Novinky
Killing Floor 3 wants to tick all the modern multiplayer boxes
D
Diego Nicolás Argüello
After spending hours in its closed beta, Killing Floor 3 makes its aspirations clear. The shooter has taken cues from popular trends of recent multiplayer games, with traces of Helldivers 2, Destiny 2, and Apex Legends permeating its DNA, to mention a few. If you're wondering how these influences are shaking up the game, here are a handful of highlights to keep in mind before launch.
We can be heroes, just for one wave
Traditionally, Killing Floor has always introduced classes in the way of perks. Sharpshooter, Commando, Support—each perk represents a role that players can assume, offering appropriate weapons to match. Over time, either by completing specific tasks or gaining experience (depending on the game), you level up said perk to gain bonuses or skills, which encourages specialization.
In that sense, Killing Floor 3 is closer to its predecessor, with a number of substantial tweaks. There’ll be six perks available, from Commando to Engineer, and each is tied to a specific character, the combination resulting in the new so-called Specialists. For example, one of the returning characters, Mr. Foster, is tied to the Commando perk.
Each Specialist has access to three skill trees. As you gain experience and level up, you’ll amass proficiency points, which are used to unlock these skills. Each “branch” has up to three abilities to pick from, encouraging planning and experimentation. Furthermore, each skill can be upgraded three times.
It’s worth mentioning that Specialists can buy and use weapons from other classes, so you’re not entirely tied to the corresponding guns that suit your character’s perk. That being said, after you’ve spent a substantial amount of time investing points into its skill trees, you’ll be better off making the most out of the improvements related to the main perk. Still, there’s quite a bit of wiggle room to try different weapon combinations. (You can’t change Specialists once a match has started, so plan carefully!)
In-depth weapon customization
While previous games offered futuristic or non-traditional guns as the occasional outlier or in the form of DLC, the upcoming entry kicks off with them as a foundation, and will allow players to heavily customize them. The base weapons can be customized with a plethora of mods to change their properties and how they feel.
Whenever you’re not taking down undead armies during a mission, you’ll get access to weapon customization. In short, killing enemies, completing objectives, and destroying certain environmental objects will grant you materials which, alongside schematics, lead to an array of mods for your weapons. These mods can also be upgraded, granting yet another layer of player expression.
Some are fairly straightforward, such as adding sights to help with those tricky headshots. Others can shake weapons up quite a bit, increasing fire rate at the expense of more recoil, adding acidic or explosive ammo, and more. Once you have the parts that you want, you can create custom loadouts for weapons, which become available to purchase in the trader in between waves during missions.
The environment is your ally
The multi-tool is your new best friend. In previous entries, players could wield doors using a specific tool, but it seems technology has added more capabilities to it in 2091. Now, environments have an assortment of gadgets and specific actions that you can activate using the multi-tool, and they can be crucial during tough waves.
You can still lock doors to prevent being swarmed by enemies from certain choke points temporarily, but there’s more. In Killing Floor 3, maps present gadgets like turrets, which are surprisingly reliable, as well as armor boxes that let you refill your shield. There are even massive fans that can suck enemies in and quickly chop them up into pieces upon contact. In order to make use of these helpful additions, all you need is to aim your multi-tool at them. The item has only three charges per wave, so choose wisely.
All the modern conveniences
The retail version of Killing Floor 1 was released back in 2009, its sequel following in 2016. Killing Floor 3 is a reminder that a lot has changed in the past nine years, especially when it comes to the modern conventions of what constitutes a popular multiplayer game.
For movement, you can now dash in any direction (albeit with a cooldown), vault over tall surfaces to climb almost anywhere, use ziplines, and even slide on the floor. Everything is snappier, and it’s likely that you’ll be in constant movement, as opposed to previous games where you were encouraged to find a specific spot and camp there for the entirety of a match.
There are many differences, from the UI to the addition of a hub before missions. There’s even a battle pass in the style of Fortnite, displaying multiple tiers with sets of rewards to unlock in each, the biggest unlock requiring you to have all others in the set. If you’ve spent the past few years with popular multiplayer games, Killing Floor 3 will feel pleasantly familiar in many ways. It seems both in 2091 and 2025, times have changed.
Killing Floor 3 releases on March 25 in the Epic Games Store.