KILLING FLOOR 2
There’s no resting in peace with this manic shooter
Uh-oh, a virus is transforming the majority of the population into bloodcraving monsters and, unsurprisingly, it’s falling on our shoulders to stop them. As you should know by now, PC developer Tripwire is bringing its shuffling not-quitecorpses – unpleasant beings known as Zeds – to PS4. Expect more buckets of gore and limbs than an Eli Roth film marathon as you face down the frothing freaks as part of a six-player online crew. Everyone can play differently, too. Perks give you and your teammates the chance to forge individual approaches to combat. Fan of up-close-and-personal action? Brawler gives you close-range weapons and appropriate stat boosts such as an increase to your melee speed. Enjoy patching up mates? Field Medic hurls healing grenades. We plump for the Gunslinger, which lets us dual-wield powerful pistols and pretend we’re Clint Eastwood.
28 SLAYS LATER
We drop into the Evacuation Point map with three other players and begin planning our strategy. We need to survive five waves of Zed attacks in a huge ferry port that has a central ship and roads around it – perfect for attempting to bottleneck Zeds who try and rush us, but disastrous if we get separated from our party. Once the action begins, everything moves at insanely fast speeds as Zeds charge forward and ammo stashes quickly deplete. Zed Time, where the game randomly slows down and overlays an arty filter so we can admire our headshots, offers some respite – as does the inter-round shopping phase.
After four tense waves with our team, The Patriarch lumbers in. A returning boss from the original, he’s an enormous monster with tendrils waving off his back and a gatling gun attached to his arm. Making Quasimodo look like George Clooney, he charges at our group at full speed, knocking us away like skittles before smashing us into a mushy paste. Though our crew is underpowered and we all fall beneath his might, with a full-strength squad of six we can see Killing Floor 2 really standing apart from the shooter crowd. Certainly it’s already proving there’s still plenty of life left in zombie killing.
For PS4 Pro owners, things only get better. Extra horsepower brings better visuals to this disgusting, diabolical blaster. An acquired taste, no question – but those who enjoy this kind of shooter will find it bloody brilliant.
“THERE’S STILL PLENTY OF LIFE IN ZOMBIE KILLING.”