Killing Room

Killing Room goes for a first-person shooter with a showy TV-game-show frame, so the real focus is on moving fast, shooting fast, and surviving rooms that keep trying to humiliate the player. By our assessment, the selling point is that nasty satirical setup, which gives the gunplay a bit of personality instead of leaving it as a bare arena shooter. The limit is that the joke can only carry so much, because once the novelty of the room-by-room format wears off, the repetition shows. In practice it feels like a compact, aggressive arcade shooter that wants quick reactions more than long-term planning. Against bigger shooters it is smaller, rougher, and more built around a gimmick than a broad campaign. People who like short, mean FPS runs may get along with it; anyone wanting polished combat systems or a long stretch of levels may find the ceiling low.