Killing Floor 3 Is a Shooter By the Numbers

By Diego Nicolás Argüello | July 24, 2025 | 9:00am

Video Games Reviews killing floor 3

Killing Floor 3 Is a Shooter By the Numbers

The identity crisis of Killing Floor 3 was evident from the very first reveal trailer back in 2023. It shows a humanoid sliced open and being surgically intervened against its will to become yet another copy of a Fleshpound, one of the special enemies in the zombie-killing franchise. Bright red neon lights replace its eyes and chest, and most of its body is now mechanical. It’s been programmed to do one thing and one thing only. Fail at it, and the next copy on the factory line will come around.

Killing Floor has been around for 20 years now, first appearing as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004. The premise is one you’ve heard a dozen times: there are zombies to kill (sorry, zombie-like specimens called ZEDs), and some of them have different capabilities. The Scrake uses a chainsaw, while the Siren screams so loud that her sound waves destroy grenades in mid-air. Unlike the Left 4 Dead duology, the Killing Floor games center around surviving enemy waves to get cash and purchase better weaponry right until you got to the final boss.

I played 2009’s retail version of Killing Floor for hundreds of hours. The option for dedicated servers led to a surprising number of local sessions hosted at all times. Eventually, this led me to a group of people who played consistently, and I joined in. Again, the premise is nothing to drive home, but Killing Floor didn’t try to be anything more than that. Instead, it stood out for being gritty and vicious, both in its violence and the impact weapons have on ZEDs, and in the overall ambiance of each map, resembling the spirit of a B-horror movie. The soundtrack also played a part in this, surprising my young self with how heavy it was, with a myriad of guttural screams and a snare drum that sounded like somebody hitting a massive can with a monkey wrench.

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But the sequel didn’t follow suit, instead putting the first nail in the coffin for that initial vision. Killing Floor 2, released in 2016, embraced the modernity of the past decade by pushing for better tech in the visual sense, but also in a way that veered from the concept of its predecessor. Instead of leaning on the B-horror side of the series, it went the other way, betting on the loose lore snippets about a corporation running experiments on humans and later creating clones. It turned out to be more about labs with future tech rather than old farmhouses where it was easy to imagine the stench of bodies in a state of decay. This was reinforced by some of the weapon and enemy additions, including straight-out robots.

Killing Floor 3 review

When talking about Killing Floor 3, developer Tripwire Interactive described it as a “direct sequel” to the first game, carrying its “darker, grittier tone.” But as both the reveal trailer and equally short video snippets showed over time, the tone of the presentation was closer to the likes of Doom Eternal (up to and including a Glory Kill equivalent). Moreover, Killing Floor 3 doubles down on the service aspect of its predecessor, which came out during a weird in-between phase of the industry. You could still host and find dedicated servers, but the adoption of industry trends like microtransactions via crates and keys was already set in place. Now, the third installment is a full-on live service game with a premium currency and battle passes.

The history lesson above is important to understand just how much Killing Floor 3 seems designed to be a fleeting experience, allowed only to exist for as long as the lights are on. Its life is dictated by seasons and live servers, rather than allowing players to create their own sessions at their own pace. Tripwire has made every possible effort to remind you that it’s no longer the early 2000s, nor the 2010s. Now, the blueprint of a shooter—a live service shooter—is seemingly easy to mimic, produce, and distribute.

It’s hard not to play Killing Floor 3 and see the influences of Apex Legends in its traversal, as well as Destiny 2 and the modern Call of Duty games in its myriad of resource-gathering and weapon loadout options, respectively. Many of the decisions made had such a sour impact on the game that when Tripwire opened its doors via a beta mere weeks before its original release date, the developer realized it had “missed the mark” and decided to delay it. Since then, Tripwire has posted updates about how the team decided to lean (yet again) into what made the first game stand out. But the final result is a living corpse of leadership decisions and design pivots, a zombie of a game that has dragged its feet for so long that no one can stop it. Tripwire might have grabbed a brush and a bucket of blood and painted the floor and walls of its existing levels while dimming the lights to evoke the original ambiance. But the problems are as clear as day from the moment you boot it up.

Starting a session in Killing Floor 3 takes you to a lifeless hub area, shaped as a station for the six current Perks (a fancy name for classes) available in the game. There’s a massive computer that lets you select a map and difficulty to start a mission, as well as an armory where you can access the workshop table to customize your weapons. Or you can simply press TAB and have all of these menus at hand—including the ones for the shop and the season pass, of course. To actually start a match, you have to physically get inside a helicopter in the middle of the hub. It’s the one relevant interaction in the whole space, and yet it feels unnecessary.

The good ideas that are present are executed in head-scratching ways, or demand a commitment that’s hard to accept. Classes have skills again—way more than in Killing Floor 2—and some of the higher-level ones sound enticing, but the grind doesn’t seem to be worth the effort. This also applies to adding mods to your weapons, which takes a considerable time due to how dependent the upgrades are on gathering materials, which are obtained by killing enemies or destroying environmental objects.

The moment-to-moment gameplay was rough during the first beta. Now, it’s serviceable enough, although that depends on the weapon you’re using and whether it has enough attachments to make it somewhat viable. Not just in damage alone, but in whether you can feel its impact on ZEDs or not. Sometimes, this doesn’t matter. ZEDs often run aimlessly in circles or stand somewhat still in place, while some animations seem rushed in conception. Bosses, in particular, are bullet sponges that feel like a paper sheet instead.

If Tripwire is afforded the time, it’ll likely continue to issue patches to keep on improving all of these rough edges. But some of its foundational decisions will be harder to iron out. One of the classes, the Sharpshooter, is tied to an operator who canonically worked as a hunting guide in Córdoba, Argentina. Normally, depictions of Latin American writers tend to push for incorrect accents and dubious use of Spanish, while captioning is rarely factual. But the operator, named Luna, does the unthinkable, actually talking with an Argentine accent and spouting phrases that I, an Argentinian, hear and say regularly. Yet, she sounds nothing like someone born in Córdoba, a province with a predominantly distinct accent. Even if the approach to the voice over was to have a more traditional Argentine accent instead—which, in other words, is how people primarily in the city of Buenos Aires sound—the result comes out as forced. In fact, the more I played, the more I realized Luna doesn’t just miss the mark in terms of sounding genuine. The character is basically reading a list of “top 10 Argentine phrases” while forcing the accent in a way that sounds almost like mockery, while the captioning tries and fails to actually capture slang. And yes, she also speaks Spanglish at times, ticking the box of yet another trope.

I’ll likely continue playing Killing Floor 3. I’ll happily reserve a few Friday nights with my friend group for old times’ sake. We’ll likely bemoan the loss of identity of the series once more, while trying to ignore the microtransactions thrown in our way. We’ll complain about how bad a stereotype Luna is. We’ll have a hard time trying to tell a Fleshpound and a Scrake apart, considering how the art style is embedded in the grey and bland monotone of your usual modern game using the tech of Unreal Engine 5. But when the experience tries to be a copy of everything but itself, and not one of its limbs seems designed to stand out and leave a lasting impression, does any of this matter?

Killing Floor 3 was developed and published by Tripwire Interactive. Our review is based on the PC version. It is also available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Diego Nicolás Argüello is a freelance journalist from Argentina who has learned English thanks to videogames. You can read his work in places like Polygon, the New York Times, The Verge, and more. You can also find him on Bluesky.