GasBandit
Staff member
Same vein as the Left 4 Dead thread, but for a slightly different game - KILLING FLOOR!
I'll be covering Killing Floor 1 because KF2 is still in early access at this time, and isn't complete. KF2 is currently $20 on steam, but you can usually get it for $5 during a steam sale.
The player characters are numerous and largely irrelevant - all differences between the characters themselves are purely cosmetic/auditory. However, the class, or "perk" that you choose to play determines your play style and advancement, and thus is very important! What character you choose to play does not limit what perk you choose to use, and you can change between perks whenever you want (between map waves when actively playing) without losing any progression.
Perks (Character classes)-
The perks are Commando, Sharpshooter, Berzerker, Medic, Support, Firebug and Demolitions.
The commando specializes in assault rifles, and can better see invisible enemies, and can see the health bars of enemies. His damage isn't the best of all the classes, but his job is to make sure the team doesn't get nasty invisible surprises, and to quickly take down enemies he sees are already damaged but may be forgotten/unnoticed by other squad members.
The Sharpshooter specializes in pistols, crossbows and sniper rifles. You have to be accurate when you play sharpshooter, but you're rewarded by much higher amounts of damage for headshots. He's one of the most powerful classes against heavy type enemies, as his headshots will stun what they don't kill, but he can get swarmed by lesser specimens if he's not careful.
The Berzerker is a melee specialist. He gets bonuses that make him tougher at soaking damage, faster movement speed, and bonus melee damage (naturally). He's the bully up front who takes a fire axe or chainsaw to the bad guys and doesn't afraid of anything.
The Medic, obviously, specializes in healing. Anybody can heal another player in the game, but the medic is best at it - his healing supplies recharge faster, he can heal from a distance instead of melee range, and he gets big discounts on armor. A squad without a medic is in big trouble.
The Support specialist primarily uses shotguns, which have excellent target penetration and is good for high burst damage but slow firing. The Support is also faster than other classes at welding/unwelding doors to build or remove barricades to help stop the squad from getting flanked. Also, he has higher carrying capacity that other classes, so in a fix he turns into a rapid fire grenade dispenser.
The Firebug is your all-purpose pyromaniac. He's all about area effect damage over time. If you need to kite something strong, he'll set it on fire with flare pistols, and then you can run away while it burns. If you need a horde dealt with, his flamethrower will cook them to a crisp in short order. The downside is that, as his damage comes over time, he doesn't do much damage up front. Also, ammo can be a factor, as flares are bulky and flamethrowers burn through fuel fast, and reload times are slow.
Finally, the Demolitionist brings the big boom. They get grenade launchers, pipe bombs, even a LAW (a heavy rocket launcher). Nobody does burst damage better than a Demo. But boom comes at a price. Ammo is expensive and heavy, and using explosives against scattered small fries is extremely wasteful - it might leave you empty by the time the big boys come around. So a demo needs the other classes to keep the mooks off him, but he'll shine like a giant diamond when it comes time to fight the patriarch.
Players start off with a basic weapon (at lower levels, sometimes just a pistol). By dealing damage and performing tasks related to their role (IE, medics healing, supports welding), you gain experience. When your perk levels up, you get more bonuses in line with that perk - and at a point, even start getting better starting weapons.
Oh, and one other note - there is no friendly fire damage in Killing Floor... so the Firebugs and Demos can go nuts without fear of hurting their teammates - but watch out.. your OWN explosives/grenades can hurt YOU!
The Specimens:
The enemies of Killing Floor are not "zombies," they are "specimens," sometimes still referred to as Zeds, however. They are not undead or diseased, there is no moral ambiguity here - these things were grown in vats by a deranged bio-geneticist working for a biotech firm called "Horzine" bent on making living weapons and fucking shit up. They need to die. All of them. Here's what we're dealing with:
The Clot
The clot is the weakest specimen, an imperfect clone of Horzine's CEO's son. A first attempt at making cloned servant-beings, but the project was abandoned when the clones started displaying aberrant behavior such as aggression and self-mutilation. It is slow moving and can't take much damage, but they swarm. If they hit you, they will grab on, making you unable to move until you deal with them.
