#Halloween2022
Into the Dead 2 is an auto-run zombie survival game which originally launched back in 2017 on iOS and Android as a free-to-play title laden with the usual mobile microtransactions. The aim of proceedings here is to make your way through gauntlet after gauntlet of shambling, braindead zombie attackers as your player character moves ever-forwards, your controls limited to shifting from left to right to avoid incoming attacks whilst desperately trying to conserve ammo for your weapons. You can also unlock a selection of animal sidekicks who’ll attack incoming zeds and grant you little boons to help you out here and there. And that’s about it. is pretty simple and repetitive, as you might expect from an auto-runner, but it all looks very nice and plays smoothly – except for the odd occasion where you find yourself getting caught out even though you were sure you made a successful dodge or shotgun headshot. There’s a story to follow in the main campaign, with each of the sixty levels bookended by some pretty hackneyed radio banter between your character James and his sister who’s on the run and trying to survive the zombie invasion with what’s left of her family. It’s predictable stuff that runs through a checklist of pretty tired zombie movie tropes, but it does at least provide some sort of basic narrative framing for all the running and, really, we weren’t expecting some subversive zombie horror masterpiece here.
It’s a slim state of affairs in terms of what it offers gameplay-wise, and if you’ve played a handful of levels you’ve pretty much seen everything in terms of actual mechanics – apart from a couple of novelty weapons and turret gun sequences that add momentary variety later on. The main drive of Into the Dead 2 is really the constant unlocking and upgrading of new weapons, boons and doggy partners rather than what's going on with its gameplay. It’s an expected situation in a game that was a microtransaction-heavy FTP title to begin with, but it doesn’t do anything to change the fact that it all becomes a pretty mindless grind very, very quickly. Its levels almost feel eager to shuttle you through as quickly as possible and get you to the XP screen so you can see what you’re on the verge of gaining access to next – access that is doled out incredibly slowly.Granted, there are a ton of weapons to unlock. They all look very nice and are well-detailed in the game’s armoury; we've got everything from dual-wield pistols to riot shotguns, bazookas, old western-style rifles, machine guns and some fancy compound bows, but the mechanics of actually shooting are so simplified – without any way to pick out individual body parts, maybe blow the legs off an enemy to leave them crawling towards you – that we’re not sure all of this variety in gun types really makes a big difference. It’s just more stuff to unlock; padding to an endless grind of collecting in-game currency to reach the next power boost. Sure, a bazooka is gonna make shorter work of a zombie than a pistol, and you'll certainly be treated to more giblets as they explode all over you, but you're still just auto-running forward, moving left to right to avoid things and shooting every now and again; nothing changes that.
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