Mods, of course. The gaming community is known for its creativity and openness. DLC packs are now as common as chips at a 7-11, but before commercialization, “modules” were a terrific way to enhance the established schematics of your favorite games with layers of fresh, personalized material that gave you an altogether different experience. So you can imagine our excitement when we first learned about this obscure cooperative FPS game that exploded on Steam in 2009, touted as the Counter-Strike sequel.
We will admit that this total conversion of an Unreal Tournament ’04 mod has a long way to go in terms of engaging storytelling, especially when compared to its Half-Time counterpart, whose strength is the interplay between the plot and the gameplay, but Killing Floor makes up for all of its shortcomings with one simple offering: unbridled violence against zombie-like mutants, and that is good enough for us.
The first Killing Floor game, developed on the Unreal 2.5 Engine, introduced us to Horzine Biotech and their hellish experiments with a restrained but effective sales pitch: aim for the head and keep an eye on your ammo. In this game, there will be no hail-Mary bullet-spraying; instead, efficiency, strategy, and battle-savvy sensitivities are required.
For your convenience, I will provide you the essential premise: Horzine Biotech is a military-contracted biotechnology firm that is undertaking genetic alteration and cloning operations for the British government in an attempt to develop super-soldiers. However, something goes horribly wrong, and project leader Dr. Kevin Clamely and his patients morph into monstrous, maimed, and deformed versions of themselves who are ravenous for flesh and will not stay down unless shot in the head; at least, that is how it happens in most cases.
Killing Floor 2 improves on the first game’s limited gameplay components by introducing more bosses and refining the “Perk System” to make the gaming experience more fluid and demanding. Despite its simple premise, the Killing Floor franchise is an all-time classic, thanks in large part to the depraved zeds and their overlords’ utter nastiness. Let us have a look at the Killing Floor Monsters’ Top 12 List.
The Patriarch
The Original Big-ZEDdy of them all, Dr. Kevin Clamely emerges as a mech-mutant and the final boss of the first Killing Floor game; and after getting a good look at him, we can see why. Panicked by advancing governmental pressure to shut down his program, Clamely made a last-ditch effort to produce a true super soldier; he subjected himself to his experiments.
The results were equal parts, awesome and terrifying. The Patriarch is a deranged monster; half robot, half eldritch beast, and the overall embodiment of brutality. His claw-like right arm delivers devastating slash damage, not unlike the thrust damage from his chest tentacles (yes, that is a thing). A plethora of body modifications has amped up his fighting abilities while forcing players to rely on tactics.
His left arm has been replaced by a weapons platform with a rocket launcher and a nasty chain-gun which, by the time KF2 rolls around, he can use WHILE advancing on the players (thank you, scale-adjusted Hell on Earth difficulty). The left side of his body is practically impervious, as it negates 90% of the damage your weapons can inflict. In fact, the only weak spots he has are the bulging right shoulder and his tentacle which only appears when he’s on the offensive. Both of them take 30% extra damage so it’s best to target them, as even headshots are no match for this guy.
Fighting him is no joke; stocking up on ammo is crucial, thanks to his healing injections and the waves of minions he spawns each time he heals. Oh! and if he sees you kill one of them, he goes into rage mode, upgrading all his stats for a few seconds (and we will tell you why later on in the video). Getting to him is made tougher by his cloaking ability, which he activates every time he’s low on health, so set your sights on Going Commando when selecting Perks. Also, when you fight him in KF2, he can shoot up to 5 mortars at your team, so when you start running, don’t stop.
King Fleshpound
The boss version of the Fleshpound units that appear in every Killing Floor installment, King Fleshpound lives up to its billing. The original Fleshpounds were envisioned as the true “super soldiers” by the British: mangled beasts with metal spikes embedded in their skin, metal gauntlets for hands, and a metal visor draped over their eyes.
They were pumped with steroids to make them freakishly huge & strong, but if the torture hadn’t broken their minds, the drugs did, and their chest-jewel is the only thing keeping them together. These rage-filled brutes were tough to kill in the original Killing Floor, but not invulnerable; explosives being their key weakness. KF2 ups the ante by taking this away from King Fleshpound while adding on a bunch of powerful upgrades. His gauntlets negate 80% of the damage your weapons can inflict, and while his head & chest jewel remain his weak spots, that is where the similarities end.
Unlike regular Fleshpounds, the King can block incoming attacks, reducing their effects by at least 10%. And of course, because he’s a Killing Floor boss, he isn’t gonna die after a single round of combat. At 65% health, King Fleshpound can cause explosions by pounding the ground with his fists; at 50%, his jewel fires a beam that can tally up-to 10 devastating hits in a second; and when his health bar falls below 20%, he spawns a shield which needs to be completely dissolved before you can attack him further.
