Killing Floor 3 is a case study in contradictions, positively iterating on the best aspects from the series’ past while introducing confusing features that would make more sense in another game.
Put simply, the new changes make Killing Floor 3 a AA-feeling horde shooter with a battle pass. It’s a pick-up-and-play arcade game with a loadout system. But most bafflingly of all, the game introduces a complex, grindy weapon modding system even though there’s a rather limited arsenal to stuff all those extras into.
Despite these incongruities, developer Tripwire Interactive has crafted a bloodier Killing Floor game with faster-paced arcade-style zombie killing action than in previous installments. I found myself frantically zipping around the map as I was overwhelmed by armies of the dead, utilizing ziplines and side-dashes to escape their clutches — a fun flow reflecting a refined balance of danger and death-dealing.
If you’re a fan of the series, this game will feel comfortingly familiar to you, even if some of the new features create an uncomfortable friction when they rub up against the beating heart of Killing Floor.
Killing Floor 3 Review: A Gorier Zombie Killer Than Call of Duty for Brainless Fun
At the end of the day, the Killing Floor series is all about getting together with friends, turning your brains off and shooting massive holes through the undead.
Its round-based gameplay is reminiscent of Call of Duty’s zombies mode, but Killing Floor’s challenging special zombies and end-of-match bosses have always made the series more interesting to me. Even so, Killing Floor 3 stumbles the hardest when it tries to replicate the live service hooks from other more broadly played arcade zombie co-op experiences.
I’ve sliced, diced and exploded thousands of zombies in previous Killing Floor games, and though it was satisfying to watch that carnage unfold, none of it could hold a candle to the bloody mess you can cook up in this sequel.
In Killing Floor 2, high-caliber weapons tear zombies apart, turning them into cartoonishly separated bits and pieces on the floor. Killing Floor 3 takes the gore system a step further by letting you eviscerate still (un)living zombies.
I enjoyed blasting away at the hordes and watching limbs come undone — a crazy explosion of lead might take a shambler’s legs off just below the knees, wild arterial sprays painting the ground red as the zombie continues to crawl forward. A well-placed headshot blows a hole through the creature’s skull, leaving pieces of flesh and jawbone intact like a twisted blooming flower as the zombie finally stops moving for good. It’s a very satisfying yuck fest.
Ballistic gunplay feels sickeningly kinetic and impactful, but this advanced viscera system extends to other damage types too. My favorite class, the Firebug, wields flare guns and flamethrowers, scorching the battlefield — and the zombies. Their flesh blackens and chars as they push their assault, which actually helps me understand which enemies I need to spread my flames at next.
As you experiment with cold weapons, acid sprayers and other dangerous goodies, you’ll find there’s a surprisingly deep amount of visual reactions to your attacks. There may not be as much gratuitous blood and guts in Killing Floor 3 as there were in its predecessors, but this new system feels more rewarding — and has a true impact on your moment-to-moment gameplay.
Arcade-style gameplay gets a tactical upgrade
Killing Floor 3 is still full of mindless first-person shooter action, but it’s a game that also rewards you for thinking about your team composition, positioning and environment.
The round-based mission gameplay loop returns, and you’ll quickly get used to killing a set amount of enemies and resupplying or buying new guns at supply pods sprinkled around the maps. This time around, new equipment allows your team to reinforce doorways, grab ammunition and healing without returning to a supply pod, and perform more essential functions that are key to your survival. My personal favorite loadout includes the multitool, which lets you unlock armor boxes, repair broken ziplines and activate turrets throughout each map.
In a co-op lobby, everyone can bring a different kit to cover one another’s weaknesses, keep one another in tip-top shape, and fully unlock the defenses and mobility on each map to prepare for the boss round. Each piece of utility adds so much quality of life to each match, and it really feels like the cooperative gameplay is being incentivized more than ever.
Nowhere is this more apparent than with Killing Floor 3’s lack of in-game healing. In Killing Floor 2, you had a rechargeable syringe that could heal you after a cooldown period. If you were able to stay away from the gnashing teeth of the zombie horde, your health points were fairly easy to manage.
Killing Floor 3 limits your healing items — you have to purchase each syringe, and you can carry a maximum of three per round. It’s more important than ever to play around your teammates — covering one another during reloads and smartly routing the horde is the key to success.
I like that the Medic serves a bigger role as the backbone of the team in this game, because it’s one of my favorite perks in the entire series. Medics also have limited ways to heal, but they can dispense it over long distances, and revive downed teammates from far away as well.
