Look, it’s the last day of term and we’re allowed to bring in whatever we want. Pip’s batting an avocado about, John’s cradling what appears to be a small hairless cat with opposable thumbs, Graham and Adam are kicking some kind of spherical egg between themselves, and me, I’ve brought in a video to watch. It’s about zombies and monsters and big guns and cool swords totally murdering zombies like schhhhing!> in Killing Floor 2 and before you ask, yes, my mum did say it’s fine if I watch it okay.

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I do enjoy how Killing Floor’s monsters look like people in Halloween costumes, the sort of thing one could make with a few hours and some household supplies. Given me a black bodysuit, some tights, cotton wool, pipe cleaners, socks, and wire coat hangers, and I’ll make you a Crawler that’ll win you pity in your office costume contest. Unsurprisingly, Killing Floor gets into Halloween in a big way.

The co-op survival FPS’s annual spooky event launched yesterday, and KF is also part of Steam’s ten-game Free Weekend Weekend, so all and sundry can come fight the horrible, horrible dolls that are murderous and horrible.

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Summer has arrived in London, and it’s pretty glorious all right. But I say that as someone on the third floor with a nice south-facing window and a cat dozing in the sunlight. Parts of London are today, I say exaggerating only an awful lot, Hellish. You hop on the Central Line during rush hour tonight and you’ll see. So where better to set a level in a co-op horror shooter?

Killing Floor‘s annual summer update has arrived, with goodies including a new Underground map and a new playable mutant-murdering lady. And, as they cannily do with big updates, developers Tripwire have also launched a few new paid DLC packs and put the game on sale.

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Dear readers, until today I had thought that the screaming and chattering noises spiders make in movies and video games were entirely fictional. I had intended to post a Killing Floor 2 trailer which introduces a few of its mutants, including the arachnoid Crawler, and say something clever about the “shared unnatural sonic vocabulary” of popular media. But, curious about the origins of this, I read around a little (looked on Yahoo! Answers) and discovered the world is a terrible place.

Now I know that some spiders do actually hiss and rattle (‘stridulate,’ we say–know your enemy), I find this trailer for the co-op FPS abhorrent and oh god why have the hairs on my neck pricked up what’s that feeling is there a spider on me you have to tell me I mean it.

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Killing Floor is a pleasantly solid co-op survival FPS, blessed with chunky-feeling guns and ridiculous English accents shouting daft Britishisms. It also cemented Tripwire Interactive as one of my favourite developers for banging it full of new monsters, levels, and special events for years after launch in a way that only Valve match nowadays. Now, delightfully, a sequel’s coming. Imaginatively titled Killing Floor 2, it seems to have as its core new feature, er, buckets of gore.

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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