Killing Floor 2 is about cleaning up hordes of unruly test subjects with bullets, fire, swords, and anything else destructive enough to remove a mutant s head, and doing it all with friends. It s still hacking its way through Early Access, and since Tyler wrote about it in April, the team at Tripwire has continued working on the guns and gibs. Last week, I got to play Killing Floor 2 s next big update, which is coming to players in December and brings back an old friend: the Patriarch.

Killing Floor 1 fans will remember the Patriarch boss, who seems to have put on some weight and mutated a few more times since then, but is otherwise mostly unchanged. He s a huge bullet-sponge: fast, powerful, and with a tendency to run away and heal just when you ve almost got him.

He will come at you in those first couple of minutes with his basic attacks, Tripwire Interactive vice president Alan Wilson told PC Gamer. Once he s taken a bit of damage, so long as he can get away, he ll disappear, stab himself with a healing syringe in a quiet corner, and cover his retreat by throwing a bunch of lower-level monsters at you. We want it to be a mix of [fighting and] damn we ve lost him —because if you keep up with him and keep piling damage on, you can actually kill him there and then.

To test out the Patriarch, I joined Tripwire and smashed through KF2 s two new maps: the Black Forest and the Farmhouse. The Black Forest is heavily wooded and crossed with running streams and creeks. Railroad tracks and a lonely mountain cabin break up the woodlands and create chokepoints for mutants to swarm through. As time goes by and the bodies pile up, the woods get darker and darker until flashlights are a necessity.

Along the way, I admired the gun animations and behaviors—heavy and believable, fun to spray at mutant heads, or carefully aim and steady—and the work Tripwire has done to iterate on KF1. We re doing a sequel to a well-beloved game, so we can t depart from the core formula, said Wilson. Basically: mutant freaks; if you see anything that looks fucked up, shoot it, burn it, chop it to pieces; general mayhem; have fun, look cool while you re doing it. Going KF1 to [Red Orchestra 2] to KF2, we ve done a lot of work at the engine level with weapons, weapon feel, sound, all the rest of it.

The update s second map, Farmhouse, is straight out of every horror movie you ve ever seen. I was a little disappointed to see the map s similarity to the farm finale area in Left 4 Dead, but the genre cliches instantly set a familiarly creepy tone, and lend themselves to the design of a fun map—mutants come swarming out of the dense corn field, and the barn, hayloft, and farmhouse add vertical space. If it s an homage to anything, it s an homage to every single creepy horror movie that ends up in an old farmhouse, Wilson said. The sort of place that everyone jokes, when the man comes out with a chainsaw, you run away. Don t go and hide in a small cupboard.

When the Patriarch finally lands at the end of a game, he s a towering pile of flesh and circuitry. He absorbs a lot of damage, sure, but that s par for the course with Killing Floor bosses. Patriarch is in many ways the same character from KF1, but he s learned some new tricks. When he spots players hiding from his rocket launcher attacks, for example, he turns the launcher into a mortar and lobs rockets up and over players cover.

His invisibility power is back, too, but he uses it in more interesting ways. Rather than simply a tool for retreat, the Patriarch uses his invisibility to attack unpredictably. Now when players lose sight of Patriarch they can t be completely sure: did he run away to heal, or is he about to pounce on them from behind?

More importantly, however players beat Patriarch will be a very different approach from how they attack Hans, the current final boss in Killing Floor 2. Any map will have a 50/50 chance of spawning Hans or the Patriarch, and that uncertainty is part of Tripwire s strategy for giving players an ongoing tactical puzzle.

It s going to be interesting to see now, how players will form new teams, Wilson said. They ve worked out how they like to handle Hans. Now they have to work out how to handle the Patriarch, but they also have the challenge that they don t know which one is coming at them. If they gear up to fight Hans and the Patriarch comes at them, they could be up shit creek… How do you strategize for an end boss when you don t know who it is?

Killing Floor 2 is getting its own in-game marketplace where you can purchase goods with real money. Dubbed The Trading Floor, the shop vendors cosmetic items like clothing and weapon skins, which will drop at random during gameplay and can be traded with fellow zombie-killing enthusiasts

These drops will come in crates, which need a "decryption key" to unlock. "Horzine supply crates contain a single skin variant of a wearable cosmetic, chosen at random from a set of possible items for each type of crate," Tripwire explains. Those decryption keys can be purchased either on the Trading Floor directly or via the Steam Market. In addition to skin types of various levels of rarity, crates might also drop a "precious golden accessory".

Again, you'll be able to trade items with other players, but in the future you'll be able to break down loot and craft exactly what you want. Tripwire doesn't explain how this will work, but it'll come in a future update.

To reiterate, these items are cosmetic only. "All of the content added in Trading Floor at launch will be cosmetic only and not affect gameplay in any way," Tripwire writes. "In the future we may be adding weapons with new gameplay for sale, but this will appear in the Shared Content area on the server. This means that, if any player on the server has a weapon (like the Chivalry Zweihander now), then every player on the server will be able to use it. No-one gets any advantage . Co-op game - everyone starts out equal! Our goal is for any such weapons to be side grades anyway, so they won t provide an edge over the current tier of weapon power."

