Playing No More Room in Hell 2 can occasionally make you feel as though you are in hell. You are on your way to a console to begin flipping switches with buddies for one minute, and then you are trapped. You can not equip any of your items, your keyboard inputs do not work, and your colleagues have to try to entice a zombie over in the hopes that it will end your suffering. Character models are lacking, there is only one map available thus far, and there are many more flaws to be found. These issues are just a few of the many issues that could be justified by the game’s Early Access designation on Steam. However, that grace is limited. Although No More Room in Hell 2 is technically playable, it does not feel nearly as prepared for Early Access as it should. Furthermore, it lacks a unique identity that would set it apart from other cooperative survival horror shooters, even if it were not rife with problems and lacking in content.
The objective-based game mode in No More Room in Hell 2 is structured similarly to its predecessor’s. After being dumped onto a map filled with forests, eight players must fulfill objectives while avoiding being killed by hordes of zombies. To gain an advantage, you will need to scrounge for weapons, health items, ammunition, and other equipment, which will be in generally limited supply, as is typical in survival horror games. The first No More Room in Hell draws a lot of inspiration from George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead with how the zombies (here dubbed “stiffs”) function, and it continues to be to its benefit in the sequel: They’re slow and shambling, yet are great threats in groups. Additionally, the hordes become denser the deeper you go into the terrain.
All of this is quite typical for a cooperative zombie shooter, but No More Room in Hell 2 employs some clever strategies to help you improve your crew and your equipment. At one of eight locations around the outside of the only map, known as Power Plant, you will spawn at random. You will then proceed towards the center, completing tasks along the way that will give you vital equipment and increase the challenge as the hordes grow in size.
Your teammates do not even appear on your HUD unless you are in a party, in which case you will spawn close to them, and you can only hear them via voice chat if they are physically close enough. The map is not very big, but it is big enough that you might not see another player until the last area at the center. That does entail making a concerted effort to team up during each round, but it is a great extra goal that can heighten the tension. It offers a sense of progression that affects the map as you travel, and it is a fantastic way to make it feel like your efforts are rewarded. If you fail, you will be stuck with some meager stuff and nobody to pull you up if you go down.
No More Room in Hell 2 shines in this crucial area: encouraging collaboration. Even though I was stuck in a terrible bug that made it impossible for me and the rest of my squad to effectively evacuate, at least I got to see them do all in their power to get me out of my jail. You are ingeniously compelled to cooperate as you all descend on the last region, and as a result, you develop a brief bond. Squinting beyond the blatant bugs—such as the ability to clip through walls, zombies that survive damage, and weaponry that do no damage—you can see that the game cleverly promotes teamwork. Even though it just has one map, it is the ideal location to follow the development of your crew’s adventure.
Cooperation is the main area in which No More Room in Hell 2 shines.
Grouping is made easy by the Power Plant’s optional objective locations. You can obtain weapons, ammunition, health, and occasionally unique items that grant passive bonuses by finishing them. Although you might be able to finish the game without restocking at any of these locations, you should visit at least one of these sites because resources are limited in this survival horror game. They are very simple to locate; you can use your map and compass to discover one, or you will just happen to stumble upon one. I always wanted to swing by when one of the two commanders (one of whom, surprisingly, is spoken by Deux Ex’s Elias Toufexis) announced over the radio that there was a chapel nearby with supplies or a pub that had been booby-trapped. Usually, any other players in the area did the same.
Your colleagues will eventually appear at these locations, where you must cooperate to finish many tasks to receive your reward. This typically entails connecting cables within wire boxes, turning on generators, locating fuses, and putting them inside fuse boxes to power up rooms. Most of them involve simple timing and puzzle solving, which is much more challenging when zombies are after you. Furthermore, completing these puzzles opens a different menu that you must leave if you wish to defend yourself. In situations like this, it is critical to look out for your teammates. You can go on to the next zombie if they can concentrate on the current assignment and you manage to eliminate them all. To unlock a screen or advance a procedure, certain activities even need one player to read a randomly generated code to another.
Then there are the bugs, a ton of them.
These omitted details are what currently detract from a game that might one day have a noteworthy complete release. Yes, you can give an Early Access launch a lot of tolerance, but many of No More Room in Hell 2‘s components are not even close to being finished. Despite all of the positive aspects of the map, certain routes lead nowhere. Although there are many goals dotted throughout, they are wildly inconsistent in their level of difficulty; some seem completely unachievable in small groups, and crossing a bridge after its gates are opened, which ought to feel like a monumental moment, can be accomplished by just sprinting forward and occasionally strafing.
And then there are bugs, bugs, bugs. While they are present in all Early Access games (and the majority of fully released ones as well), many of these are unacceptable. Shotguns did not always deal damage when I started playing last week at launch. As I was slicing through walls into closed-off chambers, I soon found myself surrounded by zombies, some of whom survived the steady barrage of bullets. The lack of objective markings on the HUD is somewhat problematic for new players who are unsure of where to proceed. Sometimes a teammate would just be a floating head when I looked at them. It is a mess.
Since launch, developer Torn Banner Studios has been working hard on hotfixes, and during my review time, they have issued some extremely significant improvements. Map markers now appear regularly, shotguns are more dependable, and I can complete puzzles without being trapped or having to press a switch several times before it reacts. Prioritizing hotfixes above the planned content roadmap is the appropriate decision in the short term, and it has already produced some significant gains, but there is still a long way to go before it reaches an acceptable condition.
Regretfully, it is also in dire need of content updates, ideally with anything that would make it stand out from the crowd. Eight years have passed since No More Room in Hell 2 was initially hinted about, while more than ten years have passed since the original No More Room in Hell was turned into a stand-alone game from a Half-Life 2 mod. Although the sequel is structured similarly to the first one, with the same aura of darkness, limited loot, and comparatively weak characters, it lacks tension-building and moral quandaries. The juvenile zombies, for instance, that were far faster than the normal ones and made you uncomfortably uneasy about killing them, are no longer around. Creating an environment that felt like the real apocalypse, where decisions had consequences beyond survival, was the aim. No More Room in Hell 2, on the other hand, is headed toward showing a world that seems to be collapsing around you, but in terms of tone and the underlying plot, it is just another typical zombie shooter with an emphasis on end-game rescue.
Verdict
No More Room in Hell 2 has a lot of potential if you can get over the glitches and performance problems. Through some great level design, it experiments with some creative ideas about how to encourage players to cooperate, but those ideas are not sufficiently developed to elevate it above the status of another co-op survival horror shooter with generic weapons and limited treasure. The Early Access release of No More Room in Hell 2 at least lets you play with friends for a few crazy and occasionally entertaining rounds, but it needs a lot more time in the oven because there is just one map available, which quickly becomes monotonous, and there are a ton of significant flaws that cause unforeseen issues. Hopefully, the fires of hell will eventually be hot enough to cook it to perfection, but you should probably wait until they do, as there are already some hotfixes available and more are reportedly on the way.
