No More Room in Hell 2 Is a Buggy, Extremely Promising Zombie Survival Game

4 days ago 3

When there's no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the earth. And when there's no more room in US East servers, the Americans shall walk with 160 millisecond ping.

No More Room in Hell 2 is a zombie survival game now available in early access on Steam and the Epic Games Store. Whereas the original Half-Life 2 mod and standalone game -- both released over a decade ago -- featured linear co-op maps seeking to emulate a more realistic, hardcore Left 4 Dead-style experience, the sequel is an objective-based extraction game that takes place across a wide, sprawling map.

Players take on the role of Responders, a group of volunteers who risk their lives to accomplish tasks for the greater good of the surviving human population. Right now, there's only one map in the game, which means you'll have the same goal every match: get to the failing power station to put an end to the rolling brownouts threatening to destroy the remnants of civilization. You'll join seven other players in the lobby before heading into the zombie-filled world alone trying to meet up with your teammates, arm yourselves with weapons, ammunition and bandages found in caches across the map and try to survive to turn the power back on.

The map of the power plant is unfurled on a workbench by a flashlight and some duct tape.

It's a novel idea that moves the series forward from the first game, which had players trying to escape from crowded population centers at the beginning of the outbreak.

Conceptually, everything about No More Room in Hell 2 is an advancement. The dated Source engine has been replaced with the shiny Unreal Engine 5, and new skill-based RPG growth systems not unlike that of Hunt: Showdown were added to modernize the game, allowing players to specialize their characters with new perks between each match. Even the fictional world of No More Room in Hell has grown and developed as humans have better learned how to control the undead scourge.

Unfortunately, even though that combination of elements sounds like a winning formula, No More Room in Hell 2 is held back by no small list of bugs, glitches, server issues and a couple design decisions that leave me raising an eyebrow in confusion.

A fascinating vision muddled by poor choices

A man with an eight-pound sledgehammer swings on three zombies in front of him.

I like to afford a certain level of grace to early access titles, because the program is meant to facilitate a conversation between the audience and developers in order to iron out bugs and guide the direction in which a game grows and evolves.

But No More Room in Hell 2 needed more time in the oven -- an always-online permadeath experience is incredibly delicate, and players will feel like they've been cheated out of time and money if the formula isn't right from the get-go.

While I didn't personally encounter any game breaking issues (outside of atrociously high ping in one match that made me constantly rubber band toward the zombies pursuing me), I did find a staggering amount of bugs and glitches that made my matches much harder to enjoy.

I had zombies spawn behind me in enclosed rooms, glide across the floor with missing animations, become invincible when they had their legs blown off and clip into environments, cars, doors and more.

One of the most frustrating conundrums with No More Room in Hell 2 is that it's sometimes hard to tell when something is a design choice or a bug. Weapons are purposefully unwieldy, difficult to aim and sluggish to use. When I'm handed a shotgun and it takes four shells to put down a zombie, that doesn't seem right to me, but it's not until the patch notes arrive that I realize the boomstick is buggy.

These problems wouldn't be as troublesome if the game wasn't chasing the extraction shooter trend. But it is, and when your character dies you lose potentially hours of progress. It makes me question why No More Room in Hell 2 needs these RPG systems in the first place: The first game was an intense zombie survival experience even in their absence.

The No More Room in Hell 2 roadmap lists items that are being developed or conceptualized. A zombie is in the bottom right corner.

Despite the issues currently present in-game, Torn Banner Studios has posted a development roadmap that promises to mop up the bugs and glitches before moving on to meatier content, such as a player infection system and a new hospital map. The development team has indicated that the game will leave early access for a full release sometime in 2025.

Even now, No More Room in Hell 2 has laid the necessary groundwork to potentially become one of the best zombie survival games released in many years, creating a deeply haunting world that delivers some of the most addicting co-op zombie gameplay I've ever played.

Atmosphere that George Romero would kill for

When the first trailers for No More Room in Hell 2 released, I was admittedly worried that the game would not honor the tone set by its predecessor. Everything seemed fast-paced, and the key art was splashed in color; I thought what was shown off was more reminiscent of Dead Island than anything else.

