Fans of grisly FPS future-hells have something special to look forward to this March with the launch of co-op shooter Killing Floor 3 on PC and consoles. Let’s cut to the chase — this is some gruesome stuff, as anyone who’s played the two prior smash hits in Tripwire Interactive’s series will attest. Here are five things you need to know before blowing the heads off your first enemy Zeds.
Beware the Gorilla Tank Knife
The bad actor in the Killing Floor series is the shady Horzine Biotech corporation. As with any self-respecting capitalist megacorp, Horzine is always looking to innovate with its products, and among the new crop of Zeds in Killing Floor 3 is the imposing Impaler. According to Tripwire, the creative thought process for the fearsome fiend was “M1 Abrams tank meets a silverback gorilla, and then just smashing a giant knife into its face”. It shows.
MEAT is an Acronym, Not Food
Vegetarians needn’t worry about the MEAT options in Killing Floor 3, as the acronym refers to the Massive Evisceration And Trauma system rather than dining choices. What is on the MEAT menu is a mind-blowingly expansive gore system. Dismember limbs in your favorite order, watch legless Cysts come after you using arm power alone, and delight in the flower-like remains of exploded skulls. Persistent blood means you can indulge in floor to ceiling redecoration if the creative urge strikes you — as long as you like red.
There’s an “Oh Shit” Button
One of the new features in Killing Floor 3 that has sparked debate is the move from a playable character class system to specialists who each get their own exclusive spread of weaponry. While series fans might think they’ll miss being able to shove all kinds of violent pyrotechnics into their backpack, game director Bryan Wynia has talked about the addition of “the oh shit button”, which is a specialist-specific piece of kit that will lay waste to a horde of Zeds at — you guessed it — the push of a button. Acid-belching drone anyone?
Jurassic Park Played a Part
While the Killing Floor series counts plenty of impeccable old-school horror sci-fi films among its inspirations — Robocop, Aliens, Predator, and Total Recall, for example — it’s somehow reassuring that there was room for family favorite Jurassic Park to leave its mark on the game’s world of viscera. That said, the film’s wholesome influence extends only as far as dino-cloning corporation InGen, whose ethically questionable practices served as inspiration for Horzine Biotech in Killing Floor. The rest is just more death.
Watch Your Back, Sides, Floor, and Ceiling
Once upon a time in Killing Floor, you could sweep a room with gunfire and take out a ton of Zeds relatively hassle-free. Times change, and in Killing Floor 3 your redoubtable opponents have new tricks. Fleshpounds tower over you, Husks fly, Crawlers take to the walls, Cysts duck and dive, and any one of them can appear suddenly from what the developers call “boo holes”, presumably in reference to the heart-in-mouth jump scare you get when a Zed launches out of one at your neck. But it’s OK — you get zip lines. Weeeeee!
Check out PC Gamer’s excellent Killing Floor 3 making-of film for more insights from the Tripwire dev team.