Nightdive and Ziggurat’s remaster of Killing Time is out this month

It’s almost here. Nightdive Studios and Ziggurat have announced that Killing Time: Resurrected is just around the corner. It will launch on PC and consoles on October 17, 2024.

As a fan of retro 2.5D FPS games, I’ve been waiting for this. Killing Time is one of the few games I actually own on 3DO. However, I started playing it, discovered the framerate is ridiculously choppy, and stopped. There’s a PC version, and I figured that would be a better way to experience it, but apparently not, as a lot of changes were made to the PC version, some of which alter the game’s aesthetic. Nonetheless, I still don’t really want to play such a choppy FPS on console.

For Killing Time: Resurrected, Nightdive, and Ziggurat were able to get the best of both worlds while upgrading everything for higher-resolution displays. I spoke to Nightdive about it back around when the remaster was announced and got the skinny. For a lot of it, they had access to a backup of the original photographs of the original monsters, since they were played by actors. For PC version monsters that weren’t in the 3DO version, the art team had to upscale them by hand.

Killing Time is a unique FPS for 1995, as it contained cutscenes featuring real actors. It also walked the line of humor and horror to great effect. It’s maybe not the most amazing FPS out there, but it’s not PO’ed. It’s worth playing, even if it’s not as entertaining as Doom or Duke Nukem 3D.

Nightdive has made some excellent remasters in the past. While the games vary in quality, they all get the same loving attention when remastered. While we now know when we’ll be playing Killing Time, we still have The Thing to look forward to, which doesn’t currently have an announced release date. I’m also not going to let them forget about SIN: Reloaded and an enhanced edition of System Shock 2 is also in the pipe. They’ve been keeping busy, but here’s hoping we’ll soon hear that they’re working on a remaster of William Shatner’s TekWar. (Disclaimer: the existence of a TekWar remaster has never been discussed with me or confirmed. Whenever it is brought up, the team usually reacts with understandable revulsion.)

Killing Time: Resurrected will arrive for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on October 17, 2024.