KILLING FLOOR (PC)
You and your team have a mission: to exterminate all the zombies and mutants that are loose in the area. After that, you should only collect the check again. The objective is simple and the work well remunerated, but those monsters will not make things easy for you. It's time to kill them, it's time for Killing Floor.
That zombies will never go out of fashion is something that everyone knows. Since the visionary director George A. Romero directed 'The Night of the Living Dead' in 1968, the zombies have been with us all these years. How many films revolve around the zombie theme? And not only movies, but all kinds of merchandising that can accompany this fever towards the undead, who does everything possible to reach our brains, hearts, or any juicy part of our body.
And video games were not going to be less. These slow eaters of human flesh have strolled through all the generations of videogames and haves. And do not believe that only zombies live in horror games. We have seen them in platform games, beat 'em up, in tower defense and even playing golf. Although the great success in the videojueguil world came with the legendary Resident Evil of Capcom, where we had to defend ourselves from them in the great Umbrella mansion.
But Killing Floor does not have much to do with the previous games. His 'biggest rival' is the zombie jewel in Valve's crown: Left 4 Dead. This is due to the great similarity, half-heartedly, that these two games have and that we will now analyze more deeply. Yes, zombies are going to have to bore.
Enemies everywhere
If something is not missing in this game, that's the enemies. Killing Floor is a first person shooter in which we must massacre hordes and hordes of zombies and mutants. The most intriguing question is to know why we are in the eye of the hurricane of this avalanche of undead.
History places us in London. The city has been dominated by mutant monsters, not to call them directly zombies, product of a failed experiment of a biological company. That is, the typical argument that we have already experienced on many occasions. These experiments are now out of control and our mission is to exterminate them so that the city returns to normal.
We will put ourselves in the shoes of one of the survivors of the London massacre, being able to choose between two policemen and four soldiers who have managed to withstand the different onslaught of the 'specimens', as the game itself calls them. The choice of the character is important, since each one has abilities that differentiate them from the rest. As we have already said, our only mission is to make clean the maps where the different zombies are found because history, what is said history, there is no more than what was read in the previous paragraph.
What started as a mod??
Killing Floor began its journey as a mod of the Unreal Tournament 2004 in 2005, to be later rescued by Tripwire Interactive and launched for sale via Steam. And if you wonder if things have changed since Killing Floor appeared as a mod, the answer is a resounding yes, but this does not mean there is not much similarity between the game and the mod from which it comes.
Tripwire Interactive already had some experience in the world, since years ago it developed the Red Orchestra mod: Combined Arms that won many awards and allowed the company to develop its own game, which in this case would be the well-known Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41 -45, game that also received enough praise, especially in its multiplayer mode.
So thanks to the success and experience gained in the world of mods, Tripwire Interactive dared with Killing Floor, a game that stands out in multiplayer as the previous titles of the company did. Does it comply with the faith deposited in this company or, on the contrary, do we have a sound failure? You just have to keep reading to find the answer.
Graphics and sound
The graphic level of Killing Floor is not of last generation, but it is something normal for a game that has left a mod of 4 years ago and that has a graphic engine similar to the original mod. The truth is that the graphics in the 3D environment are decent and do their job. In addition, due to the predominance of darkness in the scenarios, the developer can afford not to have the most modern graphic engine to prioritize the setting. However, the game of lights is quite successful and stands out in all the reflections and shots that are produced by firearms.
The modeling of characters is also correct although the design of our enemies is much better. In relation to their animations, we have to give Tripwire Interactive a good tug on their ears and they move in an unnatural way and many times we can appreciate the transition between animations in a rough way. In the enemies this does not happen so strongly.
As a positive note, to say that Killing Floor does not need a great machine to be able to play and that perfectly supports the immense waves of enemies that appear to us. The truth is that although the rate of framerate goes down in these meetings, as is normal, the game does not slow down and remains fluid. In addition, this is achieved thanks to the fact that the level of detail of the scenarios is not too abusive and since there is no physics whatsoever with the furniture, it is very difficult that the game does not run in more humble machines.
Regarding the voices, the game can be quite heavy since there are not many personalized phrases for each of the characters, but at least everyone has a different way of speaking and the dubbing is not all bad, although, that Yes, it is entirely in English. The sound effects fulfill their role in an outstanding way and we will enjoy hearing a very real sound coming from the different weapons we use, as well as the different screams and grunts from our friends the zombies or 'specimens'.
Gameplay
The single player mode can serve as a mini-training to make us a bit with control of the game but I think it is much better to enter directly into multiplayer mode, the real chicha of the game. Although the servers did not work very well at the beginning, little by little these problems are solved to improve the gaming experience. The controls are customizable but are predefined as most shooters: mouse to shoot and rotate the camera and keyboard to move and perform the odd action.
When there is no argument, the game becomes a kill-kill without stopping. But, eye! This does not mean that the title is worse or better, it is simply what is there and this is the reason why the game is pure adrenaline ?? at least in its early stages. Basically we go to an area with our team and start massacring, or resisting as we can, the different waves of zombies that attack us. After finishing all of them, we have to fight against the boss of the level, which will be much more powerful than the rest of the zombies. And this is constantly repeated, so after a lot of playing, Killing Floor may seem repetitive.
To try to mitigate this spiral of infinite tedium we find a cast of six unique characters, more than fifteen weapons and a multitude of zombie types. But not only this, since Killing Floor has a little touch of RPG to make the experience much more bearable. At the beginning of each map we can choose a skill for our character, which will go up as we use it. For example, we can improve our healing capacity if we are healing the members of our team who need it. So we can customize our different characters as we play more and more.
Getting the different weapons in the game, chainsaw and flamethrower included, is a simple task, since we are getting money with each victim that we charge. With this money we can go to the weapons store that will open once a wave of enemies has passed. So the mechanics becomes: kill enemies of the surge, go sell or buy weapons to the store and repeat this process over and over again.
One aspect that has not yet convinced us is that we only have five maps with the original game, since we can clean these maps of enemies in a short time. Fortunately, we have a level editor from the beginning, so the Killing Floor scene has already had several maps that can be accessed as soon as you purchase the game thanks to the SDK tool.
In conclusion
It can not be said that the guys from Tripwire Interactive are not trying. Although Killing Floor has a gigantic competition with Left 4 Dead, little by little the errors that the game had when it was launched are being filed, and the community of mapmakers is very active to make this game worth playing.
The experience may be monotonous at the end, but this is the great burden of most online shooters. So, what Tripwire has to do is follow the path marked by the inclusion of future improvements such as new weapons, maps or characters that make buyers not feel offended by having an unfinished product.
In short, Killing Floor is an extremely fun game in which we will discharge the tension with a clean shot, but which still lacks enough to get close to Left 4 Dead. Although these two titles do not share a game system, the comparisons between them are made continuously, so we expect Killing Floor to get its own identity, as the game deserves it.
- Adrenaline in its purest state
- Inclusion of elements of RPG
- Crowd of elements on screen at the same time
- Large amount of weapons and enemies
The bad
- In the long run it can be boring
- It has no great graphics
- The animations of the characters are too rough
The best
- In the long run it can be boring
- Adrenaline in its purest state
- Large amount of weapons and enemies
- Inclusion of RPG elements
- The animations of the characters are too rough
- Crowd of elements on screen at the same time
- It does not have great graphics
- The bad
Worst
*Noting
It fulfills the expectations of what a good game is, it has quality and it does not present serious faults, although it lacks elements that could have taken it to higher heights.
