'Killing Floor' Review (9/10)

It was just a matter of time before I got around to doing a Killing Floor review. This game clearly has it's roots spawned back to the good old days of co-op multiplayer mayhem a la Serious Sam mixed in with a healthy dose of class-based fun thrown in for good measure. The game is definitely not without it's upsets and faults but for the most part, I'm too busy playing it to be bothered.




Immediately, comparisons of Killing Floor to the highly successful blockbuster title, Left 4 Dead will come to light although it's worth noting that KF's roots started back in 2005 as a mod for UT2004. The formula is dirt simple and builds upon the not-as-well-implemented 'Invasion' game mode. Simply put, it pits the players together to deal with wave after wave of baddies (the stock Invasion game mode was either too easy, or too aggravating and the maps were designed with DM/TDM in mind rather than co-operative play). While this is nice in and of itself, what sets KF apart is the persistant perk system - the more you player, naturally the better you get - but now it isnt reflected just in real-world gaming ability but also in-game as well via a leveling system: "perks"

You can make the argument that a good player doesnt need to have perks to beat a game but the game mechanics of KF already deal with that in a somewhat elegant manner. Here's the jist of a KF game:

• Players spawn with a knife and pistol and some starting money
• As they kill creeps, they earn 'money'
• At the end of each wave, an inventory store is available so that players can restock on ammo and buy/sell weapons and armor etc
• Players also make some money for surviving the wave

So far, pretty straightforward. But when you increase the difficulty (either by adding more players or by increasing the difficulty mode, or both), naturally the creeps get harder (they move faster, hit harder and are more resiliant). Without any perks and such, you eventually run into a vertical wall of impossibility (on suicide difficulty, the creeps get a 75% bonus damage and hitpoints and move 30% faster ... not to mention there's more of them). I guess the argument could be made that good players can beat it without any help from perks (and if you really want that, you can also deactivate perks on your private games) but it's just not practical.

The other thing is, without perks, there's nothing that particularly makes KF different from Invasion. Perks, also, by their nature, help to promote teamwork and delegation. From a gameplay perspective, on the harder difficulties, you make less money per-kill and per-wave and yet you need to spend more ammo to kill things (because they have more health) and there are less items spawning in the game world (and less often too), so the perks - which give you discounts for your class's specific weaponry and ultimately, spawns you with items, is a necessity.

Killing Floor isnt without it's flaws and catching-issues mind you (although hearing me rave about it might lead you to think otherwise).

• It's too damn slow. This is a common complaint and is usually voiced by noobs and/or during the first few waves where, for veterans, it is slow. Although, wily and/or more organized players will realize that these first few slow waves are made of pure awesome. Mind you, stuff like this doesn't happen in "real world" games involving randoms simply because - like every other multiplayer game - the intelligence and forethought of an [random] internet gamer is extremely lacking.
• It's too hard. I hear this a lot from beginners (understandably). The game does have one bad point of starting having the default I-just-installed-the-game-first-time-playing map to 'Biotics Lab' which is definitely not beginner-friendly (think tight quarters corridor combat). This aside, the majority of the difficulty complaints are probably due to players choosing the wrong difficulty (read: not playing on 'beginner' when they are in fact, beginners).
• It's too easy. I hear this a lot from veteran L4D player with the usual complaint being "there's so few zombies, how is this supposed to be challenging". These complaints usually go away when you play 6-man games on Suicide. It's then that they realize that 4-man L4D doesnt really differ that much from 1-man L4D.
• It's too unbalanced. A mix of all theee previous complaints: there is a feeling that the first five or so waves (of a 10 wave match) are in fact too easy. Once you get to wave six or seven though, there is a dramatic increase in difficulty due to the introduction of the Scrake and the Fleshpound. This can, for the ill-prepared, result in a team wipe and complaints of "too hard" or, for beginners observing how specialized players can single handedly wipe out these threats in one shot, complain about how the game is unbalanced.
• There's no friendly fire. Sure it's an option that can be toggled on but even then, even 100% friendly fire isnt close to what you get from Expert mode in L4D. Which kind of sucks (would be nice if there was an easier way to readily set the friendly fire percentage). Would also be nice if the friendly fire wasnt so "arcady" (i.e. one or two bullets should incap the player). Mind you, just like in L4D, over 90% of players don't know how to deal with friendly fire.

