Killing Floor 3 Review (PC): Dead Zeds & Playerbase

I’m going to put this out there straight away… I HATE FORCED MULTIPLAYER GAMES. Killing Floor 3 sounds cool from what it says on the Steam summary page, but when you quickly find out that this game is made to push you to play with random people on the internet when less than 2000 people are playing worldwide a couple of weeks after launch, you get turned off wanting even to try playing the game to begin with.

Name: Killing Floor 3
Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox Series X/S
Developer: Tripwire Interactive
Publisher: Tripwire Interactive
Game Type: First-person shooter
Mode(s): Single-player, multiplayer
Release Date: July 24, 2025

Story… What Story?

Given that this is the third game in the Killing Floor series of games, I thought there might be some sort of story as to why you are dropped into zones to fight “Zeds”, the Killing Floor 3 version of zombies/undead. But no, there is no story, no nothing. If there is something that a game like Killing Floor 3 needs, it’s a story, especially in the solo mode. Give me some reason as to why I am putting my life on the line to gather biocrap and other junk for this mysterious company that I’m working for. Hell, Resident Evil managed to do more with Operation Raccoon City & Umbrella Corps, two of the worst games in that series. But sure, I’m guessing there are some lore books out there or something hidden deep in audio files or something that might give me a hint as to what the fuck is going on in Killing Floor 3, but I’ll be damned if I could find it in the time I gave this game to impress me in order to keep going.

Graphics… When they load.

Ok, sidebar for a moment.

Am I the only one is getting sick and tired of waiting for 10-15 minutes while the game renders/caches shaders when loading any modern game on PC? With Killing Floor 3, I was waiting for 15 minutes every single time that I loaded the game up while it was doing whatever “rendering shaders” does in order to get the game to run for a single session… If the game loaded at all. Sometimes the whole shaders thing would crash the game and force me to start it up all over again, meaning if I was 12 minutes into the waiting screen, I would restart from the beginning again. I’m sorry to the developers who spent a lot of time to get Killing Floor 3 to look amazing on PC, but I’m dropping a whole point for a 15 minute mandatory loading screen on a 2025 PC. If a console can load this game quicker than a PC can, then you’re going to lose points in my eyes.

That being said, Killing Floor 3 is a very good-looking game. The Zeds, while mostly simple looking at first, start to look detailed and gross in the way that they blend human-style looks in with some cool-looking cyber enhancements that turn them into something from a horror-cybergoth movie.

The battle grounds, while feeling very boxed in at times, do make you think about looking around for that hidden advantage point, which is hidden really well, thanks to the use of light and shadow to hide places you wouldn’t see normally unless you use your flashlight. However, while you are looking at these areas, you’re going to see how small most of them really are. You’ll be boxed into a building and have very little room to move due to a lot of unneeded clutter around, like the game’s areas are designed to be as annoying as the swarms of Zeds that you are going to be fighting all the time.

Gameplay

Killing Floor 3 is a horde shooter… That’s it. If you have played things like Left 4 Dead or Back 4 Blood, then you’ll know exactly what Killing Floor 3 is all about.

For the most part, you are dropped into an area that you choose, pick the difficulty, and hope your loadout is enough to get the few little objectives in that area and survive wave after wave of Zeds, which will come at you in overwhelming numbers and different varieties. Zeds start out with basic and armored versions, then start adding in more cyber-Zeds, ranging from some weird raptor-looking Zeds that stun you with a scream, flame-thrower Zeds, and Boomer Zeds (which work like the Boomers from Left 4 Dead). I’m sure there are more Zeds roaming around, but since I often got my ass handed to me in 99% of the areas due to getting trapped in a corner, or overwhelmed by the various long range Zeds spamming stun locks over and over, I didn’t stick around to find out what else was waiting around the corner… And no, I don’t suck at these games, I just ran into the biggest problem with Killing Floor 3: A lack of players.

Killing Floor 3: Replayability Eventually

The biggest problem with Killing Floor 3 is that this game is made to be played with a group of up to 6 players. However, at the time of writing, there were fewer than 2000 players online in the last 24 hours according to Stream Charting, meaning that the chances of getting a multiplayer game going were less than nothing. I tried for hours to get a multiplayer game going so I could experience Killing Floor 3 in the way that it is meant to be played, and I never encountered another player. The multiplayer timer would tick down and lock me into a single-player version of the multiplayer experience, leading to me getting my ass kicked many times over, as the game does not adjust for this situation. Sure, there is a solo player mode, but the game doesn’t enter into that mode when it cannot find players; it just keeps going with the multiplayer version.

While there is a solo mode that you can go into, where things are balanced more for that gameplay, you do get the push from the beginning of the game to go into multiplayer and join others in the fight against the Zeds. So that’s what I did, I played the game it was meant to be played, and it didn’t feel like fun. Hell, even having a few bots would make things feel a little bit more like the game as it should be, like Left 4 Dead or Back 4 Blood do. But just going through Killing Floor 3 alone just felt like a bad Resident Evil style game that put a lot of money into something that ultimately wouldn’t pay off.

Killing Floor 3: Dead on Arrival

I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I jumped into Killing Floor 3 after the big drop off, or if there was even a big launch peak for the game that I also missed, but my experience with Killing Floor 3 left me feeling deflated and sorry for the developers who put their time and effort into a game that just feels dead on arrival.

At it’s core, there is a really good horde shooter here, something that I haven’t been able to find since my old Left 4 Dead 2 days with my friends, and I’d love to bring them into Killing Floor 3 and let them experience the awesome graphics and fast paced gameplay it offers, but I don’t want them wasting full price on a game that would only be used when we all get together and unplayable at all other times.

Review Disclosure Statement: Killing Floor 3 was provided to us by Tripwire Interactive for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more details.