. Killing Floor 2 was released in 2016, and despite numerous content updates and special events, players were eager for the next installment. Tripwire Interactive has listened to those pleas, and that brings us to the release of Killing Floor 3, which promises to modernize what made the series so iconic in the first place. While we can see quite a few positive ideas being brought to life, we also see a lot of room for improvement. Story In Killing Floor 3, we are blasted into the future to play through a campaign that feels like an afterthought. During the regular wave-based matches, you’ll just run around doing small objectives to listen to a bit of voice chatter that is hard to follow as you dodge and gun down Zeds that keep on chasing you. There is a codex available where you can look up character information and other lore, but we found the story to be somewhat underwhelming. If the developers wanted to make a dedicated campaign mode or wanted players to bond with the characters, a separate, small campaign mode would have done a lot here. As it currently stands, you’re just completing the so-called story objectives because you’re accidentally near any of the objectives when playing with others online. This doesn’t mean, however, that players who are truly interested in the lore will not get some enjoyment out of this. Graphics It’s easy to say that Killing Floor has never looked better than it does in Killing Floor 3. This game amps up the gore effects, and it’s really satisfying seeing Zeds blow up in a million pieces when hit by a grenade or other explosive ammo-type weapon. The weapons themselves also look great, and the overall animations are impressive. We did find that there is not really that much impact when it comes to hitting certain Zeds with heavy weaponry, and not all reload animations managed to impress us. That being said, the level designs are great, and the maps are fairly large. We would have loved to see a few more destructible components, especially when you’re using massive weapons to kill the oncoming hordes of enemies. You can, however, see a lot of the surfaces being splattered with blood. Sound The soundtrack tries to emulate games such as DOOM, and Killing Floor 3 manages to do this to a certain extent. The rock tunes blasting through your speakers (or headset) do get the blood pumping, but they also sound a bit generic and limited. After a while, we didn’t really notice the soundtrack anymore, and we found it to be a bit lacking considering other similar titles in the genre tend to have more memorable music. While not exactly the same gameplay experience, titles such as Darktide impress players by providing them with more memorable tracks during hectic combat sequences. The SFX are quite good, and guns have nice impact sounds. You’ll hear bullets tear through Zeds, which never grows old, no matter how many rounds you have played. The characters each come with a bit of voice acting, which is drenched in stereotypical accents for the different ethnicities of said characters. Gameplay Killing Floor 3 is a wave-based shooter, much like its predecessors. You’ll be able to select your class, or Perk as the game calls it, pick a level, and you’re pretty much good to go. You can change your starting loadout a bit depending on your Perk level and your starting budget. In-game, you just have to survive increasingly harder waves of Zeds, earn money, buy better weapons, and hopefully beat the boss during the last wave. The so-called campaign objectives can also be completed, but these mainly involve interacting with a few objects on specific maps. It’s mainly a rinse-and-repeat kind of experience, which is perfectly fine for a title such as this. You’ll probably make your way through the eight currently available stages fairly quickly, as you plow through hordes of Zeds out to kill you. During each wave, you’ll earn Dosh (cash), which you can use to purchase new weapons, restock ammo, replenish consumables, etc, during a match. You can freely choose to purchase weapons from another Perk, making it fun to mix and match during a run. At the end of a match, everything will, of course, reset, but you’ll gain experience for your chosen Perk. When leveling up, you’ll unlock new skills, and you can further level these skills, gradually making your Perks stronger as you play more and more. Each of your Perks has its own unique abilities and skills. The game is very grind-heavy, and there are also microtransactions present in the form of a Supply Pass, which allows you to unlock additional cosmetics. The Supply Pass does earn itself back with the credits you earn when unlocking new things on said Supply Pass. The gunplay in Killing Floor 3 is very enjoyable, and it’s a lot of fun experimenting with different weapons. There is also the weapon mod system, which allows you to add modded versions of certain weapons to your loadout. These modded versions, however, will be more expensive and thus use up more of your starting Dosh. We personally didn’t use this system a lot, as it made it harder to buy other, more useful upgrades or weapons early on. On higher difficulty levels, an amped up starting weapon can give you the edge, making it easier to survive much harder starting waves. Some systems in the game are also not explained that well, which is a shame, given how limited a lot of the content is. Sadly, not all is well when it comes to the overall experience that is Killing Floor 3. Even when not looking at the limited content variety and the heavy grinding you’ll have to do to level up your Perks, there are still quite a few bugs that rear their ugly heads. We entered a never-ending matchmaking sequence when choosing the ‘any’ map option multiple times, and the game will only give you the option to return to the title menu, and not a simple end matchmaking button. This feels like extremely backwards game design. More than once, we got a random ‘Hydra’ error, kicking us from the game, receiving 0 experience for the waves we played during the match we were in moments before. Other times, we encountered waves that could not be finished, as our enemy was a ragdoll corpse that would take no damage, no matter what we threw at it. This would eventually force us to leave our match, again, not receiving any experience for everything we did during that match. Due to this, in the totality of our playtime, we played for several hours without getting any experience at all. This grows old really quickly, and it’s quite off-putting as you’re essentially playing with no purpose and no rewards. Conclusion Killing Floor 3 is, by all means, a fun wave-based shooter that has a lot of potential, but that potential has not been tapped into just yet. The overall gunplay is entertaining, and the different skill trees of the available Perks are fun to mess around with. Sadly, the game currently lacks sufficient content to warrant its price of entry. While the roadmap already announces new weapons and Perks, it’s currently rather slim pickings for early adopters. If you can play this title with some friends, you’ll still have a blast, but be warned that you’ll have seen most of what the game has to offer over the course of a weekend or two. Even so, as an in-between title where you can blast zombies into smithereens, you could do far worse.