Killing Floor Incursion is one good looking game and in its early hours it’s incredibly chilling, particularly while you are getting used to the controls – fumbling around to holster your gun so you can pick up ammo with a free hand, while Zeds bare down on you is guaranteed to raise the hairs on the back of your neck and cause you to panic just ever so slightly.

Indeed, the initial VR adjustment needed in order to accurately holster your firearms and melee weapons is made that much more clumsy when you’re being rushed by an oncoming horde. You can of course just drop the weapon, which respawns in its holster after a short while.

Dual wielding weapons or clutching a flashlight will keep your hands full, which presents the biggest problem – being able to grab more ammo or health – and it’s this restriction that gives the game an extra level of urgency.

Each level can be explored via free motion, but I stuck with the lasso to teleport around, which easily allows you to avoid the horde until you get your shit together. Hop about too often and your stamina decreases making the aiming point of the lasso shuffle slowly across the floor simulating tiredness. It sure does increase the intensity of some of the scenarios – and while I understand the mechanic of simulating stamina – it merely prolonged the rinse and repeat combat of putting enough distance between you and your enemies before spinning around to open fire.

Fumbling about goes beyond trying to holster your weapons. You need to pull pins from grenades, pump shotguns and pull the bolt of the sniper rifle back to load a new bullet. There are also several environmental puzzles to grab at; all while Zeds swarm around you. It’s this level of interaction and immersion that makes Killing Floor that much more creepy because you feel more part of its world, despite being told you are merely entering a simulation while your real world body is being ‘repaired’.

The sweet shot – as any undead hunter will know – is to aim for the head, but there’s more fun to be had, Zeds and many of the other creatures can be dismembered limb by limb. You can even grab a severed arm or head to bash Zeds. Killing Floor even manages to weave in boss fights, which are rather unsightly but also quite ineffectual – resorting to a rinse and repeat tactics of pouring in shots before turning tail and legging it to find more ammo (and health).

Unlike some zombie based VR games, Killing Floor is quite fast paced with hordes soon bottlenecking en masse, so culling them should be top of your list, otherwise expect lots of manic reloading and running across areas before spinning around to unleash a clip before doing the same again until none are left standing – it can get quite repetitive.

The gunplay of Killing Floor is solid. Shots are accurate and the guns look superb, but as great as the firearms are, the easiest way through each horde is to wildly swing at them with a melee weapon. Unfortunately doing so instantly diminishes any intensity of the combat, which slightly spoils the game. Melee weapons could have really done with a break limit making them an option you need to carefully consider rather than being able to thoughtlessly swing with.

Killing Floor’s main trick is far too overused – enemies run straight at you growling and groaning – beyond the intensity of the number of enemies versus your seemingly pathetic arsenal, the only scares come from the first level or when you accidentally stumble into an enemy. Sure it never ceased to make the hairs on my neck stand on end, but its ‘horror’ was a one-trick pony, although I must admit to being happy that the eerie Resident Evil-esque opening level only stays for one level.

While I enjoyed my solo time with Killing Floor, it’s undoubtedly better with a friend and if you have a regular co-op partner, then you should definitely pick this up, particularly for the never ending wave based holdout mode, otherwise it’s a great way to spend an afternoon.

At roughly four-five hours, there’s a decent sized campaign and with a never-ending horde mode, which is best played in co-op, there is plenty of fun beyond the campaign. The sniper rifle sequence, which admittedly drags on slightly, is the best use of VR sniping I’ve experienced and with Aim Controller support hopefully in the pipeline, Killing Floor Incursion will sit proudly at the top of my VR shooter pile.

Thanks to ONE PR Studio and Tripwire Interactive for supporting TiX