After playing nearly every zombie game, this new one still feels fresh

For about as long as I can remember, I've had a soft spot for zombie fiction. I've always assumed it's because I watched Romero's classics at far too young an age, but my enthusiasm for the undead has never faded, whether in movies, TV shows, books, or video games. At this point, I feel like I've seen, read, and played almost all of them.

That deep familiarity with the genre is exactly why I've been so excited for No More Room in Hell 2 over the past few years, even through some early-access growing pains, and why I'm happy to see the 1.0 release land so well.

It's been a long road to this 1.0 build for Torn Banner, the studio behind the PvP medieval combat series Chivalry. I've been playing No More Room in Hell 2 in early access for roughly two years and have watched the team try to connect with its community, which at times seemed fed up with the sequel and preferred its low-profile original. Balance problems, bugs, and broader design issues got in the way at points, but I feel most of them have been smoothed out in its current form.

No More Room in Hell 2 is a first-person zombie-survival game built for teams of eight. That's a cool setup right away, since zombie games tend to be designed for huge lobbies of dozens, like DayZ; smaller co-op squads, like Left 4 Dead; or solo experiences, like Days Gone. The novelty of eight players is a real asset, but it wouldn't matter much if that were all the game had going for it. Thankfully, there's a lot else working in its favor.

In its deliberately slower-paced story missions, you move through campaigns set on large Pennsylvania maps with plenty of lateral space to explore, taking you from woods to residential neighborhoods to downtown areas and beyond, completing objectives as a group and hopefully escaping with the same number of beating hearts you arrived with.

No More Room in Hell 2 clearly draws on timeless zombie-fiction imagery, with the undead bursting from caskets, pounding on doors and windows until they break their seals, and shambling through graveyards like someone should warn Barbara. While the new console version naturally doesn't look as nice as the PC edition I've been playing for the past two years, the game has a strong sense of atmosphere no matter where you're playing it.

No More Room in Hell 2 takes players to a wide range of locations that feel like classic zombie-fiction set dressing.

In some campaigns, you'll start alone and must find each other through exploration. These missions are my favorites, as they feel especially desolate and dangerous, and that's always been what I look for in zombie games. Throughout early access, this was always meant to be a slow-burning, Romero-esque walk through hell, and it excels by achieving that vision.

Though nearly all zombies in the game are of the classic slow-moving type, even just one of them can spell trouble. They're relentless. In fact, on higher difficulties, there may even be too many, offering not enough breathing room for the highs to feel as high as they should. But on normal difficulty, the game finds a sweet spot.

Killing just one of them often takes four or more swipes with a melee weapon, and that's if you're diligently hitting them in the head, chipping away at their skulls as their brains flop out like someone's stepped on a tube of toothpaste. Body blows will only serve to tire you faster than it will take out the restless ghouls--unless you happen to have a sharp weapon and cut off enough of their limbs to halt them. Letting them into your personal space is a tense affair, as it's important to let them get just close enough for you to hit them, but not close enough that they slash or bite at you. Learning to measure them up correctly is an early hurdle that will decide who lives or dies.

Managing stamina is a thoughtful and near-constant exercise in survival. A powerful kick ability allows you to gain some vital breathing space when you're being surrounded, but it also eats away a big chunk of your stamina. The same is true of running. Very early on, I learned to stay aware of my surroundings, because while running from the horde behind you may seem absolutely crucial, you may be heading straight toward another and won't stand to survive if you're exhausted when you get there.

Further demonstrating how seriously this game takes its zombie fiction, you can get infected mid-mission, and if you're not careful, you'll not only turn into one of them, but you'll become a speedier variant, losing control of your character as you're left to torment your fellow survivors from beyond the grave.

You can help your infected teammates, or you can wait for them to turn and then lop off their limbs.

This element is No More Room in Hell 2's coolest, because it allows for some really fascinating social dynamics. Pills will temporarily keep the infection at bay, and anyone infected will give away their illness by coughing every once in a while. But what if you don't have pills, or what if no one is willing to share theirs? They're not abundant enough to go around, so I've seen some people choose not to share, opting to take their chances with the fast ghoul who will soon come charging toward whoever is nearby.

