Killing Floor 2 starts Gary Busey rehearsing for his Christmas event debut
Grenades are bad for your elf
We're barely out of October and Killing Floor 2 is jumping the queue to get its next holiday sweater on. In a bit of oddball casting that somehow makes sense, Tripwire's monster-mashing co-op shooter is adding a grizzled, eyepatched Santa to its playable characters, voiced by the eternally boggle-eyed Gary Busey. Players can opt in to the game's beta branch later today to try the upcoming Season's Beatings event featuring a story-based romp through Santa's Workshop, a shopping mall map, three new weapons and Busey himself lurking in a video below.
Killing Floor 2 has never been especially subtle, but the three weapons introduced in this update are especially straightforward. There's a fire axe melee weapon and a rotary grenade launcher (both returning from the original Killing Floor), plus a Tommy Gun for those who like to lean heavy on the trigger. The event map is Santa's Workshop, featuring an army of elves who have allied themselves with the Krampus to overthrow the jolly chimney-diver. The second map - Shopping Spree - is another fan-made Workshop map promoted to full-time duty, and also holiday-themed.
While Killing Floor 2 still contains loot crates to dispense optional cosmetic goodies, they're becoming more generous in this beta update, too - no longer will they contain duplicate items, and players will be able to buy specific crates. Not a complete fix (just sell your costume gubbins directly), but more ethical. Once it goes live on Killing Floor 2's main branch, all monsters will stay in Christmas costume for the remainder of the holidays. Unfortunate for those who would rather kill generic zombies, but great if you like the idea of gore-splattered Christmas silliness.
As an aside, this isn't Busey's only weird appearance in games recently. In Hitman, he played as himself - possibly the loudest and least elusive of all elusive targets.