Tripwire are having a busy weekend, with the announcement of Killing Floor’s now-traditional Christmas spectacular, and a free weekend on Steam for Red Orchestra 2. This Christmas’ Killing Floor event is IN SPAAAACE, which puts robots and Evil Santa on the moon (a free map with Christmas-themed baddies). Could anything be more festive? Watch the trailer below, and decide for yourself.

R’ochestra meanwhile is free from now until Monday. It’s a fantastic, rumpled bastard of a game. Worth a few squeezes of the mouse button. (more…)

Killing Floor knows all about mods, having been one itself. They never tidy their rooms, leaving files scattered all over internets and hard drives alike, and trying to organise them is like trying to herd cats. The multiplayer horrorshow is gathering all its mods in one place, the increasingly active Steam Workshop, which should make keeping track of maps and modes much easier. Tripwire will also be adding Steam Workshop support to Red Orchestra 2, which is receiving a paid for expandomod by the name of Rising Storm. I’ve got a load of notes about that which I shall compile later this week. There are booby traps, flamethrowers and kamikaze bayonet stabbings, all of which I approve of in games though I frown at them in life.

Killing Floor is an acquired taste, or at least it was for me, like chugging down a bucket full of rust and blood, with accents so dodgy they’d taken on form and floated atop the grungy broth like cockney croutons. Where Left 4 Dead directs the players’ progress, toying with them, Killing Floor has the player run around in circles, waggling their most succulent parts at the mutants and freaks, encouraging pursuit. Crowd control, herding, elimination; it’s a butchery simulation with cattle that bite back. This summer’s special event, the Summer Slideshow 2012, adds new levels, enemies and guns. The trailer would have given me nightmares when I was a boy.

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The Tripwire guys do like a bit of seasonal celebration in their Killing Floor. This year they’re gifting us with “the Winter Weapon Pack, with seven brand new weapons complete with new achievements, free to everyone who owns the game” but there’s also an entirely new level, the Ice Cave, which you can check out for free, even if you do not own the game, thanks the free weekend on the Steam from Thursday 8th to Sunday 11th December. There’s other exciting new DLC, too, such as the Steampunk pack, which lets you dress like one of those digital distribution punks, I think. Hmm.

Do you want to have a crack at Killing Floor‘s frightening-looking Summer Thing but are too poor/miserly to buy the game? Well then no problem> – at least for fifteen of you – because Tripwire have sent us some keys to give away. Hooray! What you need to do is email us at this address with the reason why you are the best candidate for entering a nightmare freakshow armed with dangerous firearms. Enter by Midday UK time on Friday or LOSE OUT.

Please make sure to read this, it’s the competition rules thing. Oh and I am just setting up an RPS Killing Floor server. Details to follow.

Killing Floor server: 85.236.101.3:7757, password: rumpus

The guys at Tripwire have sent word that they’re going to be doing another Killing Floor novelty map event, like they did for last Christmas, only this time it’s a “Summer Sideshow”. What that means is they’ve poured their mapping talents into creating a grotesque freakshow, complete with ‘orrible circus variants of Killing Floor’s hideous mutants, and new unlockables and achievements. You can check them out in the trailer below. More details on the site.

It’ll be arriving on Steam, and the event will from June 30th to July 22nd. (Also I recall Killing Floor being a popular option for an RPS server. Any +1s to that?)
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Portal 2, which appears next Tuesday (how did that sneak up on us so fast?!), continues sneaking its way into other games. I imagine using portals. There must have been a more imaginative way of my phrasing that. Almost every member of the Potato Sack has gained content relating to the cryptic influence of GlaDOS, including Killing Floor, The Ball, RUSH, Super Meat Boy, Toki Tori and even Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which has got some new, free and somewhat cryptic DLC.
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Last night I got an exclusive sneak preview of the Christmas update to Killing Floor, in which the familiar range of nightmarish mutants are replaced with an even more disturbing group of gingerbread men, murderous elves, fiery snowmen, and super-powered death Santas. It’s an impressive piece of work, and also a little strange, and comes with free stuff for TF2 players. More on these things, to the slightly off-key tune of Jingle Bells, below. (Also, a seasonal trailer.) (more…)

Tripwire has released the third free content pack for their co-op multiplayer zombie-shoot, Killing Floor, as well as a new 99p character pack, which is currently available at half price. 49p! That’s a bag of crisps. The Incendiary pack brings a new weapon and four new maps, as well as upgrades for the Firebug perk. Bonanza! A video of some professional-sounding people completing the West London level of killing floor awaits your judgement beneath. (more…)