Killing Floor 3 feels like it was designed to make every hit feel more punishing, but the game also rewards you more than ever for smartly punching back at the encroaching hordes of zombies. The core gameplay loop hasn’t changed, but Killing Floor 3 adds just enough new variables to a familiar formula to make the series’ wave-based survival maps feel rewarding all over again.
Weapon modding, arsenal variety and class restrictions are serious pain points
Though Killing Floor 3 positively iterates on the flow of large gunfights and overall survival difficulty, the game is unfortunately held back by the introduction of a confusing set of features (or in some cases, a lack thereof) that make no sense for the series. This is where I’d bemoan the introduction of a battle pass, but that’s basically mandatory for live service hopefuls in 2025 — and Killing Floor 3 has stumbled in ways I find much more concerning.
One of the strangest preliminary changes to Killing Floor 3 was the decision to tie characters to perks. In Killing Floor 2, players were able to use any character model with any class: You had control over your aesthetic no matter which weapons and skills you were using.
Locking player classes to a specific character look might seem like a benign move to make, but I think it’s indicative of a broader design philosophy that chases industry trends. Killing Floor 3’s changes to the perk and character system feel like a proto-hero shooter, which isn’t what people play this series for. Community backlash over this was so severe that a decoupling of the perks and characters is one of the first things on Killing Floor’s year one roadmap. I give studio Tripwire Interactive credit for recognizing a mistake, but it feels like a lot of early postlaunch development time is going to be dedicated to fixing unforced errors.
That’s the common through line I noticed with many of Killing Floor 3’s new mechanics: They’re at odds with the arcade horde shooter foundations of the series, and I don’t think many existing players asked for these changes. There’s an inherent friction between the upgrades to Killing Floor’s existing gameplay loop and the ways in which Tripwire Interactive seemingly wants to change the game.
Nowhere does this become more obvious than with the brand-new weapon modding system. In theory, adding different modifiers, statistics and damage types to weapons is a good thing. To actually craft these mods, though, you’ll need to spend hours beating down zombies and destroying conspicuously glowing red tech (cameras, electrical boxes, etc.) around the map to collect the requisite materials.
What’s even worse is that a layer of RNG is overlaid on the system, as each weapon mod you craft gains a random augment that unlocks at upgrade tier three. If you don’t like what you get, you can break the mod down into materials (not as much as you spent to make the mod, of course) and try again and again until you get something that fits your build. It’s obvious that you’re meant to aspire toward the perfect mod, giving players a way to sink extra time into the game — but the whole system feels hopelessly grindy and fundamentally at odds with the pick-up-and-play arcade gameplay of Killing Floor 3.
I also think the arsenal for each perk is a bit barren, and that’s concerning for a game where I just want to maim and rend zombies in increasingly creative ways. There are fewer than 30 guns, launchers and blades in the game at launch compared with Killing Floor 2’s arsenal of nearly 90 weapons (though in Tripwire Interactive’s defense, Killing Floor 3 is a seasonal live service game, and more weapons are on the roadmap for the four postlaunch seasons that have already been planned out).
I think this is partially a consequence of the weapon modding system, since each new weapon needs development time for over a dozen mods that augment their performance. But I just don’t know if there’s enough here to keep folks entertained, since I ended up feeling like I was creating a standardized build with the same couple of weapons each time I played a perk for multiple matches in a row. The loadout system makes this an even more glaring issue, since there’s even less of a point to use certain low-tier weapons once you’ve leveled up enough to bring the big guns in at the start of a match.
There’s still a lot to love aside from the features that move away from the core of Killing Floor’s identity. Killing Floor 3’s massive gameplay improvements have me excited to see how the game develops and evolves in the future, but I’m not sold on it being a complete upgrade from its predecessor.
Do I really want to leave an arsenal of nearly 90 weapons and a pool of almost 30 maps behind? Is it worth it for me to leave my existing cosmetics and perk progress behind? It’s going to be tough for Tripwire Interactive to compete against its own game with nearly 10 years of free updates, especially since Killing Floor 3 is priced at $40 compared with Killing Floor 2’s $30 price tag.
I strongly believe Killing Floor 3 has the potential to surpass the other games in the series, but decisions like characters being locked to perk classes and obtuse weapon modding might prevent the game from being widely embraced by the existing player base at launch. In 2025 — a particularly fraught year for the games industry — that’s not a great feeling to have about a new game.
Killing Floor 3 is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
