Killing Floor 3 Review (PS5) – Modern Gorefare

It’s been a long nine years since we’ve had the pleasure of slaughtering Zeds. After a rather underwhelming initial response to stress tests and betas, which led to a delay, Killing Floor 3 has begun the latest wave of violent abomination carnage. Have the Zeds benefited from the extra time in the incubation tubes? Well, that will depend on your experience with the series thus far and your patience in sticking with it.

I spent over 50 hours with Killing Floor 2. I earned the platinum through hard graft, winning matches on Hell on Earth difficulty and scooping up the ridiculous numbers of collectibles on each map. Along the way, I came to love its niche brand of gory, bloody and savage wave-based destruction, alongside its satisfying gameplay and excellent class customisation options. It’s with this in mind that I came into Killing Floor 3 excited, and it’s worth bearing in mind throughout this review.

(Don’t) Bring Me That Horzine

70 years have passed since the events of Killing Floor 2, or so I’m told. In that time, the Horzine corporation had dabbled in some extracurricular Zed biology, forming an army of bloodthirsty monstrosities. As part of the renegade Nightfall group, it’s your job to drop in, shoot up every biomechanical nasty in sight, and make it home in time for tea.

I’m not going to pretend like I had any idea what was going on in the previous game’s story, and the same applies to Killing Floor 3. Aside from set dressing and an exceptionally loose narrative thread of “missions” that last all of an hour, repeated over the game’s maps, there’s little to no exposition. There are some Codex entries if you’re so inclined, but I’d hazard a guess that, like me, you’re not here for the story. Nor should you be, because this entry’s lore is more piecemeal than eating a solitary grape for breakfast.

However, what you will be doing is facing off against up to six waves of Zeds upon each expedition you take. There are a handful of maps, half a dozen Perks (operators or classes), a social hub area and a hell of a lot of Zeds to kill. Given that the series has always had a penchant for ridiculous weaponry and an arsenal of explosive tools, we’d best discuss the Perks available for this third iteration.

Create-A-Farce

Unfortunately, I don’t have particularly good news to report. There are six Perks available at launch: Commando, Firebug, Engineer, Sharpshooter, Medic and Ninja. Each class comes with four weapons, one provided as default with a sidearm, three more available through in-mission currency accrued through separating Zed limbs from bodies. Instantly, the underwhelm strikes me. All the previous weapon varieties, where you could purchase a small nation’s depot in the second game? That’s gone.

While you can customise each weapon with crafted mods (with three upgradable tiers for each mod), the new system pales in comparison to what came before. After a single run with a Perk, you’ll already know their entire kit and loadout, with no means to keep their class fresh through multiple dozens of hours. Like a shotgun slug to the face, it hits even harder when you realise you may not even like one or two of the available four, or that they’re less viable than the others.

I certainly won’t scoff at the explosive rounds shotgun I pieced together with mods. It was a sadistic delight to tune up my engineer’s starting weapon to the point I was a walking artillery battery. Still, it just doesn’t offer the same longevity as the previous iteration’s model. However, Killing Floor 3’s Perks have unique and interesting gadgets, while their equipment slot can use any of the available tools or traps, which is relatively nice. No swapping Perk mid-match, though, which is another baffling change.

This Is Zediculous

Surely, once you get boots on the ground and you’re sprinting and sliding through blood, gore and mechanical limbs, everything is forgotten? Yes, and no. Core gunplay feels and sounds punchy. Assault rifles will pop Zed heads like flimsy watermelons, while grenades or katanas will have severed bodies soaring up into the air with a satisfying *plop* back onto the ground. Movement feels balanced between agile and grounded, and pinging headshots still feel great.

The issues arise around the more intricate mechanics. Dodging, for instance, is either utterly useless or terribly inconsistent, especially against Fleshpounds or bosses. Sprinting would sometimes break, only allowing for a light jog for no discernible reason. Enemy attack animations also rarely line up as they look like they should. More often than not, you’ll think you’ve delivered the coup de grace just in the nick of time, only to find their flailing body still hit you with the full force of a rocket anyway.

Killing Floor 3 struggles with making the gunplay and general wave-based survival feel inherently satisfying like its predecessor. Bosses, Fleshpounds and Scrakes feel ridiculously bullet-spongy, even on Normal or Hard, while their far-reaching, insurmountable movesets and hitboxes make them an unfair chore to fight at times. It is redeemed in moments when the enemies number in the hundreds and your squad is wreaking utter devastation with legs flying in all directions, but compared to 2, this entry feels mechanically loose.

It’s Murder On The Kill Floor

I know my review thus far has been quite negatively oriented, and I want to reiterate that Killing Floor 3 is not a bad game by any means. Upgrade trees for each Perk provide meaningful changes to their Gadget, throwable and passive abilities. Mutation rounds offer substantial buffs and debuffs that savvy players can take advantage of. The sheer number of enemies and effects that can be ongoing at any moment is a violent sight to behold.