Luckily, No More Room in Hell 2 is still dripping in a dreadful atmosphere. Even though the narrative is all about the indomitable human spirit, the players' Responders still find themselves in a truly despair-inducing situation -- the power plant they need to reach is surrounded by hundreds of densely packed undead bodies, just shambling about until they lock on to something with a pulse.

The truly scary moments happen toward the beginning of each match, though, when every player is fumbling around the outskirts of the map all by themselves. When you're alone with only a flashlight and a lead pipe in hand, every single zombie presents a real threat.

Each groan or bump in the night sends goosebumps up my arm and has me scanning the backwoods for a shambler I may have missed. The sound design is truly top notch, with ambient noise that goes toe-to-toe with Dying Light in how much it puts the fear of God into me -- and when an explosion rattles the screen or a siren starts blaring, it makes my stomach drop.

I know that I have to take my time on the several-hundred-meter journey to my first objective, where I'm praying that I'll be able to link up with another survivor. Letting my guard down for one second is all it takes to get clawed (or worse -- killed and reanimated to fight my former teammates), and that forced caution feels absolutely electric as I make my way through muddy forests, burning highways and dilapidated service tunnels.

While that solo gameplay is probably the scariest part of the game, the real magic happens when you start partying up with the seven other players in the lobby, because No More Room in Hell 2 shifts from a survival horror to an action horror game over the course of each match.

The best cooperative experience I've played in years

A man with a shotgun stands with three other survivors in front of a blue barricaded door.

No More Room in Hell 2 isn't going to replace Left 4 Dead, Dying Light or Call of Duty Zombies when it comes to quickly dispatching hordes of zombies with your friends. But it has quickly become one of my favorite co-op zombie games of all time.

Dumping all eight players at different places throughout the map was a genius design decision. I'm a bit of an antisocial gamer; I prefer to do things alone, even in a cooperative environment. Usually, I don't even turn on my mic to communicate with other players unless I'm playing a competitive game.

That makes it a crowning achievement to inspire a sense of actual relief in me whenever I hear a faint, garbled voice start to come through the proximity chat as I bumble into range of another player. I make sure to team up with the stranger, split my supplies with them and then form a plan of attack on supply caches located throughout the map, where we'll no doubt run into our other future friends.

Completing objectives around the map usually requires some type of horde holdout, with multiple people firing guns, throwing explosives and bashing in zombie heads as someone finds a fuse, connects wires or turns the proper valves to get the electricity working again. This feels like the most Left 4 Dead-esque part of the gameplay loop, and it feels brilliant.

In most horde shooters, I'd welcome the wave of flesh crashing down upon me, hacking, slashing and shooting with reckless abandon. But the fact that any one zombie could be a truly lethal threat if it's allowed to advance too far into your perimeter raises the stakes in a way that most similar games can't manage.

A team of three Responders go back-to-back as they make their final stand in the power plant.

Surviving these encounters creates a sense of camaraderie between perfect strangers, and I often ended up sussing out who could be depended on for different clutch situations.

In one match I played, I met up with one player who was quick on the trigger as well as another who was great at finding a way out of the worst situations. They spent nearly an hour beating back the undead by my side before we reached the power plant, making our last ditch effort as a trio to complete the mission.

I was the only one left to put a bullet in their heads when they were ripped apart and reanimated. No one was left to do the same for me.

The beauty of No More Room in Hell 2 is in creating these emergent narratives and building a working ragtag team of people who might not have anything in common aside from wanting to make it to the extraction zone alive. There's the skeleton of a narrative here, but the real compelling drama comes from the tragic loss (or brave sacrifice) of other players just like you and I.

No More Room in Hell 2 has, in theory, the perfect formula for a smash hit: it's an extraction game with lots of zombies to beat, bash and blow up and dynamic player storytelling that I haven't seen since the beginning of Helldivers 2. It only remains to be seen whether Torn Banner Studios will guide this game to success or if the botched launch will set the tone for its future.

No More Room in Hell 2 is available now on PC on Steam and the Epic Games Store. The game is currently priced at $30, though Torn Banner Studios has expressed that the price will rise as development on the game continues.

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