Zombie survival shooter No More Room in Hell 2 shambled onto Steam early access late last year, and proved to have a few more bits missing than its audience could reasonably cope with. Debuting to a 'Mostly Negative' rating on Steam as players cited a litany of flaws, from bugs to performance issues to the experience generally feeling undercooked. However, developer Torn Banner has continually tinkered with the game since then, with this latest addition described as its 'biggest update yet.'
Titled the 'Nightmare' update for reasons that will soon become clear, the patch expands the game's open-ended survival scenario in numerous ways. The headline addition is weapon attachments, letting players customise their guns with sights, flashlights, and perhaps most importantly, silencers, which seem like a major advantage in a game where noise is as much of a threat as the undead shambling in the dark. One notable omission Torn Banner admits to is "magnifying scopes" though the team assures players these will be "coming in a future update along with more attachment options".
Meanwhile, the large open ended Power Plant level has been expanded with a new ending scenario, replacing the 'restart the generator' climax with repairing infrastructure around the plant. This is coupled with a new beginning scenario, where players must find radios to access the plant rather than laptops. These have apparently been added in response to player requests for "more replayability" in the map, though I do wonder whether the real issue isn't the lack of maps in the first instance.
In any case, now we come to the titular change included in the update, adjustments to Nightmare difficulty. Here, Torn Baner adds several new modifiers, a "hardcore" UI that removes objective markers and interaction cues from the game's already minimalist HUD, and clouds the entire map in a soupy fog. Sounds utterly horrible to me, frankly, but players who emerge unscathed will gain 'Nightmare Prestige Point', which Torn Banner states are designed as a way for them to "brag about" their achievements.
Other minor additions include a new two-handed melee weapon—the shovel—new jump scares "in a few locations", and "infection audio hallucinations" just to make your transformation into a walking corpse that little bit more horrific. The new features are accompanied by a beefy list of bug fixes, addressing everything from visual and audio glitches, to UI problems, loading times, and zombie behaviours. I'm sure players will be pleased to hear they "should no longer spawn into matches without a body", although you could argue lacking a torso would prove an advantage in a zombie apocalypse. Torn Banner also reassures one specific player that "the naked zombie that was found at a vista point near Lookout Tower has been redressed" adding "our thoughts are with that responder."
All told, it seems like a substantial update. Whether it will do much to reverse the game's fortunes remains to be seen, however. As well as continuing to raise concerns about quality, several recent Steam reviews also complain No More Room in Hell 2 is "dead". Indeed, according to Steam Charts, 111 players were bashing zombies at the time of writing, compared to its all-time peak of 1,998. Those aren't exactly huge numbers, and I don't see how you can sustain a game for years on a player count in the low hundreds.
It's a bit of a shame, to be honest. I thought there was a perfectly decent core to No More Room in Hell 2 when I played it last October. I liked its thick, foreboding shadows, its emphasis on slow-moving zombies that gradually overwhelmed you, and how all your objectives were communicated via simulated radio chatter. Players also seem to have been keen to damn it due to how its design diverges from the original, 2012 mod. Nonetheless, a bit more meat on the bones at the outset would undoubtedly have helped its longevity, and I fear that short of dramatic improvements in the near future, No More Room in Hell 2 may well suffer final death sooner than it perhaps deserves.
