The Haunted Hoard: Into the Dead 2 (Switch)
In a lot of zombie fiction, survivors often try to seek out safe places to settle down in to make surviving the zombie plague a bit easier. If they do travel, it’s in search of the next location they can find stability in, but in Into the Dead 2, it seems like the best way to avoid the walking dead is to just keep running constantly at all times.
Into the Dead 2 is an auto-runner/first-person shooter mix that began life as a free to play game on mobile phones and received a Switch port that stripped out the extra purchases and only has you pay one flat price for entry with bonus content unlocked through play. No matter which mode or level you end up playing, you’ll always find yourself running forward automatically. Whether you’re traversing large open plains, running down city streets, pushing through abandoned industrial parks, or wading through swamps, the one thing you can always count on are zombies walking about. While you can carry up to two guns at one time, you have very limited ammo so you can’t just take out every walking corpse you see. Luckily, the aggression levels on the shambling undead are fairly minimal, many of them only a problem if you run right into them. They can still kill you if they get their hands on you though, and most of time you only have one chance per run to escape their grip. When they’re packed together in big groups or blocking a useful path forward though you may have no choice but to blast your way through them. There are some that are a bit more aggressive to add some more active danger though, these ones running out into your path to try and intercept you if you don’t stay alert.
The most consistent challenge you’ll face in Into the Dead 2 ends up being balancing how you use your ammo. There are always going to be ammo dumps with green flares to find as your character charges forward automatically, but you might not always be able to adjust your running to reach them. You are freely able to control your left and right movement, but your runner moves rather slowly when traveling sideways so you can’t adjust your course in a hurry. If you use up all your ammo you might not even be able to safely grab the next ammo cache if zombies are surrounding it, but you can actually weave your way through some zombie groups with a fair bit of finesse. Once you get a good feel for how close you can get to zombies, it’s not all that difficult to squeeze your way around packs of them, and Into the Dead 2 is actually quite merciful when it comes to detecting if a zombie is going to be able to grab you. If they blindside you or barely touch the periphery of your vision, you will be jostled but the game won’t have the zombie stop your run to try and kill you. There are some areas like the cornfields where you can still not potentially see the zombie that reaches out and grabs you, but it’s fairly balanced not only because that’s the unique hazard of that area, but your character will adjust their aim when a zombie is within reach and that can be used as an indicator for if you can land a shot on them. In fact, a good deal of auto-aim is present because the game is less concerned about if you shoot zombies so much as if you make the right choices on which zombies to run past and which ones you’ll need to gun down.
Depending on the mode there are some levels where not shooting a zombie at all can be pulled off, but usually there will be some incentives in place to make you want to mow down zombies even if they’re not in the way. In the game’s Story mode, every level asks you cover a set amount of ground before the level wraps up, survival actually fairly easy here but the challenges and experience system give things a touch more life. Challenges like getting a certain amount of kills with a weapon or finding hidden special weapons like chainsaws, mounted turrets, and garden trimmers that you can go on a tear with for a while encourage you to play a bit more dangerously and run towards areas that may not necessarily be the safest. Clearing challenges earns you stars that go towards unlocks, but even just using weapons to take out zombies builds up experience points for that gun, an upgrade system existing where you can make your weapons a bit stronger by paying the gold that is often paid out for collecting stars or as part of a set of random goodies you can select from on level clear.
Story mode is unfortunately pretty reliant on the challenges to really have much of interest. If you are only concerned with reaching the end of a level, it’s not much of a challenge, and while leveling up your guns can pay off down the line, they level up incredibly slowly and even when you spend gold on an upgrade, Into the Dead 2 feels like it specifically picks poor areas to upgrade until you get to the higher weapon levels. It is technically advantageous for some guns to reload or fire faster, but with there being some zombies types that can take two or three bullets to put down, it would be nicer to get damage buffs instead, especially considering the deliberate ammo scarcity. It could understandably throw off the balance, but it makes upgrades mostly feel rather underwhelming despite the work you put into them. There is one area where upgrades can feel meaningful though, Into the Dead 2 allowing you to gradually acquire an animal companion who can help you out during runs. There are many breeds of dog available, a bear, and some side content even allows you to unlock tigers or oddly enough, the gross ghost Slimer from Ghostbusters. Companions will attack zombies on their own, but each companion also has special abilities like the border collie who can find extra ammo crates on occasion. Upgrades to animals often increase the frequency of their attacks and their special ability’s likelihood or how often you can activate a special technique they have, but if there’s any part of Into the Dead 2 that does bear the marks of its mobile game history, it’s how wimpy upgrades can feel since originally they were designed to try and funnel you into spending cash on better gear.
