No More Room in Hell 2 may be too early for early access, with Steam reviews flagging endless technical issues and major server issues

PC Gamer’s best mod of 2012 was No More Room in Hell, a Romero-inspired Source mod that supports eight-player co-op and delivers an intense, claustrophobic survival experience like no other. The standalone sequel has been in development since 2016, from the original group of modders, which last year was acquired by Chivalry 2 studio Torn Banner and received many more resources. No More Room in Hell 2 finally released yesterday and… oh. Oh dear.

Just under 4,000 reviews from early players left NMRiH2 with a “mostly negative” score, with some criticism of the game’s style and design alongside the original mod. However, most players are questioning its poor performance and a horde of bugs that are ruining the experience.

“Early access is an understatement,” writes cryptic. “Teleporting zombies, disappearing zombies, unbindable keys that were previously bound, broken voice chat, floating heads, gibs attached to floating zombies, buttons sometimes become unusable after jumping. Massive lag spikes, errors server, scenes that cannot be skipped during startup, and menu bugs already.”

This story repeats itself in many reviews, with some describing the game as “pre-Alpha” rather than early access, while one joker refers to it as “Have More Bugs in Hell 2”. There are also a number of complaints about networks and servers.

PCG’s own Morgan Park found something similar on their first NMRiH2 experimentscalling it “frustratingly unfinished. Almost everything about the preview build I played was difficult: melee hits feel delayed and inconsistent, performance was worryingly bad on my RTX 2080 Super (an old card, but still good above the Steam user average), several weapon animations appeared every time I pulled the trigger, and both matches ended early due to bugs.”

At the time, Torn Banner said the release version would fix many of these bugs, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. The studio has now made a statement regarding the issues, saying that “the game continues to be a work in progress, and we see this week’s Early Access launch as just the beginning of its journey as a live game.”

With so many complaints about lags and servers, the company says it is “actively working on optimizing matchmaking on our servers around the world” and identifies several causes related to poor region matching (resulting in poor ping) that have already been resolved.

Additionally, the studio says the cloud service provider it used didn’t have the capacity needed for the game in some regions, placing players in Asia, Europe and the US on servers “performing about half as efficiently as our target.” He adds: “We are working on additional server optimizations that should help with game lag: issues such as slow reactions to hits, zombie teleportation, as well as some animation and rubberbanding issues.”

These fixes are being tested and, if all goes well, should be implemented overnight and improve things. Finally, the more general complaints about bugs and technical issues are acknowledged, but clearly Torn Banner is focused on fixing the server issues first: “We are preparing a hotfix to resolve a selection of gameplay and performance issues, and will share more as soon as we have more information on what players can expect.”

It must be said that some Steam users seem to be having a good experience, even if they are currently being drowned out by the number that are not. Still, not all complaints are created equal – with some negative reviews going as far as things like the $30 price tag (as the original mod was free), which seems a little unfair. The first game still has an active player base now, and Torn Banner clearly wants NMRiH2 to be available within a decade: there’s still time to fix things, but it’s not a good start.

Related Posts

Cell phones stolen after victims were distracted in restaurants

How Israel Tracked Down and Killed Hamas Chief Sinwar, Its No. 1 Enemy

Monica from “Love Is Blind” Season 7 reveals what was in Stephen’s messages