KILLING FLOOR 3

Tripwire Interactive's creature feature is back

- Jake Tucker

The Impaler, the first boss I get to see in Killing Floor 3, sets the scene perfectly. Described as equal parts M1 Abrams tank and gorilla, with a giant blade embedded in its face, the first time I see one it’s exploding through a door frame and barreling straight at game director Bryan Wynia.

The first thing I notice is the giant gorilla-tank hybrid charging towards Wynia, obviously. But after that I spot the winking red lights, armored plates and biomechanical technology. It’s not sleek, things look bolted on, welded together. If this is truly the future —Killing Floor 3’s biggest twist is the jump to science fiction—then it’s more Aliens than Star Trek.

Killing Floor has always been a franchise about mowing down genetic freaks with heavy firepower, but the jump to sci-fi has brought upgrades to evil megacorp Horzine’s stable of Zeds. These Zeds are meaner now, with even the simple Clot being given an upgrade to make them intimidating. The xenomorphish Crawlers can now crawl along walls to ambush you from all angles, too, but the real terror is the chainsaw-wielding Scrake, who has kept his woodworking tool despite the wealth of new technology and added a grappling hook, all the better to pull you across the map and fillet you with an oversized hedge trimmer.

“It used to be that there were tons of Zeds but they were all very similar in height and so you could just line up heads and start shooting. It’s something players love to do, and it’s something we love to do too. But we wanted to increase the danger, and so Zeds are now more like unique challenges, chess pieces that we’re serving up to players.

“There are less Zeds now and the pace of combat is a bit slower, but now you’ll have to deal with problems like the fact Husks can fly now, and they’re shooting down at you from various rooftops.”