Killing Floor: Incursion – Review (PSVR)

By Phil Neyman Last updated May 12, 2018

Killing Floor: Incursion is one of the most immersive games to date on Sony’s young VR platform. An impressive feat for a franchise that started as nothing more than a mod of Unreal Tournament over a decade ago. At first glance it looks like an easy game to pigeon hole, but the deeper you dive into Killing Floor: Incursion the more you find exactly how much is below the surface. The best way to describe the game is by starting off with the obvious – Resident Evil. Stopping there though wouldn’t do it justice at all. If it’s one part Resident Evil you could also say that Incursion is equal parts Unreal Tournament, Assassin’s Creed, and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter all rolled into a nice and neat, functioning, VR package.

You find out early on that you’ve experienced an injury and are being sedated in order for them to perform some sort of emergency procedure on you. While under, they plug you into a program, a la Assassins Creed, in order to keep your brain functioning properly while the procedure is taking place. Not long after “arriving” it’s very evident that the program is corrupted and you are now tasked with finding the bugs in the programming and removing them, thus allowing you to leave.

The first level feels eerily like Resident Evil 7, but in all the best ways. As you solve the puzzle of the abandoned house, hoards and hoards of zombies (or Zeds as they are called here) will attack relentlessly in an attempt to kill you inside of the program. Due to the corrupted programming, if you die in the program you die in real life… er, real video game life. Completing each level feels like a feet of physical as well as intellectual survival as you solve puzzles and kill Zeds simultaneously in an attempt to escape.

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This leads us to the next topic of discussion – the controls.

What can be said about the Move controller that hasn’t been said already? How about that it works really well? You weren’t expecting that were you? Neither were we. Having said that, the controls do take a little bit to master but, when you do, combat flows at a level of precision possibly unseen on PSVR.

Your right hand shows your health as well as controlling turning (moving you a quarter turn at a time) while your left hand controls where you teleport. Since the game does rely on teleportation as opposed to classic movement, the controls will take a little time to master. In no time at all though you’ll be moving around with ease screaming “Hardcore Parkour!” Ok maybe that last part is a stretch considering there is no real parkour involved, but you get the point. Not only does this control scheme help combat nausea (yeah unfortunately that still has to be mentioned) it will enable you to break through a crowd of Zeds by teleporting to a safer location closer to ammo or health and give you a second to catch your breath.

In addition to movement, the weapon and accessory controls feel great. You are equipped with 2 front pistol holsters and can carry a shotgun and other various weapons on you as well. Other items you’ll need to survive include your flashlight (used for light and uncovering items), an ax that you must break out of it’s glass case in rewarding fashion as well as grenades that are littered around the map. In the heat of the battle, holstering your pistols in favor of a grenade and then using one hand to pull the pin while the other prepares to throw it feels incredible. The faster you are at holstering weapons and using items the more fun you’ll have.

You also have a very handy drone that will lead you to ammo and other items via a handy touch pad that can be activated on your left arm.

Everything you pick up feels weighted. This encourages you to explore and have fun with all sorts of enticing items that liter your virtual world. You can even use dismembered arms from your enemy to fight off a mob while you either reload or just find yourself out of ammo. The sniper rifle feels incredible. It almost feels how you’ve always expected a sniper rifle to feel like in VR, yet games have failed to live up to our expectations until now.

Recommendation: If you have PSVR do not sleep on this title. With very tight controls, an interesting enough story and just the right mix of action and puzzle solving, Killing Floor Incursion will keep you interested until the end, or possibly even beyond. There is a co-op mode to keep bringing you back for more. The only real downside to the game is the lack of enemies. You’ll pretty much be fighting the same zombie and Venom looking Zeds throughout each level with the occasional boss fight to break it up, but this never takes away from the experience.