Daddy's Home: Killing Floor 2 Brings Back The Patriarch
New levels, class, and more
Killing Floor 2 [official site] continues to roll on through Steam Early Access, and yesterday brought a hefty update that's mostly great and a wee bit divisive. Tripwire's co-op wave survival FPS now has a new class in the dual-wielding Gunslinger, a new final boss in the Patriarch returned from KF1, two new levels, new weapons, a new playable character, and oh, cosmetic items coming as drops, in TF2-style crates, or simply sold in a microtransaction store. Those seem pretty innocuous so far, really.
I've had a brief play of the Return of the Patriarch update, and I dig it. I'm a sucker for forests, and especially ones with rivers and waterfalls I can get in, and Black Forest is a good forest. It feels unnervingly open, with so many routes into the river channel the map flows around, but the side paths winding through the trees are more confined and conventional. The Gungslinger's pretty nice too - lots of headshotting with dual honking great revolvers, which also is very much my My Bag. As for the returning Patriarch, I dig his new extra-mutated look. The new character's a grubby metalhead with a spiked cowboy hat - aye, that's about who I'd expect to find in the Black Forest - though you will need to follow the KF2 Steam Group to use him.
And then, cosmetic things! It's TF2's hats, basically. You'll get drops while playing, which might be e.g. a headband for a character to wear (as I have received). Or you might get a 'supply crate' containing a random weapon or item skin from a selection, which you'll need to buy a key to open. Tripwire are also selling character skin packs directly. So far, it... all looks like how the first Killing Floor ran, really. Only now you can trade and sell your cosmetic things.
Along with years of free KF updates, Tripwire released oodles of paid DLC: 21 DLC packs in all, including cosmetic character and weapon skins, new cosmetic character models, and brand new weapons which worked differently. So far, KF2 only has cosmetic stuff, and if one player on a server has a weapon then everyone can use it. Adding DLC while a game's still in Early Access does feel a bit gross, and Tripwire probably should've mentioned these plans sooner. But as they explained when announcing the Trading Floor Zed-conomy, they need to add and test it now so it'll be ready when KF2 actually launches. Creating new skins also uses a part of the development team who might have a bit less to do nowadays - it's not like artists would otherwise be mucking in with the programming.
I'm sure you can imagine what's happening with its player reviews on Steam.
Anyway! Here's a trailer:
