Killing Floor: Betrayal in Team Dynamics

Over the summer, I’ve been playing this zombie-apocalypse game called Killing Floor. I’m not a big investor when it comes to putting my money into gaming, but after six months or so, my friend finally convinced me it was worth the $19.99.

It doesn’t play much different from your typical shooter, but what’s attractive about Killing Floor is that so much of the actual game play is dependent on whether or not you’re willing to work together as a team. In comparing it to another popular zombie game, Left 4 Dead, my friend had told me that one of the things he likes about it is that you can’t just pick up any weapon and be incredibly proficient with it. There are individual classes you can pick from (Medic, Sharpshooter, Firebug, etc), and a leveling system to go with it. I know that people who play on higher difficulties will actually ban players if they play a class too low.

There are some moments where my team will be waiting for a map to start, and one of us will be locked outside of a door by our teammates. While Dante will argues that betrayal will land you a ticket to the lower circle of hell, the players of this game embrace it. In a recent match, one of the players was playing a medic, so I just assumed that he would be healing people. I ran in his direction, only to have him pass me, and the zombies chasing him to surround me. Then this little dialogue appears to let your team know what killed you:

And then they laugh. Sometimes teamwork will only go so far. At the end of the game, there isn’t much payoff. It doesn’t matter if you betrayed everybody or saved the lives of your comrades. The map just changes and the waves begin again. Maybe this empty gratification is the source how and why we play the way we do.

I guess it isn’t fair to call them ‘zombies,’ because the small plot that the game does give them the name ‘specimens’ of this scientist creature which you fight at the end of each game. They call him The Patriarch, and for what reason, I’m not exactly sure.

If you have a steam account and enjoy survival horror, then I do recommend this game to you. You can download it on Steam, and if you want to totally destroy me, my account is frightforyou.

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Video Games

I think I need to come to terms with just how much of an impact video games have had on my life.

My cousin recently brought his PlayStation 3 over to show me some of the games he downloaded. One of the games he showed me was called ‘Fat Princess.’ Before it even loaded I thought the title had negative connotations. I guess the object is to recapture the princess of the other side while trying to protect the one which you have captured. All throughout the map there are pieces of cake which you are supposed to feed to your captured princess so that she becomes harder to lift and be taken away. I recommended that the game would operate the same if it were a flag, because this a very basic capture the flag scenario, and I was told it was the same thing. “Think of her as an object,” he said. I think this situation speaks for itself. This is how our culture is entertaining itself?

My friend Alan has recently got me playing Warhammer online. To be blunt, it’s stuffed with very early colonial images of good and evil. One class that I started with was the ‘Witch hunter’. It’s supposed to be aligned with the side of ‘Order,’ but it’s abilities are named after Crucible archetypes such as ‘accusations.’ There isn’t even much room for a story between the Order and Destruction sects, like as to why the darker characters want war. The characters even go as far to say, “For evil! For Destruction!” Why evil and why destruction? I would like to know why these characters intentionally love evil. Is this what I want out of a video game? If you want a game where the conscious community is geared toward a very black and white war scenario, I guess you’ll enjoy this game.

Another game my cousin was playing was F.E.A.R. 2. The storyline was actually pretty neat, in a Silent Hill-meets-Halo sense. Although, when you step on medical syringes and your health bar goes up. When in the real world can you step on a needle and you feel better?

Google Wave is finally being publicly released. Is anybody else using this? I haven’t really jumped into it much, though. Pull me into some of your waves: commonfright@googlewave.com PS: I can’t figure out how to add people.

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