How to Survive 2 Review
A Reanimated Review to Die For
Intro:
With the ever increasing fascination of our rotten kin, it is hard not to see the impact zombies have had on our culture. Shows like The Walking Dead and movies such as A Scouts Guide to the Apocalypse are great examples of just how much we fear and love the idea of reanimated corpses causing havoc. So it wouldn’t surprise me if many people today are prepared for such an event, but for the minds at 505 Games the training is never over. How to Survive 2 is a zombie fanatic’s wacky guide to survival during a zombie outbreak that laces fun in the sun with others… but it wont be easy.
Gameplay:
How to Survive 2’s at its very core is a top-down hack and slash rpg similar in style to games like Gauntlet or the Diablo franchise, but with far less rpg elements and a stamina bar. Don’t get me wrong, it is fun to explore zombie infested maps cracking skulls with a giant makeshift debris-sledge hammer, but there is an overall lack of attack variation to the carnage that no amount of cool finishing moves can fix. I can see players’ ambitions begin to dwindle at the realization of how much of a grind game How to Survive 2 is. This will be more evident to hardcore gamers who increase every mission’s level for maximum rewards as 2–3 arrows to the head per kill quickly turns to 6–7 shots instead.
Wading through How to Survive 2’s open ocean of grind only gets worse with the crafting system. This isn’t a criticism of the variety of items you can craft as there are so many awesome items to craft, but a criticism of just of how monotonous repeating missions for specific crafting supplies can be. Sure I could hike the mission difficulty to max for extras rewards, but as I eluded to earlier enemies on the map begin to take an annoying amount of damage to kill if you are under equipped. To help items randomly spawn on the map, but I found this to be inconsistent with sometimes not a single scrap of the desired item located. It wasn’t long before I found myself running past most enemies on my way to completing objectives; which is not always the best strategy:
Design:
As an attempt for realism, food, water, and carrying capacity become essential for survival in How to Survive 2’s zombie wasteland. How hungry or thirsty a character is will directly effect your in-game skills. Allowing hunger to fall under 50% will result in your character consuming more stamina per swing and alternatively falling under 50% thirst results in longer aim time for ranged weapon critical shots. Letting either of these reach zero and your are in a world of hurt. Finally, carrying over your backpacks weight capacity directly effects stamina as well. These aspects may seem like a headache but altogether these limiters provide worthy immersion into a world of struggle and chaos. When the only penalty for repeated death is an incremental decrease in awarded experience points, I full-heartedly enjoyed the challenge provided.
Alternatively to crafting minor items in the field, players are required to craft and construct a base of operations, and I do mean required! With the experience points gained from various missions, players will have to juggle leveling up self and base to progress through the story. In fact, your characters level can never exceed your bases level. For every 10 increases to base level, players will have to complete a Kovac Challenge to proceed; that’s right you will be stuck at max level 10 until the first challenge is complete. Kovac’s Challange is essentially a tower defense game mode, where the player is pitted against waves of enemies as they attempt to destroy a pylon constructed by the player. Completing these challenges also provide new crafting items, buildings, and new harder enemies to spawn.
These aspects of the game can seem irritating to the gamer who is not particularly interested in base construction, but there are multiplayer solutions. How to Survive 2’s multiplayer system is awesome, and should act as a standard for multiplayer games of this type. There are thousands of online camps created by others that you can join with minor strings attached (host permissions and character level). Once loaded into another’s online camp players can use, create, or upgrade a hosted camp’s buildings and storage, but that’s just the cream on this sundae. The cherry on top comes with the ability to start all your own story/missions without the need of anyone else being there. But what happens when you join a lobby with 3 other people already in a mission? With a simple navigation of the menu, players can freely join and leave any active mission started by other players. Though be warned: check the mission’s level first! Being a level 11 in a level 19 mission may prove a bit too challenging, ultimately forcing you to cower close to stronger players, but drizzle some more chocolate and throw on the nuts because you’ll still receive experience for their kills.
Presentation:
Throughout my time playing, I may have only reached level 19, but I visited a vast variety of mission locals. From a foggy bog where dead babies hang from trees and zombie dingoes run loose, to golden farmsteads whose corn stocks drip red from the slaughter of their smallholders by infested turkeys, and even to the confetti covered streets where the Mardis Gras celebration was cut short by acid spewing pelicans and decomposing Rottweilers. Maps like these are what makes the game creepy yet strangely humorous. The game does possess an overall lack of musical ambiance. Most of the time the only sounds to enter a players each are the grunts and growls of locale terrors accompanied by the twang of bow shot or swoosh of club, but taking a wrong turn and becoming face to face with a horde will subject the player to sudden stress inducing action track that acts more as a warning of immanent doom than anything else.
Conclusion:
There is still so much How to Survive 2 to talk about, but ultimately this review should give you a good idea of how to game felt for me. For the Call of Duty Zombies gamer, this game may not be what you are looking for. But for DIY crafter who harbors a joyous place in their heart for the smell of rotting corpse all while playing top-down hack n slash games set in creepy environments and laughing at Zom-Coms, How to Survive 2 provides the Stench scented candle made from real zombie flesh just for you. Where else can you experience Jack-o-lantern helmeted zombie farmers, maniacally fast zombie bucks, just-not-slow-enough turned turtles, and hordes of undead turkeys gobbling for man-stuffing? Nowhere!
Thank you for reading. Nolan — Totaltoad
How to Survive 2 gets a 7/10 (Average)
Thank you to Zack Hage and 505 Games for supplying me with the code and giving me this chance to share my opinion with everyone. For more reviews and features like this one, please check out The Cube on Medium.com, or our twitter account @TheCubeMedium . Check out my random video game videos on YouTube.
