No More Room in Hell 2
- TheAwakening
- May 6
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 11
Overview
No More Room In Hell 2 continues the semi-realistic zombie apocalypse by evolving it into an extraction shooter with roguelike features. This time, you’re not a survivor caught inside a building surrounded by the undead making your breakthrough and escape alive; you are a responder who will go to hell and back or die trying to rescue others. Your responder is barely armed, but as you complete objectives and collect supplies, it will level up and unlock skills that will make any mission a walk in the park. That is if you escape alive. Unfortunately, its current state makes it a bit unplayable, janky, and unoptimized.
Gameplay
The core gameplay remains the same as its successor, with the addition of roguelike and extraction features such as unlockable skills and loadout customization. You pick your responder, find a game with other players (alone or with a team of four), complete all the objectives, and extract alive. You are warned from the beginning: If your responder dies or you fail to escape, you lose it. There is no safe pocket or compensation if you fail the mission.
From the start of any game, depending on the map, you might spawn alone or with all or some other players. Your loadout consists of a melee weapon, a revolver, and a flashlight that requires batteries, but it doesn’t take space in your inventory. You also have a map and a compass that point to the location of your objectives. Heading towards the first objective, you must pick up any supplies you can find, such as ammunition, bandages or first aid kits, better weapons of both ranged and melee, and other utility tools such as the barricade kit. They all take space in your inventory, and you must manage it whenever you can.
Zombies are always a threat as they wander around the objective areas or in the wild. The golden rule is you do not have to fight every walker unless you are in a closed space; if there’s room, you can simply walk past them, but not too close as they will retaliate; they can even grab you. It takes several hits to the head, depending on your weapon, to take a zombie down. Walkers are very common, but other variations exist: Primal zombies are red, have glowing eyes, and are tougher than common ones. Infected carriers have a greenish aura that will infect any human on contact. The most dangerous ones are the fresh infected runners who can catch up with your responder and are very aggressive.
Using a melee weapon is riskier as they can hit you, but you save on ammunition this way; all they require is stamina with each swing. All melee weapons have proper, immersive swing animations and require a different aim control. Firearms should only be saved for the endgame, where supplies are scarcer and you must fight lots of walkers inside a building. You need the proper ammo type for the gun; you can collect ammo anywhere, but if you find a weapon that uses the same type, it can be unloaded. There is no ammo counter always being displayed; you must check the gun’s reserve yourself. Firearms can also have attachments equipped. There are also grenades, mines, and molotovs to dispatch groups if needed. Utility items have passive improvements that all they do is be in your inventory, and active ones such as the barricade kit must be deployed by hand.
Bandages and first aid kits will heal you or others, but there is one dangerous mechanic that will kill you if not treated: if your health is too low or you come closer to an infected carrier, you can become infected. You have five minutes until the disease takes over and kills your responder, to either extract in time or threat it with pills that will reset the timer. If anything fails and you have a weapon with a bullet, you can kill yourself and avoid becoming a fresh infected that will attack other responders. If a responder loses all it’s health they can be revive by others, however there is a limit until they die. All these threats must be taken with caution during the whole duration of a game which can take half an hour or more. Should a mission fail with the death of half the team, extraction points unlocks for the other still alive responders.
A responder that extracted successfully will earn experience based on how many supplies they have gathered with the team and how many others also escaped. Skills can be learned and equipped that will make future missions easier. Equipment can also be bought for the responder once the account and their level are high enough. Difficulty can be higher or lower based on the level of everyone in the team. There are mostly objective maps and one survival map to play with. You can choose whether to queue alone or with a group of up to four players.
Bugs Found
When carrying an objective item that is large and requires two hands, checking the compass down flips and rotates the item like it’s nothing as the animation happens, remaining in a weird position.
Sometimes when grabbing an objective item too, turning the flashlight on carries the animation of displaying the flashlight (like it was a two-handed weapon), the item itself goes invisible, and you cannot drop it until you use it.
When trying to heal, if you are grabbed by a zombie, then you cannot use the item further for some reason. This bug also causes you to not be able to switch weapons. It can be fixed by dropping all your inventory.
When trying to quit back to the main menu, the game freezes and does not load at all. This might happen when the server or you lose the connection.
Depending on the current ping, melee weapons are janky and do not respond well to my inputs.
On newer maps some items were placed behind invisible walls; it was impossible to grab them. (Broadway)
Loading the training map and then a mission has set my HUD options to default, so they are all shown.
On the survival map, the game audio got muffled besides the radio announcer for some reason.
Audio & Graphics
The game overhaul of graphics is neat and does bring its own unique ambience, but it is unoptimized through and through. It offers the same graphic settings for the engine, but they help little in optimizing the game. The audio has also been modernized with the music remaining the same as before, still capturing the ambience of the apocalypse.
The HUD can display a myriad of info, such as a player list with their supplies gathered, a list of objectives and their arrow locations, items you grab, an ammo counter when checking the weapon, a health and stamina bar, etcetera. You can decide what to display: whether always, only when checking the compass and objectives, or never. This can modify the difficulty to tailor your experience if you like playing like it’s the first game without too much information and tips on display.
Opinion
NMRIH 2 is bringing the classic cult game back to life with modern gameplay and the hardcore setting we all know where death is final, and it reflects well with its extraction and roguelike mechanics. But the bugs I’ve found that are still there from day one of early access, the jank on combat, and its optimization, overall it’s an unfinished game that doesn’t know what it wants and leaves no room for improving.
Rating: 4/10