The Crawler
The crawler is weak like the clot, and just as numerous, but it is much more agile. It will skitter along floors and pop out of vents and ceiling panels, jumping and clawing at you. It was an attempt to combine human and arachnid DNA, and everybody hates them for numerous reasons. It's often challenging to kill because players have a tendency to shoot over them, or miss them as they jump around.
The Gorefast
It might look like a slightly bigger, redder clot, but the gorefast is where things start to get threatening. A meter-long blade protrudes from one arm that it will swing at your head, and it is capable of bursts of speed that will let it run up to you faster than you'd like. That said, its head is a big, inviting target...
The Stalker
The clot was made from the DNA of CEO Kevin Clamley's son, and the Stalker was likewise from his daughter, Rachel. An (arguably) failed experiment in camouflage biotechnology, the stalker renders herself almost completely invisible to creep up on her intended victim, decloaking only right before attacking. Fortunately, she can barely take any damage at all, and is often accidentally caught in crossfire. More of an annoyance than a real threat. Commandos are especially good at dealing with them, as they can see through their cloak.
The Bloat
The Bloat... ok, real talk, folks? The bloat is a Boomer with a meat cleaver. The difference is, instead of "attracting the horde," the bloat's acid vomit will deal considerable damage, and when killed, it also sprays around a shower of acid to melt anything nearby. It's slow and pretty easy to kill, but if it gets close, you're going to have a really, really bad day. Disturbingly, the bloat may be the only specimen not cloned in a vat - rumor has it Horzine tried to develop weight loss drugs, and many obese men volunteered for testing... and the drugs were a nightmarish failure.
The Husk
The Husk tends to stay to the back of the pack, as it has a long range fireball launcher grafted onto its arm. It is 75% immune to fire damage, and the fireballs it launches also cause area effect damage over time in addition to the initial explosion. If you're mired down in clots, gorefasts and other minor zeds, a couple husks in the back can make a bad situation worse.
The Siren
An experiment based on the DNA of CEO Kevin Clamely's wife, the Siren doesn't attack physically... rather it emits an ear-shattering, mind-bending shriek that not only does damage to players but also ignores armor and defuses and destroys any explosives - and to add to the fun, she is resistant to headshots. The bane of a Demoman's existence, this one. She likes to sneak in behind packs of other zeds, then cause chaos with her voice. Rumor has it, when Clamely's actual wife tried to divorce him, he had her killed by a siren.
The Scrake
This is where the fun REALLY begins. The Scrake is a 7 foot tall lumbering tank with a chainsaw. He can take tons of punishment, and if he gets that chainsaw into you, you're likely dead if you don't get help fast. If he hits you, it draws you closer, and he can also put on sudden bursts of speed like the gorefast to close the distance and catch you. It's best not to fight one alone.
The Fleshpound
If you thought the Scrake was bad, wait til you see his big brother. 8 feet tall, 300 pounds, rotating blender arms, and a partridge in a blood-soaked fucking pear tree. The most powerful non-boss specimen in the game, he absolutely requires the cooperation of multiple players to take him down. He can soak tons of damage, deal out just as much, and the more you shoot him the madder he gets - and when he goes into a rage, he moves like greased lightning, for all his bulk. When the fleshpounds start showing up, you can usually be sure somebody is going to die.
The Patriarch
The big bad daddy baddy of the specimens. The final boss of any map you play. He is, or rather, used to be, Horzine CEO Kevin Clamely. Tasked with building the perfect super soldier, then having his project shut down for going "too far" is what led to him unleashing his creations upon England, and also as a final act of desperation, modifying himself to become their true "Father" figure. He's got a combination chaingun-rocket launcher grafted onto his left arm, a stalker's cloaking abilities, an incredible amount of damage resistance, three super-healing syringes that will near-instantly recover him to full health, and a hentai-riffic tentacle thing poking out of his chest that drains health to heal him as it does damage. He can run faster than any other specimen, or, indeed, player. It's just not fair - it's total bullshit. And you're going to have to cooperate with everyone to beat him and come through alive in the end.
Overview:
The objective to any session of Killing Floor is to survive until the appearance of the Patriarch, and then defeat the patriarch (with at least one player still alive when it dies). Depending on the game settings of the server you play on, there could be anywhere from 4 to 10 or so "waves" of attacks. A wave consists of a set number of enemies for you to kill, and the wave isn't over until the last one is dead. Between waves, a trader will open shop for 30-90 seconds (depending on difficulty) at random points on the map for you to buy weapons, ammo and armor. You get money from killing (or helping to kill) specimens. Ammo, weapons, and armor can also sometimes be found scattered randomly around the map, though usually not enough to go around.