Oh, and did we mention that while all of this is happening, he’s spawning disgusting Quarter Pounders at each phase to fight your team? Yep, the King’s princes are just as nasty as their daddy. It’s best to avoid gimmicks when fighting this one, as fire & poison are weak against him. Hitting him hard & fast is the only way to go, and if you’re smart enough, you can exploit the King’s rage to your advantage.
Abomination
A Bloat is a juiced-up version of Killing Floor’s base units, quite literally bloated because of the poisonous bile they carry in their bodies. This bile is extremely potent & extremely dangerous; if exposed, players can lose vision for a few seconds and their health bar starts deteriorating at a gradual pace. The Abomination is what happens when a Bloat dons a wearable Iron Maiden, starts dual-wielding axes, and spawning toxic little exploding versions of itself.
It is the 4th boss introduced in KF2, and perhaps the most twisted of them all. Bloats are ordinary units so they have ordinary weaknesses. Their bile attack is only effective if they vomit on you or you step into a pool of their disintegrating bodies. Their deaths are almost-comedic, resembling the post-death nervous shocks that are experienced by chickens. A well-placed headshot is enough to deal with these buggers, but there is nothing funny about the Abomination.
It retains all the strengths of a regular Bloat, with none of its weaknesses. It can block attacks, which adds to the protection its armor provides. The armor itself is a pain in the ass; 3 pieces- head, chest & back- all of which need to be destroyed in order to start dealing damage to it, while it goes into a rage-fueled frenzy as each of them are destroyed. And of course their damage-resistance increases with increasing difficulty settings. But Abomination’s truly nightmarish ability is the creation of Abomination Spawns. These tiny creatures rush at your team and explode when they’re in close proximity, immediately poisoning them.
The splash damage alone is enough to make them an absolute nuisance; what makes things worse is their health bar. Why is it so damn high?! The Abomination can suck in your teammates and any other zed units that are nearby, dealing great damage to the former and converting the latter into Abomination Spawns.
Like King Fleshpound, Abomination is also prone to bouts of destructive rage, triggered when its health bar drops to 75%, 50% & 20% respectively. Trust us when we say, it’s the worst 9-second blitz we’ve ever faced in our lives. The Abomination will also try to lure your team in while laying traps by creating massive pools of poisonous bile and swarming you with his Spawns, so a long-ranged battle is the best you can do to deal with this beast.
Dr. Hans Volter
If you’ve ever wondered what Green Goblin would do in an FPS scenario, Dr. Hans Volter is probably the closest thing you will get to an answer. This mad scientist and the primary antagonist of KP2 takes the unhinged maniacal energy of Norman Osborn and turns it up to a 20. He’s been experimenting with genetic manipulation & cloning since World War 2, and in the absence of The Patriarch, is the best-suited leader for those dreadful zeds. He doesn’t have a swanky glider, but his exoskeleton and metallic forearms keep him well-protected, reducing damage by 20% and 80% respectively.
The exoskeleton also acts as his weapons hub, keeping him supplied with 3 different types of bombs and twin MKb42 guns which he breaks out as the battle progresses. When you start fighting him, he keeps his distance and uses his guns to attack your team, but as you keep inflicting damage, he breaks out his bomb bag. At 78%, he starts summoning minions to aid him in his attack, who re-appear twice more to keep you on the defensive. While his attack patterns are fairly predictable- he downright announces his next attack, for god’s sake- there are two things that make him a deadly adversary; his eventual descent into bomb-based megalomania and his shield.
The shield is particularly annoying. At 3 stages during the fight, Dr. Volter will activate his shield and try to run away, only to grab hold of your team members and suck out their health points, replenishing his own in exchange. The only way to attack him is to destroy this shield; otherwise, you’ll end up as a power-boosting snack for him! As he loses health, his attack pattern becomes more erratic, relying on bombs & melee attacks over guns, utilizing entire barrages of HE bombs in his death throes. Luckily, his head is more prone to damage than the other bosses on this list, giving you a simple yet effective strategy to fight him.
The Matriarch
A wise philosopher from the Hidden Leaf Village once said that the next generation will always outdo the previous one. Judging by her powers, it appears Rachel Clamely has done just that. Introduced as an ally in KF1, she still opposes her father but has decided to adopt other… methods to deal with him.
Hell-bent on revenge, she underwent the same procedure as her father, turning into a gut-wrenching rendition of her past self. With her mutated genes, grotesque physiology, and penchant for wanton destruction; it would be a wonder if she wasn’t the most formidable boss out there. Oh, and you better not get in the way of her family business. As the name suggests, The Matriarch has most of the powers that her father had, albeit far more effective and lethal to your team.
Instead of the chain-gun & rocket launcher, The Matriarch sports two energy-based cannons- the plasma cannon & the Tesla cannon- which are basically upgrades of the former pair hopped up on a cocktail of power boosts. The plasma cannon is the most powerful weapon in the game, as it can drain a character’s health & armor, even if they’re both maxed out.