The full rundown of how it'll work is over here. If you're yet to dive in, Tyler Wilde's review of the Early Access version might twist your arm in the right direction.

A few days ago we mentioned that there would be a Killing Floor 2 free trial to celebrate the Incinerate 'N Detonate update. The free weekend is go! Just head into Steam to download the client. it expires on Sunday

Killing Floor 2, which is still in Early Access, is discounted by 33% for the duration of the trial, as is traditional for these Steam free weekends. The free update adds a couple of new maps, new perks and a bunch of new weapons. You can find out more on the Killing Floor 2 site.

Tyler called Killing Floor 2 "a superb mutant bloodbath" in our Killing Floor 2 Early Access review. Tripwire has a talent for making guns feel amazing. Combine that with a complex gore system, hordes of ugly monsters and some friends and you're getting plenty of value from a free download.

If you want to look suave as possible during combat, you can enter to win one of 8000 PC Gamer skins for Killing Floor 2. The leather jacket/gas mask combo is so in right now.

Killing Floor 2 was recently updated to make its zeds spill even more blood than before, and now you can make that mess in style. We're giving out 8,000 keys for an exclusive PC Gamer Dosh jacket and gas mask for the Mr. Foster character. 

Here's how you can enter for a chance to get one:

1. Enter your email into the widget below, or by going here (you only have to do one or the other).
2. The giveaway will end on September 6th at 11:59PM PT, at which point our system will randomly select 8,000 winners.
3. If you are chosen, you will receive an email with your key, which you can redeem on Steam.
4. Start making Dosh and killing zeds.

To be clear, THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE A COPY OF KILLING FLOOR 2. The code will only get you the Mr. Foster skin, so you will need to own the game to redeem it. Good luck!

It's worth pointing out that, if you don't have already have a copy of Killing Floor 2, it's currently on sale for 33% off as part of the release of its "Incinerate 'n Detonate" update and will be free to play on Steam from this Thursday until Sunday.

Incinerate 'n Detonate, a major and largely self-explanatory update to the multiplayer zombie shooter Killing Floor 2, is now live on Steam. Developer Tripwire Interactive says the update adds "50 percent more content" than was included with the Early Access release, and while I can't confirm that all the new stuff works out to precisely that amount, there sure does seem to be a lot of it.

The update includes a pair of new Perks, Firebug and Demolitions—hence the title—each with new weapons and grenades, and two new maps, Evacuation Point and Catacombs. There are also new weapons up for grabs, and a couple of "crossover promotions" as well: Owners of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare will get Tom Banner, a playable knight who carries the Zweihander sword, while owners of Red Orchestra 2 can step into the jackboots of Anton Strasser, a German soldier who packs rather more modern (but not necessarily more effective) implements of dismemberment.

Other changes include the addition of Nvidia's PhysX Flex technology on GeForce 770 cards and above, which Tripwire said will enable "brand new cutting-edge gore technology," plus a "complete overhaul" of the Berserker skill tree, an After Action Report option with team awards, personal stats and map voting, new Zed hit zones, achievements, Steam Workshop functionality, and all sorts of various fixes and improvements.

For those who'd like to give it a try before laying down 30 hard-earned dollars, Tripwire also announced that Killing Floor 2 will be free on Steam from September 3-6, which if you don't happen to have a calendar lying around is this coming weekend. It will be on sale during that same period for 33 percent off its regular $30/ 20 price.

Update: The post originally indicated that the Killing Floor 2 free weekend would end on September 7, but it actually wraps up on September 6. I've updated it to reflect the change.

At our very own PC Gaming Show t'other week, Tripwire showed off some of the new content coming to their corpse dismemberment simulator, Killing Floor 2. You've already seen it in action (video of that above), but the devs have now helpfully detailed a few of the contents of their upcoming 'Incinerate 'N Detonate' pack.

There are two new maps, for starters, one of which is entitled Evacuation Point. Here's what that looks like:

You can probably see why you'd want to evacuate it: it's a right mess. You might also want to get out because of the two new perks coming to the Early Access game's way: Firebug and Demolitions.

"Firebug   BBQer extraordinaire, lover of everything that burns. Known tools of the trade: 

• Tier 1  Caulk n Burn: Get close, get personal, burn its face off 
• Tier 2  Trench Gun: Incendiary rounds make for a fiery start (and end) to most zeds 
• Tier 3 Flamethrower: The classic burn baby burn 
• Grenade  Molotov : Area denial and bon party starter

Demolitions If overwhelming firepower isn t working, you aren t using enough. Known tools of the trade:

• Tier 2 C4
• Tier 4 RPG 7"

Annoyingly, the devs stop short of revealing the entire contents of Incinerate 'N Detonate, but they do say that it will add another 50% of content to the Early Access game.

