How To Survive 2 Review

Good old Kovac

Lately, even through the influence of that half masterpiece of The Walking Dead (comic), new clichés and symbolic characters have spread in the world of zombies. Not related to the zombies: those remain the usual wavering drunkards of all time. Human beings have become more interesting, don't you think? Either they go completely insane, or they turn into war machines of Wickedness. The Steward of The Walking Dead and Negan perfectly cover both these two aspects of the human soul brought to the fracture of one's psyche and exasperation.

Etc, the first time you encountered Kovac's manuals in the first How To Survive, you probably thought about this. And you will think so once again, because Kovac also returns in the sequel we are talking about. And he returns in person. It will provide you with a brief excursus via video on why and how the world is in the grip of zombie madness, with the unoriginal motivation of a mysterious bacteriological virus. But it is a minimal and basic prologue to the real setting in motion of events: two seconds later you will literally find yourself at the intercom of his outpost of the survivors. And, while he looks crazy and looks like a real bad boy from comics or a Serie B TV show, Kovac will help you out. A nice hand, giving you the first quests, rewards and explanations on this hostile and initially cumbersome game world to understand.

"If you are happy, you know it, shoot a zombie - CLAP CLAP"

At first, the gameplay of How To Survive 2 plays a nasty trick on the player: with an isometric view like Diablo 3, it throws you into the middle of a forest in broad daylight hitting the walking dead with a baseball bat. And what does it take, you will say. And indeed: three hits and a zombie goes down. It all looks nice and easy. And yet it is not even for cabbage, because after some main quest the difficulty increases and you begin to understand that 1) a baseball bat at the beginning is nice and very useful, but when a horde of zombies chases you it becomes more useless of a broken straw, and 2) this it is not just a game in which you leave the house to play at random against monsters controlled by artificial intelligence, but much more.

Unlike its predecessor, the gameplay of the title is all about grinding and farming, which in the language of the hominids means: accumulating resources, continuing to do the same things through minimal variations, strengthening oneself, unlocking objectives and new objects, and starting over; all continuing in the main story. Before saying "eh what a bore, I wanted to lead the zombies" remember that you can lead the zombies anyway, in return you are required to operate your brain at a minimum instead of being eaten by the bad guys. Okay, there are also games where you just have to kill monsters at random, but the level of gratification is still at an all-time low, don't you think?

Although the entire production is designed (and it shows) to take advantage of the online or local multiplayer sector, How To Survive 2 gives not a few satisfactions even in single, as well as being probably also fairly more difficult. The story continues through main missions that are assigned to us by Kovac: to prune them in the end we will have to go to this or that place, find this or that object, build this or that game weapon. By completing the missions you earn new rewards, you begin to become familiar with the controls and you earn experience points to spend to upgrade your character and upgrade your settlement.

About the settlements ...

One of the main directives of the game is just this: create settlements, take care of settlements, defend settlements. The settlements are practically your life is the only source of survival and security in a world devastated by zombie catastrophe: it's where you are safe and you can rearrange your ideas, as well as dedicate yourself to building new items and upgrading your character.

Going online and starting a new game quickly change pace. If you have friends you can invite into your game you can also start doing everything together right away, missions, kills, upgrades, and so on. How To Survive 2 is designed to be started, lived and ended in the company of three other "real" friends or never seen before, and the mechanics work as well as being fun. The problem, as always, are the people: because if you don't know them and invite them to your refuge, well… as your mother used to say when you were little? "Never trust strangers". Because they could come, beat you and take away everything you have. Maybe not so drastically, but still annoying enough. This is also a point in common with The Walking Dead, which by now should have taught everyone that, in the event of a zombie threat and the extinction of three quarters of the world population, it is not so much the zombies that must be worried, but the people left and the their ferocity and greed.

If we must then, in conclusion, also spend a few words for the technical, graphic and sound sector, let's put it this way: the music of the game is forgettable after twelve seconds, but it does not matter, we have never really missed it with all the things that there are things to do and the attention they require. Graphically, scenarios and details are sufficiently clean, we never needed to turn up our noses, indeed in some cases (except for the minimal objects on the screen) it is believed that the developers have focus more on quality than quantity. And in these kinds of titles, that's okay. Game uploads, on the other hand, aren't good that way. One cannot wait for a minute of transition between an inside and an outside, between one mission and another. Not in a game that doesn't have to calculate who knows how much stuff every time. But after a couple of games you get used to it.