Killing Floor 2, The Escapists 2, & Lifeless Planet Free On Epic

Let’s recap this week’s news! Monday, I prattled on about Melbits World and Twitch Prime; meanwhile, Dmitry spoke of swimming in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Wednesday, Taylor spoke of the rumor that Microsoft is pushing their Smart Delivery system, and I broke out in tears and fears as Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown was finally announced. Then on Thursday, following half a day of listening to the first book read by Wesley Crusher, I wrote about Ready Player Two being announced for later this year. It was a bit of a slow week for news really.

On to the free games available with the Epic Games Store, starting with the one I’m sure some will not touch, Killing Floor 2. Yes, killing psycho clowns and horror abominations cut from early Doom games is the aim of this somewhat Left 4 Dead-like game. Speaking entirely from my single player experience upon reviewing it previously, it is fine. The guns go bang, the men (or horror monsters) fall down, and the waves keep coming as the tide does to the shore. Killing Floor 2 is easily one of the most well-kept communities too, as Tripwire and Saber are still updating and adding to the game regularly.

The second of our triple-bill this week is Lifeless Planet: Premier Edition, a game that I just don’t understand. As a game, it lacks integral gameplay other than walking and sometimes having to jump. Even worse, is that as a story I just don’t care as it is bloated and spoils itself. The key art for the game features the common symbol of the USSR, the hammer and sickle, three guesses on why. With pacing about as stable as a shopping cart falling down an elevator shaft in an earthquake, it is hard to say the walking simulator works for this half-hearted attempt to talk about something important. Instead, it layers itself with a rather trite indie game level of pretension and lacking brièveté, for lack of a French word.

Finally, after a couple of weeks since its original intended release on the Epic Games Store, The Escapists 2 is the third and final game of this week. Now that I am finally playing it after hearing very little good about it, I can see why. If you have played The Escapists from a few years back recently, you could see it had cracks, but they showed charm and possibly a rift in the universe. Ok, Doctor Who jokes aside, The Escapists 2 is just that but with a lot more of it, more of the prisons, more prisoners, more to steal and craft, and more everything. That’s not a bad thing, but for some reason I don’t have the same feeling of direct goals to work towards, aside from escaping of course.

Killing Floor 2, The Escapists 2, and Lifeless Planet are all free on the Epic Games store this week until the 16th of July. On the 16th they will be replaced with the sequel to a game we covered about this time last year. Yes, the predecessor of a game that was released during the PC Gaming Showcase a few weeks ago, Torchlight 2 is the only game scheduled for release on Epic Games Store next week. The high-fantasy series of dungeon crawling is bigger, possibly meaner, and… Well, I don’t know, we’ll find out if it is any good next week.