Killing Floor 3 affirmed for me that there’s something inherently fun about fighting off hordes of zombies with your friends.
Working together to fight grotesque creatures of all shapes and sizes, scavenging for resources, and slowly feeling the challenge ramp up round after round is a strong core gameplay loop that many gaming classics have. Of course, Call of Duty dominates this space with its Zombies modes, with Black Ops 6 being particularly entertaining. Left 4 Dead 2 and Back 4 Blood are personal favorites of mine, but I’ve only occasionally dabbled in Killing Floor, a series of round-based zombie (or Zed) shooters by Maneater’s Tripwire Interactive.
With Killing Floor 3, Tripwire brings the franchise forward to Unreal Engine 5 and flaunts its mastery of this captivating co-op shooter formula. If you’re getting a little tired of playing on the same Black Ops 6 Zombies maps over and over again, you should consider checking Killing Floor 3 out when it launches next month.
An Unreal Engine 5 upgrade
The core gameplay formula of zombie shooters is golden, and Tripwire hasn’t done much to disrupt what works here. Teams of up to six players each chose a specialist and kit themselves out with weapons, tools, and abilities. They are then dropped into a match and attempt to survive as many rounds as possible as hordes of “Zeds” try their best to kill the players. Between rounds, players can purchase upgrades with earned currency from a trader.
Players can return to their home base between matches to hang out with their friends or engage with meta-progression character upgrades. Rinse and repeat, and you have a winning co-op shooter formula that already had its hooks in me after playing just a few rounds with its developers and other journalists. Because it’s not too drastic of a shake-up, you might wonder why Tripwire decided to make a new numbered sequel in the Killing Floor franchise.
Creative Director Bryan Wynia tells Digital Trends that technology was an important reason. He explains that Killing Floor 2 was made on a modified version of Unreal Engine 3 while Killing Floor 3 was prototyped in Unreal Engine 4 before entering full production on Unreal Engine 5. That allowed the developers to do many things they couldn’t before, particularly when it comes to lighting.
“One of the mindsets we had is when there’s a big technological advancement, it really allows us to do things we might not have been able to do in the past,” Wynia tells Digital Trends. “There was all this excitement and accessibility to build something that we’ve always wanted to build. Our lighting team is really focused on dynamic lighting. It’s very subtle, but it’s very impactful. Being able to have very dynamic real-world representative lighting on top of various set pieces in the environment, that element of immersion is increased due to what our team can do inside of Unreal Engine 5.”
Mutating Killing Floor’s core
The Unreal Engine 5 upgrade and bloodier-than-ever gore should entice players, but some other new features make Killing Floor 3 worthy of being a full-on sequel. Two in particular stand out: weapon modifications and round mutations. Modification allows players to customize their weapons with schematics and crafting materials they earn. Wynia emphasized that “the way you interact with the world of Killing Floor is through your weapon,” so they wanted players to have a lot of control over what their weapon can do.
Mutations will pop up after several rounds, adding specific modifiers to shake things up. For example, Fodder makes an overwhelming amount of Crawler and Cist Zeds attack players, forcing them to work together and adapt to overcome it. Wynia tells Digital Trends that one feature Tripwire considered but didn’t implement was friendly fire, although it may live on in some way.
“We did prototype a version of friendly fire early on in development, and it was brutal. There are some really great games out there where it plays really well, but with the amount of chaos and close-quarters combat of Killing Floor with AOE weapons, it was deadly,” Wynia says. “That being said, with the popularity of friendly fire having a resurgence, I wouldn’t be surprised if we explored some mutations for it in the future, maybe called Trigger Discipline or something like that.”
Killing Floor 3’s arenas are already bloody messes after each round, so I can imagine how much more ridiculous that would look with friendly-fire enabled. Regardless of whether or not friendly fire does come to the game, Killing Floor 3 is shaping up to be a worthy technological upgrade for a key playing in the co-op zombie shooter space. If you’re looking for an alternative to Black Ops 6 Zombies or want a new co-op game to play with friends, Killing Floor 3 offers a bloody good time.
Killing Floor 3 launches for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on March 25. You can also sign up for a Closed Beta taking place between February 20 and February 24.
