For a while, Killing Floor has been a massive success on Steam. Despite being fairly simple, the game captured the interest in fans resulting in hours of play, tons of DLC, even more mods and extra stuff, making it shine. Naturally, when Killing Floor 2 was announced, expectations were high. With a larger budget, an extremely popular game under their belt and more, it looks like Killing Floor 2 is a must for fans. The only question is, can Killing Floor 2 live up to the hype or was the original a one hit wonder?
When you first start Killing Floor 2 you have three basic options. The first is to just jump into a game, the second is to do the training mission or you can change your character and class around. In terms of classes and customization, there is an inconsistent amount, but still more than enough to play around with it.
Every class starts by having basic advantages that will improve as your level increases. Most classes do additional damage with class specific weapons, with support classes having perks that allow you to better do your job. From there you also get an additional perk every five levels. Every class has two to choose from, which can be changed at any time, and are designed to support different play styles.
So if you want to be a melee berserker, you can get more health, heal with kills, take less damage and deal additional damage with melee weapons. This makes it so there is few best choices, though this will vary from class to class. In addition to having a wide array of classes, filling almost every role you could think of, there is also a fair bit of customization.
There are currently 14 characters to choose from in Killing Floor 2, each with their own background story and accessories. Unfortunately most of the characters are male, though there are still a couple female characters to choose from. Even though this isn’t a big deal, certain characters are underwhelming in terms of options. Like one of the girls starts with six hair and dress colors and a lot of accessories, where as one of the guy only has two hair and uniform colors and like four accessories, not counting the universal ones.
Even though this can be underwhelming, there are plenty of cosmetic items, including accessories or gun skins, you can unlock through playing the game. These are end of the game rewards, though they seem to be on a cycle, so you can’t play for hours earning them. Also, if your reward requires a key, it’s likely to be a rare item, but it is only accessible by spending real money.
Once you have all this stuff in order, you’re finally ready to play. The tutorial, which isn’t required, is a good introduction to the mechanics if you want to hit the ground running or just don’t want to make a fool of yourself. Though the mechanics aren’t so deep that you need to do it either.
The gameplay is surprisingly straightforward and is quite similar to things like Call of Duty’s zombie mode. There are various difficulties that add new mechanics and are less rewarding, with several wave options. You can do a couple of waves, making it less time intensive, but it comes at the cost of things being more difficult. You can also play versus mode where you need to best human players. This mode is for those looking for an even greater challenge than the base game by adding player-controlled enemies to the mix.
The normal survival mode is your standard hoard mode. There are a couple of enemies, each with their own mechanics and you’re supposed to fight them off until the wave ends. After each round you can buy armor, better weapons or other tools to aid you in your fight. To prevent people from being too powerful there is a weight limit, meaning you need to make sacrifices for certain items.
Most of the difficulty comes from location and support. Smart players will close doors and weld them shut so they can focus on a single side to prevent being overwhelmed. This will vary from map to map, from which there are a wide variety to choose from, but the core mechanics don’t change.
You’re always fighting the same enemies, they do relatively the same thing and every match ends with a boss fight. The main difference between matches will be tactics and how to go about winning. Open maps have offer more ways to get attacked, but they’re also easier to pick off enemies. On the other hand, closed maps are better for holding a spot, but it is easy to get overran. The choice on how you handle the situation will determine how successful you end up being.
Verdict
Killing Floor 2 isn’t perfect, but it is fun if you have a group of friends or like hoard modes. There is a decent amount of variety to offer a fair bit of replayability, with higher difficulties to keep things challenging. Sure there could be more starting customization options and the microtransaction system is a bit pricey, but overall Killing Floor 2 is a decent game that will resonate with those who enjoy this sort of thing.
[Editor’s Note: Killing Floor 2 was reviewed on PS4 platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]