She also lacks any of the design flaws her father had; she is cloaked in armor that protects the cannon & her head, and you must break through both to land direct hits on those areas. Moreover, as you’re fighting her, she will keep spawning various robotic units that will trap you if you’re not careful & quick enough, right up to the moment you break her armor. After you manage to do that, she turns into a berserker, violently lunging at you with her claw & tentacles to deal hefty melee damage. Your best, and perhaps only hope, is to get her out of her armor, as quickly as possible, while ducking-and-shooting.
Husk
Visualize the Extremis soldiers from Iron Man 3 with a flamethrower attached to their right arms; you’d get an idea of what a Husk looks like. These strait-jacketed Human Torches are actually cybernetic soldiers, programmed with a simple yet deadly algorithm: acquire the target, aim, shoot. The only normal enemy units with a ranged weapon, Husks are, in essence, pyro-specimens.
The attached flamethrower is their primary weapon, which works exactly as you might expect it to; billowing out a continuous jet of armor-piercing flames that WILL turn you crispy if you stay within its range for too long. By the time KF2 comes around, they gain the ability to self-destruct and deal massive area damage to all players within its vicinity. They also have a higher chance of spawning robotic counterparts (about whom we will discuss in a while) who just keep pressing the assault.
As a result, they’re amongst the more tricky units to deal with. The fact that their only weak spot is their backpack doesn’t make things better, either, because landing a hit anywhere else might as well be a tickle for the Husk; except the head, of course. Luckily, if you’ve reached level 5 for the Firebug Perk, you’ll be effectively immune to the Husk’s flames, and have a much easier time dealing with it. Our tip is to just aim keep your distance and use microwave attacks as much as possible to eliminate them quickly; you do not want them around for a long time.
Scrake
The Scrake is your answer to the question: what if Captain Hook got jacked, became crazier than he already was, and replaced his hook with a goddamn chainsaw. Scrakes are one of the biggest threats in the KF franchise, and their appearance really conveys that: tortured, expressionless and mangled, with a rage-frenzy that would put its fellow Fleshpounders to shame. Scrakes use Blitzkrieg tactics to make up for their hulking figures, bum-rushing their targets with wild swings of their chainsaws that put close-quarters combat out of the question.
And besides, unlike Fleshpounders, once Scrakes get enraged, they stay that way till they die. So your only option is to take them down before they take you down; and with their deceptively extensive range of attack, they will, if you don’t pay attention. A Scrake’s rage trigger depends on your difficulty level; the tougher the level, the easier it becomes to piss them off. Luckily for you, their heads are extremely vulnerable to damage, and the Gunslinger Perk’s dual Desert Eagles are the perfect weapons to deal with them quickly & effectively; especially when you enter ZED time.
They’re practically immune to fire & poison, but RPGs are like their Kryptonite, able to one-shot them if timed precisely. Bonus points to the developers for making them look like the archetypal slasher villain, complete with a 6-second post-decapitation bleed-out period that is further proof of their psychotic strength.
E.D.A.R
Elite Defense & Assault Robots, or E.D.A.Rs, were originally created to eliminate Horzine mercenaries, but along the way, these corrupted robots started picking their own targets. E.D.A.Rs are a mixed bag; while their inherent fighting capabilities aren’t all that extensive, their agility, numbers advantage, and unique abilities make them excellent support units for the heavy-hitters on the enemy roster.
E.D.A.Rs come in 3 types- Blasters, Bombers & Trappers- and while all of them have the same physical composition, they wildly differ in their battle efficiency. Blasters and bombers are exactly what they sound like; ranged units that use powerful guns & bombs to deliver heavy damage. Remember, E.D.A.Rs aren’t all that strong, and are vulnerable to pretty much every type of weaponry you have except poison for reasons that should be obvious. They compensate for it with their enhanced dodging mechanisms, making them harder to target when they approach a swarm.
The most annoying type of E.D.A.R is the trapper, who has the ability to incapacitate anything within its vicinity- friend, and foe- especially when it is destroyed. You can see why we called them excellent support units: one Trapper lead Scrake’s on an unstoppable gore-fest if they time it well. But unfortunately for them, that is where their usability runs out. For all their unique abilities, E.D.A.Rs are very easy to defeat.
All you have to do is aim for their chest pieces, which gives your hits a 3.5x multiplier. EMPs and explosives are especially useful, as they allow you to incapacitate these metallic gnats without wasting too much time or ammo. E.D.A.Rs are a common sight in The Matriarch boss fight and have a 21% probability of spawning from a Husk in KF2, making them by far the most insistent enemies of the lot.
