No More Room In Hell 2 nails the terror of being isolated in a zombie outbreak, although you can just hide on a table if you want
Image credit: Torn Banner
Ah, what a pickle Iāve gotten myself into. I need to climb down from this table if Iām ever going to meet up with my teammates and finish the game, but the stupid zombies cannot get me if I stay up here. Itās an absolute gherkin, I tell you. A real cornichonundrum.
The steel pipe in my right hand is doing a decent job of whittling them down, and the torch in my left lets me see the expressions of impotent rage on their flaky faces. Still, the pipe wonāt last forever – this is videogame steel, the crumbliest steel there is. Thank god No More Room In Hell 2 doesnāt bother with the hunger or rest parts of the survival equation. I can, in theory, stay on this table forever.
I bet youāre wondering how I got here, smugly trivialising the otherwise excellently tense horror atmosphere. So was I, actually. I hadnāt heard of No More Room In Hell until Jake ‘Hit Reload’ Tucker informed me it was a Half Life 2 mod. Developers Torn Banner have pedigree in this space, having spun out their studio and Chivalry series from that gameās Age Of Chivalry mod. 13 years later, after wrapping up medieval multiplayer disembowel-em-up Chivalry 2, Torn Banner are giving the horror mod a fresh coat of bowels. Sensing a bit of a theme here, actually (the theme is bowels).
No More Room in Hell 2 – Dev Playtest Clip: Church Stealth
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Or maybe not, as it happens. “This is not a game about killing zombies,” says game director Leif Walter. Itās just, well, Iāve got this gun in my hand, Leif. Your team worked hard on this gun, right? It feels rude of me not to test it out just a little.
It doesnāt take too long after loading into the huge map to stumble upon my first zombie, who goes down easy. Youāve clearly underestimated my ability to identify which part of a zombie is the head, Torn Banner. Piece of piss! Flash forward to about five of them munching my face off. Oh, itās not a game about killing zombies. Right, right. Letās try again.
Eight-player “co-op with consequences,” is how Torn Banner describe this one. Theyāre aiming for a “classic horror film experience” rather than any sort of power fantasy. Youāll be assigned a choice of three differently-specialised characters before you start a match, and theyāll gain skills as you complete games. Die just the once, though, and youāll have to create a new one. Donāt want to die? A common perspective Iām sympathetic to. Thereās a way around that, actually.
“What weāre really excited about,” says Walter, “is our take on the core formula. Even though it’s eight-player co-op, youāre not all going to start together. Youāre all starting alone in the dark, with your flashlight and your crappy iron pipe, and few bullets in your revolver, trying to take your first steps in the unfolding apocalypse.” If I can stress one thing from my time with a preview build that nailed the atmosphere enough for me to overlook the expected jank, itās that teaming up really is essential. “Surviving together, or ending up having to die alone in the darkness,” as Walter puts it.
It’s worth noting any screenshots are from footage on the lowest settings, as suggested by Torn Banner, since things weren’t optimised yet. | Image credit: Torn Banner/Rock Paper Shotgun.
To break the omniscient kayfabe of games reporting for a moment, picture me scrubbing through my OBS recordings for Torn Bannerās introductory bits before the servers opened, only to hear something Iād missed last time. Walter mentions a compass, and its ability to show you other player markers in 3D space. I canāt test this, because I missed it, and now the build isnāt available. All I can do is longingly gaze at the compass in this gameplay snippet, wondering what might have been. Now? Well. Iām alone. And also stuck on top of a table, as you know.
I eventually thin the horde and jump down. The pipe has a hefty swipe to it, and a nice push for crowd control.
The reason Iām in this building – much of the map is highways, forests, and industrial wasteland – is that it contains one of the sub-objectives. Your initial main goal each game is to meet up with your team in the centre of the map, but youāll encounter other tasks on the way. Shut down a toxic gas leak, or restore a radio broadcast. Once sorted, youāll be able to secure equipment caches to help you and your team.
Again, though, I must reiterate: zombies. Travelling across the map, I soon learned to love my torch far more than any pistol, rifle, or shotgun I found. Thereās a touch of ambient illumination, but these forests and roads are otherwise as dark as youād expect, and every hiding place you can take advantage of might also hide a napping corpse. The relief of finding a store or a campfire is soon tempered, too. Thatās where the zombies are.
Image credit: Torn Banner/Rock Paper Shotgun
Going inside at all, I quickly learned, is an act of calculated risk. Too many corners to get trapped in, and chokepoints donāt help all that much when youāve got six bullets to your name. Even a seemingly abandoned location can soon turn nasty. For being brainless, decomposing idiots, these zombos are good at hiding. Iām soon surrounded and backed into a corner, being aggressively lunched upon like so many meal deal Double Deckers outside the Boots opposite an office.
You do have one last Hail Mary once downed: an injector than can bring you back to life. As far as I could tell though, it gets interrupted if youāre constantly being attacked, meaning itās only useful if youāve got a teammate around to distract the zombies. I think Torn Banner have achieved exactly what they were going for, in this regard at least. It doesnāt take long for me to start taking every action very seriously. I move slowly and cautiously. When I do have to fire off a few rounds, I feel like Iāve already lost.
The loneliness is somewhat countered, at least, by who Iām 95% is the brilliant Elias Toufexis giving you pep talks over the radio. āThousands of lives will be lost if you canāt get this under control!ā he warns, urging me towards the power plant at the centre of the map. Thing is, Elias, this table is really safe. Iām starting to really enjoy it up here. The zombies keep swiping at me. Growling. Moaning. I simply do not wish to leave my flatpack kingdom. I fear Iāve said too much already, really. Will Torn Banner patch out this exploit, leaving me to fend for myself in cruel, table-less world? No More Room In Hell 2 launches on early access the 22nd of October.
