Killing Floor 2 will scare the hell out of you
By Callum Bains, Contributor
There’s a gravity-defying grenade launcher in Killing Floor 2 that keeps threatening to bankrupt me. It’s a very sci-fi kind of weapon, spitting out globs of energy that explode in colorful nebulas before rapidly shrinking and pulling nearby zombies into a bloody pulp. It’s expensive and eats up a good chunk of the money I earn while slaughtering the undead—but every time I’ve got cash on-hand, I splurge, and the Gravity Imploder is pulled right back into my waiting hands.
It’s the theatricality of the thing that hooks me—though if I have to go without, I’m not too worried. I’m just as well served by the radiation-beaming Microwave Gun, the blood-popping Hemogoblin, or even one of the intimidatingly long snipers or souped-up assault rifles, capable of popping zombie noggins with a mere tap of the finger.
Killing Floor 2 isn’t content with handing you a mere shotgun, the stock-in-trade of zombie slayers everywhere. This co-op zombie shooter wants you to mop up its undead mutants as messily as possible, and feel good doing it. Limbs tear off one by one, shotguns turn torsos into mashed giblets, and heads are shattered like watermelons.
Stand your ground for long enough and you’ll paint the corridors crimson. It’s a body horror ballet that does wonders for the ego, and gives you the impression of possessing almost godlike destructive powers. Wait for ZED Time—or bullet time by a more zombified name—to trigger, and the world desaturates into near-grayscale, with only strains of red retaining their color. Loose viscera has never looked so stylish.
The mercenaries you inhabit are almost as bloodthirsty as the monstrosities you’re shooting. Between landing the perfect headshot, planting a well-timed rocket in a zombie’s face, or propelling undead corpses through the air in cartwheeling arcs, you’re not so much surviving the apocalypse as toying with its harbingers.
Until the fantasy crumbles, that is. Killing Floor 2‘s waves of zombies inevitably become overwhelming. Leaving the safety of your squadmates is a recipe for instantaneous slaughter. And the basic Clots that were once fodder for the barrel of your gun reach such great numbers that a simple wrong turn can quickly spell your end in a grotesque tangle of limbs.
When you’re the last surviving member of your squad, left to take potshots at the chainsaw-wielding monsters sprinting towards you, the blood-soaked corridors suddenly take on a rather different meaning. And despite all the weapons you acquire, the end-of-level boss will inevitably make the machine guns and dynamite and assorted sci-fi gadgetry you’ve picked up look more ticklish than lethal. The veil drops, and you realize how squishy you really are.
Killing Floor 2 is not a cognitively nourishing game. At times it even touches on the slapstick. Characters talk in thick London accents and British idioms, and its zombies regularly appear in seasonal costumes. But it’s also something of a trickster. It sells you the violent zombie-mulching fantasy before pulling the rug. Only when you’re helplessly unloading your final magazine, the eyes of your dead teammates on you and the spiked gauntlets of a Fleshpound rotating in your face, do you realize that this is no pulpy power fantasy—it’s horror.
You’ll find Killing Floor 2 on the Epic Games Store.