Gorefast
This sickening creation looks like it came straight out of Ramsey Bolton’s wet dreams. The Gorefast is appropriately named; flayed, mutilated, jawless & missing an arm, this hideous monstrosity is one of the stronger variations of the base units of Killing Floor. The arm that isn’t missing is strapped with a nasty blade that is liable to deal considerable damage upon contact. Gorefasts are seemingly mindless, as they will charge you without a second thought and often sacrifice themselves just to get a hit in.
They’re fast and erratic, switching from hack-and-slash to spinning movements in a jiffy. They can block attacks, deferring 20% of the intended damage, and keep coming for you even after getting decapitated, if their health bar doesn’t run out; although their attacks lose half their strength. KF2 introduces a two-bladed version of the Gorefast called the Gorefiend replaces spawns when a Gorefast dies, mounting the pressure on the players. Shotguns are your best friends when dealing with these mutilated mutes, and while defeating them isn’t nearly as tough as some of the other names on this list, it sure ranks high on the gore-o-meter.
Slasher
The motion capture artist for Killing Floor described this enemy as a “cokehead”; a statement we find ourselves agreeing with more on every replay. With claws for fingernails and talons for feet, the Slasher is amongst the more visually terrifying offerings of Killing Floor. Developed as a more aggressive variant of the base-level Clots (whom we will discuss about shortly), Slashers can be distinguished by the claw marks found on their bodies.
These marks aren’t from surviving a mutiny, though; they’re self-inflicted, which represents the sadomasochistic tendencies of this unit. They are fast, erratic & aggressive, leaping onto players with quick movements, and grabbing them to deal spontaneous melee damage while incapacitating them for a short period of time.
What sets them apart is their seemingly higher environmental awareness. Slashers will execute a front roll to avoid getting hit, making them harder to hit and much harder to kill. An SMG is your best option for dealing with them, as the sustained, successive firing of an automatic weapon leaves the Slasher disoriented, leaving them prone to fatal shots; especially to the head.
Clots
Patient 0. Weapon I. The original subjects of the Horzine Biotech cloning & gene-manipulation project, Clots are the most commonly found units in the Killing Floor franchise. They were created from the DNA of Dr. Clamely’s deceased son, in a twisted attempt at faux-reincarnation. These “clones” were exposed to controlled dosages of serotonin with the intention to make them subservient to Horzine.
That resulted in failure, however, when all the subjects lost their minds and started indulging in casual self-mutilation and cannibalism. Now, they look more like zombies than human beings; wiry, hairless, with blood-caked extremities and absentee genitalia. Clots behave like zombies as well, heedlessly charging at players to deal melee damage with their filed teeth & claw-like nails. Though not the most-effective enemy type by a long margin, Clots form the basis of every enemy-type in the franchise and are to be taken seriously.
A horde of them can easily overpower your squad if left unchecked. Clots are even used as collaterals by bosses, for instance, when Abomination sucks them in and transforms them into his Spawns. While they’re mostly cannon-fodder, they can come in handy when fighting The Patriarch. Because he thinks they’re all “his children” (due to their DNA), The Patriarch will stop attacking you if he accidentally kills a Clot. Conversely, he will rage at you if he sees you kill one, so best avoid killing them in his line of sight. A quick headshot from an SMG is the most efficient way to clear the field of Clots.
Siren
Odysseus had to be tied to a mast, and Orpheus had to sing his way past them to avoid being driven insane, but if there is one thing Greek mythology makes abundantly clear, it’s that the Sirens are bad news. Their sweet songs are known to drive men to their deaths or madness. Killing Floor re-imagines these mythological murderers with their own, sadistic twist. One of two female enemy units in the entire franchise, Sirens is believed to have been cloned from the DNA of Dr. Clamely’s wife. That would explain their exceptionally tortured existence; Sirens are depicted as emaciated, corpse-like women who were bound by metallic strait-jackets in KF1 and metal harnesses in KF2.
Riffing off of the mythological Sirens, Horzine’s mad scientists tweaked their vocal cords to give these women advanced sonic capabilities. Sirens usually deal melee damage as they can’t wield weapons, but their most powerful weapon is their voice. They emit a powerful sonic burst through their screams which deal a massive, rapid-fire wave of damage to players within 9 meters of their vicinity, regardless of if they have armor on or not.
The effects of this scream on the Siren lasts up to 2.2 seconds after it’s over, effectively shielding them from your attacks. And when the Sirens scream, bombs get repelled; quite literally so, as Sirens can repulse grenades and similar projectiles when screaming. Its effects on you last longer if you’re caught unawares; increased disorientation and rapid health deterioration being commonplace. Since it has no traditional weaknesses, the best way to tackle a Siren is to incapacitate it and keep attacking its head & neck from a distance; because trust us when we say, this is one lady whose love songs you wouldn’t want to hear