At the PC Gaming Show Tripwire Interactive president John Gibson touched on the new gore tech coming to Killing Floor 2. We saw footage of monstrous zombies bursting into fountains of green muck, and it was amusing. Now Nvidia has offered a bit more info about the tech behind it: GameWorks PhysX Flex, the newest iteration of Nvidia's PhysX physics engine.

"These features are best seen with the Bloat, a rotund vomiting enemy," the Nvidia spokesperson writes in a .gif strewn blogpost. "As the Bloat waddles towards players he ll vomit Flex-powered bile as a ranged attack, and when gibbed his lungs, intestines and skull will spew forth, in addition to buckets of blood and smaller giblets. Blood and bile intermix, body parts and fluids are scattered by explosions and the Siren s scream, and everything interacts realistically with geometry and objects. And should another Bloat be popped, the force of his internals exploding outward will further manipulate the disgusting Flex-powered mess that s already been created."

Sounds beautiful, especially the part about blood and bile intermixing. Killing Floor 2 will be the first game to ship with PhysX Flex once it has exited Early Access, so it'll be the most convincingly gory game you're likely to see for a while.

Here's a little bit about how the tech works, via Nvidia:

Traditionally, GPU-accelerated PhysX effects are created using a combination of specialized techniques for rigid bodies, fluids, clothing, destruction, and other material types. NVIDIA GameWorks SDK includes PhysX, PhysX Cloth, PhysX Destruction, and PhysX Particle modules for this purpose. With Flex, a unified particle system is instead used for all effects, materials and objects, enabling previously-impossible interactions and effects. For example, a water balloon made of rubber can be realistically destroyed by a bullet, the water within can burst out when the bullet strikes, and it can then cause the destroyed balloon to float on its surface. Here s a quick video to demonstrate some of the possibilities.

...and you can see some of the tech in action below. 

The first ever PC Gaming Show happened Tuesday night at E3! With host Sean 'Day9' Plott at the helm, we looked at a great variety of games, big and small. You can watch the archived steam on our Twitch channel, and the whole thing is broken up by segment on our YouTube channel—you can watch it all above.

The highlights

• Tripwire announces Rising Storm 2: Vietnam
• Creative Assembly teases Total War: Warhammer
• Phil Spencer says Microsoft "lost our way with PC gaming"
• Gears of War Ultimate Edition is coming to PC
• Dean Hall says, "I stayed on DayZ for longer than I intended"
• Dean Hall's Ion has organ simulation, Diablo-like camera
• Frontier announces Planet Coaster with trailer
• Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns trailer shows guild halls
• Pillars of Eternity's first expansion is The White March
• Tanoa is Arma 3's new jungle terrain - first video and screens
• Watch the full Dirty Bomb E3 trailer, and get a free mercenary
• DayZ single-player mode and server hosting planned
• The Monk from Diablo 3 is coming to Heroes of the Storm
• StarCraft 2 Whispers of Oblivion prologue missions revealed
• No Man's Sky will release on PC at the same time as PS4

The trailers

No Man's Sky

Dirty Bomb

Arma 3

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

American Truck Simulator

Planet Coaster

Total War: Warhammer

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam

StarCraft 2

Heroes of the Storm

SOMA

See that tasteful reading room above? Situated in a grand, cliff-side Swiss manor, you'll be painting it red in a matter of hours thanks to a new Killing Floor 2 update. The first major patch since the game launched on Early Access last month, the Volter Manor map is accompanied by a slew of tweaks and fixes, as well as two new classic characters for owners of the original Killing Floor, in the form of Briar and Masterson.

Collectibles and achievements have been added to the four existing maps, while a few prominent bugs have been swatted including server crashes, cosmetic issues and some nasty exploits on three maps. The full patch notes are on the Tripwire forums, and the patch itself is live right now.

Killing Floor 2 is currently in Early Access, but according to Tyler Wilde it's well worth checking out pre-launch. "Killing Floor 2 needs some tweaks, and will benefit a lot from more maps, but it's already a superb mutant bloodbath," he wrote. 

In the inaugural "State of the Killing Floor 2 Union Address," Tripwire Interactive says work on bug fixes and balance changes is proceeding apace, and that the first content update, including a new map called "Manor," is on the way.

"Everybody here is working hard away at something," the studio wrote. "For some their task of investigating the critical bugs and crashes continues. While we fixed many of these with hotfixes and the first patch, there are still some left lurking that aren't giving us good data. To that end with the next update will include some additional logging and catching mechanism in hopes of getting us more information to address these issues."

The "next visible piece" in the Killing Floor 2 puzzle is the Manor map, a swanky joint in the Swiss Alps that you and your compadres have been hired to clear out. It's a work in progress, but the three screens Tripwire posted look quite nice. The studio added that it has "many irons in the fire"—maps, perks, weapons, characters, and bosses—and that more information will be revealed very soon.