To be honest, these four complaints often disappear as players give it a chance and take the game seriously. Like any game where "leveling" is available, KF is a long-haul game and it's something the majority of gamers simply dont grasp. This isn't to say KF isnt without genuine flaws though:

• Limited gameplay. Every serious match eventually results in pigeon holeing or turtleing. Sure, if you know the map layout and you know how to play (and with a tiny but of luck), you can run around solo/ninja for the first bunch of waves. After that, everyone huddles up and turtles down. Sure it works (in theory), sure, it's always interesting playing with people who don't know how to play as a squad or for that matter, know how to play their class, but after tens of thousands of kills, it kind of gets boring. There are maps where you can, instead, kite but that now just means there are two different playstyles that are polar opposites. (This being said, I cant think of another playstyle that I would want to add, but I at least recognize the [theoretical] limitation)
• Overpowered/Underpowered Patriarch. We know he's supposed to be over-the-top and we know that he's supposed to be 'damn near unbeatable' but the complaint is there nonetheless. Depending on your class, preparedness and playstyle, the Patriarch can be anything from "zomg save me" to "yawn. next." I guess it would be nice to have an option of tweaking the difficulty of the Patriarch without resorting to HP/damage vertical-walls -- perhaps something along the lines of having the Patriarch spawn with a full wave's worth of creeps as well, that would go a long way towards jacking up the difficulty. As for thinking the Patriarch is overpowered, this often comes from simply playing the wrong class (like Firebug)
• Too long/too short time between intervals. It would be nice if we could readily set the time in between waves to whatever we wanted. I totally understand why it is the way it is (to promote  strategic planning and possibly to reducing camping) but it would definitely be nice if there was an option to [readily] run a specific settings for LAN parties or RP matches and such.
• Crappy players. The universal complaint of co-op multiplayer. There are so many damn bad players out there. Ok, I can totally accept being bad on Beginner difficulty and maybe Normal, but the problem is when you get crappy players on Hard/Suicidal matches where they simply don't belong. Every single match, there's one or more retarded players that can't get with the program and die right off the bat. Just like in L4D, it's the crappy players that make for a crappy experience since, as the waves get harder and harder (and as they struggle/fail to keep up), it becomes increasingly impossible to carry them through the wave (usually with them complaining about how long it takes lol)

That being said, there's a few specific player-types that you'll always encounter

1. The ping pong player. In maps where there are tight corridors (think Offices), there's always some moron strafing left-right. This now means that everyone else can't get a clear line of sight on the oncoming hoarde but also that players using explosives (which are brilliant for tight corridors) are nullified (as they risk self-damage for hitting this ping pong player)
2. The stupid firebug. Firebug's are great at softening large masses of creeps but more often than not, they tend to just cover everything in fire (thus obscuring other player's line of sight) -- for single targets and such -- something that other classes are better suited towards.
3. The slow poke. In KF, your run-speed varies depending on your class, loadout and equipped weapon. Of the these three parameters, the only one you can really control is your equipped weapon -- but so often you see players not running with the knife. Meaning you have to wait for their dumb ass before you weld the door shut or you have to go back and rescue them from a mob that spawned. On maps like Foundry, it's crucial that you get to where you need to get to between waves (getting caught in the open is pretty lethal on that map) and there's always some straggler who drags everyone down.
4. I need money. Sure, we get that you need money for weapons/ammo/etc. But every game, theres some moron begging for money on wave 2. Firstly, you dont need money on wave two because everything can be killed with the starting knife and pistol and secondly, the amount of money you spawn with is enough to buy weapons that are more than adequate for the first FIVE waves. Lastly, it's wave 1, nobody has money!
5. The low-level. Higher leveled perks in KF, get bigger discounts on weapons (and thus dont need so much money), but on Hard/Suicide, there's almost always a low level (0-2) who joins, begs for money (instead of asking for a higher level to buy the weapon at a lower price directly) and then promptly dies because they have no idea how to play the game. This is usually followed by immediately quitting.
6. The wannabe-ninja. Many/all of the classes can, to some degree or another, operate independantly of the group for some/all of the match. But this isn't always ideal, especially with the later waves. But if you can do it successfully, then by all means. It's just usually the case that players run off and die in remote parts of the map (and then quit).

A lot of player!fails can be summarized into two root causes: naivete and pride. The former can be corrected with experience while the latter cant. It just happens to be that the majority of online KF matches are populated with one or two of the latter which wrecks the experience for the rest.

Enough ranting though -- the crappy players are not the fault of this game. The underlying mechanics are absolutely rock solid and KF offers a different take on the zombie apocolypse than it's more blockbuster brethen, L4D (to sum it up in a single phrase: fewer, much tougher baddies). Solid support for good solo and team-play with well thought out official maps, classes, weapons and baddies (ok maybe some of the classes/weapons are under/overpowered but that's a different rant which I try to avoid). On the whole, KF is definitely refreshing to play as it's definitely the more  pure-shooter of the two (L4D has limited consoleitis as is, on the whole, an arguably easier game). Bottom line, 9/10.