Right on Time: A Very Killing Floor Halloween

Just the other day I was complaining to a friend about there not being a "Halloween Event" for Killing Floor, the 6-player online cooperative zombie-killing first-person shooter. Considering that they've already done a Christmas event and a summer event, you'd think that Halloween would be the perfect holiday for a survival-horror game. Well it looks like the good folks at Tripwire Interactive heard my complaints and managed to put out a Halloween event after all. Huzzahs all around!

But is it any good? Does it capitalize on the vast potential of the season? Does it rekindle my interest in the online community, full of compelling desire to decapitate specimens and to be destroyed by raging fleshpounds?  Find out after the jump.

As excited as I am for a Halloween event, this one seems totally phoned-in. Unlike past events, there are no new maps, and the specimen skins are quite obviously recycled from the "Summer Sideshow Event," which was themed after a "freak show" circus. (Even the event banner just crosses out "Summer" and writes "Halloween" over top of it.) It's almost literally the exact same models, just with different textures and maybe a few odd peripheral changes. 

Killing Floor Halloween/Summer Sideshow Specimen Comparisons (click for full size)

Only the Husk (as jack-o-lantern), Crawler (as angel/demon), and Fleshpound (as Frankenstein's monster) look particularly interesting, while the rest are just kind of meh. I like the Stalker's witch hat, but not the whole model. I don't think there are any new quotes from the new specimen skins, either (the Gingerfast's lines were a real treat). For the most part, it's hard to even notice them as new skins, and we're back to some of the same minor problems from the Circus models.

Despite there being no new maps for this event, Bedlam gets the attention, because that's where you have to play to get the new achievements. Bedlam is a good choice because, of all of the other "stock maps," it fits the Halloween theme the best, but there aren't even any minor tweaks to its appearance to make it feel special for the event. At first I thought they'd turned all of the candles into jack-o-lanterns, and pasted zombie faces on the walls, but apparently those were already there. So, again, not very exciting, but at least Tripwire are getting people to play a less-popular map now.

So, yeah, the Halloween Sideshow Event isn't all that interesting. But it's hard to complain when we're getting free content that Tripwire didn't have to bother with. New achievements are fun for a little while, and these kinds of limited-time events always spark more people to play, which makes common matches (generally) more exciting. Considering that Tripwire still have a lot on their plate with the recent launch of Red Orchestra 2, it's a nice gesture for them to find time to do a little something for the Killing Floor community. Oh, and the new chicken suit achievement character is kind of fun, too:

Contented huzzahs indeed.