Luitenant_Gruber Killing Floor 3 Review

Sequel that I tried to love but just couldn’t. Killing Floor III was the long-awaited sequel in the series and when I learned of its development, I pre-ordered it immediately. I was excited, hopeful and could not wait for it to come out. The experience I got at release was a wild ride of disappointment and sadness. Killing Floor III is, in the core, the same game and principle as the previous installments. You choose a map, fight waves of enemies (Zeds) and in the end, fight a boss. You can choose a class, earn experience and level up, after which you can unlock abilities and skills for your characters and upgrade them. Killing Floor III looks amazing. Graphics, animations and enemy design are all very good and the PhysX effects and ragdoll are spot on. The only problem here, is that all the maps are very, very dark and too “realistic”. The blood and gore effects are great and the carnage when playing a match (and not crashing) is intense. The sound effects are also spot on, and the metal soundtracks are back from the previous games, although not as many and not the greatest tracks in my opinion. Gameplay wise, Killing Floor III plays similar to the other games, with some small tweaks. Every character now has special items with them like a shock trap, multi tools or ammo bags, which can be selected in the load outs. Every class now also has a special attack that recharges overtime. Another new feature is the mods and add-ons for your weapons. You collect parts salvaged from camera’s, digital billboards and antennas to create and upgrade these mods, which can be installed in your weapons. The first problem with this game was its horrible, horrible launch. Never have I seen a game so broken, unstable and f@cked as this game was when it came out. There were constant “Unreal Engine GPU Crash Dumps”, stuttering, performance issues and matchmaking issues. I never crashed so much as with this game, and I was not alone. The developers were doing nothing at first and were just fixing some waiting issues in the matchmaking, better matchmaking and server performance and all kinds of other, useless fixes, instead of focusing all their attention on fixing the game breaking crashes. Then you got hundreds of glitches, which let you just delete a complete mod add-on because you press the wrong button, or the skills that you assigned did not assign but the points were gone. Although my main issue was by far the horrible performance of this game, later on, when everything finally was playable (and I was somehow still playing), the gameplay loop and lack of content got boring really quick. You cannot select the number of waves per level, so variation is a no go. There are three bosses and 10 maps and that’s it. You can upgrade your weapons with mods, as mentioned earlier, but this results in some Frankenstein creations in which your character becomes invincible, and all challenges are gone that the game has to offer. There are also certain spots in levels that makes all the enemies come at you in a straight line, so picking them of is very easy. And for me, the final nail in the coffin is the fact that, even when this game becomes stable, playable and gets more content in terms of levels, bosses, selectable waves, new enemies etc. I just don’t have the same feel with it as the other games, especially Killing Floor 2. I thought by myself that it was just a matter of nostalgia, but many times, after I was done with Killing Floor III and started a round of Killing Floor 2 with some friends, the immense action, optimized game, graphics, soundtracks, beautiful maps, content and experience hit me in the face with an overwhelming force. It was this moment that I realized that Killing Floor III is, and never will be, the true successor for Killing Floor 2 and is just a poor or “okayish” game. I would not recommend it.