What a surprise, yet another Early Access title, is it just me, or is this the way gaming is going? Everyone just launches in Early Access these days. Enough of my opinion, back to the facts: Killing Floor 2 is superb. It somehow manages to surpass expectations from the first game, and drives it home with amazing gore filled visuals and adrenaline pumping action.
Killing Floor 2 takes place in continental Europe where the outbreak caused by Horzine Biotech’s failed experiment has quickly spread and gained unstoppable momentum, essentially paralyzing the European Union. The game takes place just one month after the events in the original KILLING FLOOR, the specimen clones are everywhere and civilization is in disarray; communications have failed, governments have collapsed, and military forces have been systematically eradicated. The survivors then stand together (or alone if you’re a grumpy git like me and despise human contact) to take care of business once again and defeat the somewhat never ending hordes of Zeds.
The new features implemented in Killing Floor 2 are amazing. Killing Floor 2 ramps up the gore with a proprietary, high powered persistent blood system bringing new levels of fidelity to the genre. Players will send entrails, severed limbs, and blood flying as they wade through hordes of enemies. But they need to watch out! If caught, enemies will rip them, and their entire party limb from limb. New enemies and fan favorites from the original game are back with expanded and smarter artificial intelligence, dishing out powerful attacks, working as a group to weaken the player’s party and pushing the challenge level and fear factor to new levels. Perks from the original game have been re-imagined with more added to the fold. All perks now progress with meaningful talent choices that amplify different play styles, giving players a progression path that is expansive and full of rewarding milestones.
So, with all that said – why am I reviewing a game that is exactly what the fans wanted? Well, there’s a few nitpicks that I’ve picked out, and more that the community playing the game have mentioned in the forums, so the game is far from perfect. But before I mention any of the negative aspects, let me just give praise, where praise is due.
The visuals are just amazing. I honestly didn’t think I was going to be able to play this game on my run down old PC, but surprisingly, Killing Floor 2 only requires 3GB of RAM to run, so a lot of optimisation has been done under the hood to make the game look as good as it does, whilst avoiding alienating those with inferior machines, allowing most gamers who own a PC the capacity to play the game.
The new boss. I’m in the minority when I say I like the new boss, since many have complained that he is too hard to beat. I like the challenge that he presents, and don’t believe him to be all that difficult. If anything, I would suggest adding more bosses, so that the boss you encounter on each map isn’t always the same. Perhaps bring back the Patriarch? And on that note – come on! The Patriarch was REALLY hard. If he got close, you were DEAD. No question about it. The one sure fire way to beat him was to litter the place with bombs, and lure him to walk over them, then hitting him with everything you have, before he decides to insta kill you.
Balancing – my god this was an issue in the previous game, where certain classes excelled and others, not so much. In Killing Floor 2, no matter which class you pick, you have a use. The Berserker can tank hits, commandos can help others see cloaked enemies and dish out good damage, medics keep everyone alive whilst they do their best to kill that Scrake that noobish level 2 Berserker aggroed before everyone was ready and the support class can replenish ammo, weld doors shut faster and deal large amounts of damage with the only gun worth buying, the AA-12.
Now, whilst I may appear negative, I love this game, and it’s going to be a blast for anyone who makes the purchase, but you know us Brits, we have to complain about something. Since the game is in early access, the game has several bugs, most of which cause crashes to the game, most of which are known about by Tripwire, and are currently undergoing patches in order to fix them. The boss, yes I said I like him, but I hate trying to kill him with other players. Most players will just shoot on sight, but there is a technique to killing him, which again, involves some teamwork. A failure to tackle him in the correct fashion can lead to team wipe out in minutes. I guess what I’m trying to say in a nutshell is that I don’t like other players and their stupidity.
The AA-12, whilst being one of my go to weapons, is a little overpowered. As the support class, you literally don’t need to even bother with the other weapons, within 3 rounds of not spending, you can get this beast of a gun for a mere $1500, and it decimates everything in a single clip. Although ammo is ironically limited for the user, the gun packs enough stopping power to defeat the boss on hard mode without the need to change weapon.
The achievements, get all the dosh on a each map style ones, there are 30 hidden dosh locations on each map, which give you nothing except for the achievement, and some of them are really quite hard to find. I’m not saying that the game doesn’t need achievements, but a scavenger hunt whilst fighting the zeds makes for a boring run around the map 50 times, looking both high and low, whilst keeping one zed alive to find all the dosh, and with he help of youtube videos and walkthroughs, this isn’t exactly challenging, or fun, but just something every completionist needs to go through in order to get that 100% ratio for the game.
Other than that, I can’t complain, wow. My negative moments in the game really aren’t stacked very high, but rather just nitpicks, since games we often have high expectations of or that we enjoy we always look to how they could be better in some way or another. This game, needs very little in order to become an outstanding title, just more content please.
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