There are no targeting reticles in Killing Floor. If you want to aim carefully, you will have to right click to raise your gun sights to your eye level. Some people get a little cheaty and put a piece of tape on their monitor where that center dot is at that point so they don't have to right click any more, but bleh. BLEH I say. However, some weapons have scopes that zoom, which are used the same way, and some even have laser sights, so you don't HAVE to right click to aim it if you don't want to.
In most cases, head shots will do more damage than body shots to the specimens. But sometimes you can destroy the head before the specimen is out of HP! The zed will continue to move around and attack, but it will be "bleeding out" and will lose HP quickly, usually dying in a few seconds even if left alone, and it will also lose any "special" attacks it has - Bloats won't be able to puke, clots won't be able to hold you still, etc. So in most cases it's best to aim for the head.
There's no sprint key. You move slower than you might be used to from L4D or other games. But you can move faster by switching to a melee weapon (everybody has a survival knife as a last resort, switch to it by hitting "1").
Your ammo reserves are expressed in number of magazines remaining, but don't worry, it's like L4D - the remaining ammo in your mag are not wasted if you reload early. Bear in mind, however, it's possible for your last magazine to only have a few shots left in it, if you get in the habit of reloading frequently, and then use up your entire mag 2nd to last.
You get discounts on the weapons that are relevant to your perk from the trader, but you're still allowed to buy any weapon you want, no matter what perk it is for. You only get the discounts and bonuses of your currently equipped perk, though, so there's no real reason for a non-firebug to go buying a flamethrower - but in the last round, if you've got any spare carrying capacity, anybody can buy pipebombs to lay explosive traps for the patriarch. The demolitionist won't even mind.
Anybody can heal anybody. You have a healing syringe (weapon number 5). You can also heal yourself by hitting Q, but healing yourself has half the effect for twice the cost (so really is only 25% as effective). So it's best for everybody to be healing other people. As noted above, most medic weapons have syringe launchers built into them, so he doesn't have to run to each person he wants to heal.
Anybody can weld/unweld doors. You have a pocket welder (hit weapon 5 twice). Primary fire welds, alt-fire unwelds. Welding a door will make zeds have to beat it down to get to you, which can buy you time... but it can also seal off escape routes if you get into trouble and are overzealous with your welding. The Support perk welds faster than any other class.
The default alt-fire button is mouse 3 (middle mouse button for most people). Most weapons have an alt fire, though for some other weapons this also functions as the semi/full auto toggle switch. For melee weapons, alt-fire is a slower, more powerful swing. An alt-fire combat knife strike can actually decapitate a clot in one hit, if you aim it right and are lucky.
Finding an ammo case will give you a full magazine for whatever your currently equipped weapon is, and a frag grenade. "G" is the default key to throw a grenade. So, if you want ammo for something that is empty/low, be sure to switch to that weapon before picking up the ammo.
"F" toggles your flashlight on and off. You don't have to worry about startling witches or anything, but the batteries in the light are finite, a-la Half Life. The flashlight recharges when it is off. Not all weapons have flashlight attachments! In that case, hitting F will switch to a weapon that does (most often your basic starting pistol)
If you want to drop a weapon for some reason, the default button for that is "/" (forward slash).
There is VOIP support in game, but it really sucks for quality. Better to use ventrilo.
If you want to give money to someone else, you can throw 50 Pounds (it's the UK after all) by hitting B. Usually this will also cause your character to try to be funny. The money will disappear in about 10 seconds if not picked up! So throw it directly to your intended recipient.
If enough zeds are killed in rapid succession, it will trigger "Zed time," in which everything moves in slow motion for all players. That includes reloading, running and shooting, but at least it will give you more time to think/aim/breathe.
That's about the size of it! If you see me online and want to play, I'm almost ALWAYS down for some Killing Floor. There's THOUSANDS of custom maps and mods out there for the game. The graphics are pretty dated, but the game itself is challenging and fun.
The first game with you, me, Ash, and the randos was nigh effortless. Except for that one part where you died.