My main conceit is that in almost all areas, the game is a step down from what we already had. The level design in 3 is less interesting or engaging. Roaming around offices, sewers, or an army depot never gets more exciting, no matter how infatuating the slaughter. Moreover, each mission is limited to a small number of interactable objects (turrets, armour stores and ziplines). It’s also far too easy to set up zipline routes that negate enemy waves by allowing you to kite them far too predictably.

Difficulty scaling in 3 is as all over the place as the heads, arms and legs I’ve blown off with my Engineer’s pulse cannons. I’ve cleared the weekly mutation on Hard with a level 7 (out of 30) character solo, but when Josh and I joined up with fellow players, we’d be dismantled by the up-scaled boss encounters within seconds. It’s demoralising spending all that time mincing through the early rounds without issue, to have that time wasted by a ludicrous jump in challenge. Oh, and for one of the bosses, it just throws more of them at you, at once. Wonderful.

Kill The Blights

Between rounds, you can return to the Stronghold. Acting as a social hub, you can utilise this space to tinker with Perks, abilities, crafting mods for weapons, use the shooting range and stare impatiently at your teammates while you wait to depart on your next mission. This might be a nitpick on my part, but I genuinely don’t see the need for a hub when menus serve the purpose just as well, and more efficiently.

The hub itself is fairly bland, with some gameplay hints dotted about and a secret area alluding to… something. Thankfully, it helps facilitate cross-play and easy readying up with other players, even if there’s nothing to do with them in it. I feel like this is a microcosm for Killing Floor 3 in general – additions or changes that don’t meaningfully improve the gameplay formula. Often, I wondered if this modernising of the series might actually kill the niche excitement the previous entries had developed.

I will say that the crafting system is great, though. During rounds, you’ll acquire resources that you can invest into new ammo types, suppressors, sights, mags and more. They hugely improve your weapon stats, and while they’re more expensive in turn, this is balanced by your Perk getting a larger money pot as you level them up. It’s a shame that most mod upgrades are reliant on one or two key resources that are far less plentiful than the rest, as this bottlenecks progression, but I’m willing to let this slide as the system itself is very rewarding.

Post-Zedpocalypse

Killing Floor’s biggest appeal remains the absolute gluttonous carnage that ensues when you embark on bullet-ridden slaughter with other like-minded psychopaths. To this end, Killing Floor 3 offers up to 6-player co-op, with hundreds upon hundreds of Zeds included in single waves. As with anything in life, it’s much better with friends, or even randoms, unlike a flamethrower colonoscopy, which is what those Scrakes deserve.

Moreover, the soundtrack smacks so hard it’d knock a baseball for a home run, make it round and then hit another. The heavy metal tracks slap you around the ears while the rifle rounds slap Zeds through the skulls. Josh and I remarked often about just how good these dark instrumentals hit, and we struggled not to be impressed over and over as we hummed along. Sensational work, the soundtrack is perfectly composed for the game and deserves real credit.

Alongside ear-shredding tracks, gore is of course an expectant part of any Killing Floor serving. The newly introduced MEAT system will have you tearing, eviscerating and dissecting body chunks with the precision of a sledgehammer combined with supped-up TNT. Blood pours out across the entire map, and the sight of a Fleshpound getting executed with a blade to the gullet never fails to make me happy. I’m not as keen on the decision to make Zed time both A) automatic and uncontrollable to the player, and B) completely grey with only red to permeate the boring palette, though. It makes what should be a slow-mo adrenaline rush seem like a bland stroll to the park with your elderly relative.

You’re Killing It

So, cutting to the chase, do I recommend Killing Floor 3? In some ways, I do. The sheer rush when you overcome a menacingly overwhelming horde of Zeds with incredible firepower and ingenuity is thrilling. Crafting mods to turn your arsenal into a literal war machine is awesome. Hell, even succumbing to a final blaze of guts, gore and gunshots can be badass when the MEAT system and music work their magic in tandem.

However, you’re then sent back to a hub that’s lifeless and pointless. You die from a strike that dodge definitely should have countered. Your run is ended by an enemy getting stuck spawning out of bounds, or a boss gets caught in a fan (both happened to me). You realise you don’t like 2/4 of a Perk’s weapon loadout. You wonder why there are no collectibles anymore, or why nothing in this game feels nearly as good as it did from its predecessor, 9 years ago.

The decision to price Killing Floor 3 at £34.99 feels like a sensible one, because if charged at full price, this would be an incredibly hard sell. What’s new doesn’t really work in and of itself. It’s difficult not to see how, in striving to modernise or streamline the Killing Floor formula, something along the way has been lost. I enjoyed some of my time with Killing Floor 3, but never has it hit the heights of the second entry, struggling to ever truly emerge from its blood-soaked shadow.

Killing Floor 3 is available now on PlayStation 5 (review platform), PC and Xbox Series X|S.

Developer: Tripwire Interactive
Publisher: Tripwire Interactive

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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