On the flipside, the infected person could distance themselves and try to hide their illness, just like the selfish guy in any zombie movie's group of survivors. This may buy them time to find a cure, or just escape with infected status while keeping their character alive. If they're more altruistic, they can instead sacrifice themselves just before they turn--provided they have any ammo--sparing their fellow survivors from dealing with the mess.

It's a hard decision to make in either case when you're playing on difficulties higher than beginner, because permadeath is a part of the experience. Characters are re-rolled randomly, applying some basic stats and a backstory, and you can customize their clothing if you'd like. From there, you'll level them with each successful campaign, unlocking skills of your choosing at regular intervals that help you lean into particular builds. Knowing I had no plans to use guns all that much, I often grabbed skills that buffed my stamina and melee damage, and it's really satisfying to see a character come together over many hours.

But should they die, they're lost for good.

The stakes feel so high. Taking my level 20+ character into a round that quickly went into the gutter was nerve-racking. Thankfully, these lengthy campaign missions that typically take anywhere from 30-60 minutes offer a few early exits on your travels. If you're determined to just get out alive, you can extract early, even as an individual, at the cost of any character XP gains. But hey, at least you'll be leaving with your life.

While heavy, weighted melee combat helps sell this immersive experience even more, gunplay on controller leaves something to be desired. The aim assist isn't reliable enough, as it's quite sticky but then doesn't track zombie heads well, meaning you'll often waste ammo hitting them in the chest, while trying to correct for it feels hard to pinpoint, too. It's serviceable at closer range, but only barely, and partly because the zombies are attracted to noise, and you ought not be firing loud weapons unless it's the only thing keeping you alive in any given moment.

This means you can, and probably will, get through some missions without ever using guns. I do wish my co-op partners understood that better so we could keep the hordes off our backs more often, but even these teammate frustrations feel authentic to what living in a zombie world might feel like.

While you should stick to beginner difficulty for a few early rounds, the game is at its best when permadeath is in play on higher difficulties.

The teamwork required in this game is intense, and some would-be-selfish players must find themselves banding together at times, because the deeper you get into a mission, the harder it becomes, and you don't want to fight off that final horde with a deficit in your team size. There are plenty of times where you or a teammate could be totally gassed and about to be swarmed, only for an ally to save the day. But in this world, there's little time to celebrate, as the next horde likely isn't far off.

Another issue the game's newly implemented controller support suffers from is strangely janky menus. Exploring options screens or even different overlays in the main menu, like moving from character upgrades to the in-game store to the challenge system, often feels clunky; my cursor would disappear, and I'd need to guess where I'm clicking.

It's merely an annoyance in the main menu but can become a bigger issue on missions, like if you have a teammate playing music that his headset is picking up and you can't easily get to the mute button. No More Room in Hell 2 doesn't let you stop and breathe very often, so when this happened to me, I didn't have time to fumble around in the social menu. Instead, I found myself wishing that guy would just get bitten. I'm not proud of it. It's sad what these apocalyptic times make of us.

Outside of the main campaign-style "Objective" mode, there's also a wave-based survival mode. I've never been nearly as interested in wave-based zombie modes--it's why I don't even bother playing Call of Duty Zombies these days--but I like No More Room in Hell 2's survival mode just fine as a shorter alternative to the lengthy missions. They're good for farming weekly challenges and leveling characters faster than the real attraction allows, but I'd sooner just decide to play when I have the time for the game's best version of itself.

Though No More Room in Hell 2 clearly leans into decades of zombie history, it feels, most of all, like a great mash-up of two of my favorite zombie games: It has the dread-inducing, life-or-death stakes of State of Decay wrapped in a tight co-op experience reminiscent of Left 4 Dead. Though some subpar shooting mechanics keep it from being as enjoyable as either of those, that's also a very high bar in my mind, and No More Room in Hell 2 still accomplishes a hell of a lot.

Source: the original publisher