Arcade mode is the real star of Into the Dead 2 on Switch though and I’d even recommend diving into it first since you can earn a good deal of gold, grenades, and other perks that will ensure you aren’t starving too much for resources in the story. Arcade will set you in a specific area with a specific gun, it often even having special ammo like incendiary bullets or explosive rounds that are normally drip fed in the story and are used up after the level you equip them for. Arcade mode takes on the more familiar form endless runner games assume, the player’s character now running across a large looping location and trying to survive as long as possible. Rather than time being the mark of success though, your goal in Arcade mode is to rack up as many kills as possible, the player needing to really get a feel for how many bullets they can use before they can expect an ammo crate and often needing to space out their zombie kills well since later on more and more will appear and likely eventually lead to too many to clear out. The rewards in Arcade mode are earned at certain kill thresholds and to unlock the next arcade stage you’ll need to get a considerable amount, but there are definitely a few levels that are meant to be easy cathartic breaks, especially since it makes unlocking a new stage with an appealing weapon like a minigun or grenade launcher a reward rather than just a more difficult challenge. There are definitely levels that will put up much more of a fight, a bow or revolver much slower to fire so you really need to plan your shots and automatic weapons will chew through ammunition if you’re careless, but Arcade mode is a wonderful showcase of the variety of weapons on offer while also still having a good degree of challenge as you keep pushing to earn more kills to unlock new levels that don’t feel out of reach.
The last mode of note are the Side Stories, and these are in a rough spot. They have none of the challenges from Story mode and they often feature characters wielding set weapons that you’ll unlock when you finish them. However, since they use the format of just needing to survive until you reach a destination, you can definitely just run without firing in a few of them. They do at least have better plots than the main adventure though. The main game’s 60 levels all focus in on James, a survivor running all across the land as he tries to reach his sister who was taking care of his daughter when the zombies struck. His sister and daughter keep moving around to new locations that necessitate James to keep running, and while you check in on them by walkie-talkie at the end of most every mission, they often don’t have too much of interest to say. They do go to new place and meet new people, and one side story even has you play as the military group they run into, and Lance Corporal Garcia’s story at least has more meaningful personal developments for her group to follow. Other side stories like one where James is trying to meet up with a survivor called Rusty in the blistering cold or bonding with a tiger that escaped the circus also do more to actually invest you in the action despite it being easier than ever, it feeling like you’re really building towards something rather than waiting for the levels to run out to finally see what’s going to happen to James’s sister and kid. The main plot has multiple endings, but it expects you to clear every challenge and expert mode to boot to see some of them, and with some challenges not even possible until later game unlocks, it feels like it expects far too much time spent on its weaker modes to see them.
Into the Dead 2 does offer some license tie-in side chapters if you get the physical release or buy the DLC. The Night of the Living Dead one feels like an odd choice since that movie is so focused on staying still in one location, but it at least can serve as an explanation of where Ben was before he arrives at the farmhouse. It contains a rare break from formula too, a few “flashlight levels” existing where you move much more slowly and instead of being able to adjust your run to the right or left, you turn in those directions. These are fairly easy as the only zombies you need to worry about here are the ones obviously in your path and you’re given enough ammo to handle them soundly, but they can at least set a mood and any variety in the story modes is appreciated save for how the Ghostbusters side-story handles it. Swapping out zombies for spirits and giving you a set of special science fiction weapons, you play as a rookie recruited for the ghost hunting team and soon find those ghost-busting tools are much worse than the regular firearms found elsewhere. Their plasma and light effects can make it hard to tell if you’re hurting ghosts that come in more durable forms than zombies and can appear right in front of you, and many of the ghost-busting guns have unclear range or spread while also reloading fairly slowly. It’s a shame the Ghostbusters side-story contains the game’s only boss and the entire set of tie-in levels are your “reward” for beating story mode’s 60 stages, but some are more tolerable than others if you press on through this extra content.
THE VERDICT: Into the Dead 2’s Arcade mode is a blast and has a strong understanding of how to make a zombie shooting auto-runner satisfying while having realistic goals and rewarding prizes for doing well in levels. The ammo scarcity that defines much of the play mixes well with the kill quotas, and if the game only focused on this mode, it would be easy to recommend it as a fun pick up and play game. However, Into the Dead 2’s Story mode has a bland plot and levels that don’t push you hard enough, the challenges only just able to inject some life into them. Slow unlocks and upgrades and side stories that are almost toothless really threaten to drag this game down, but Arcade’s levels help it keep its head just above water so long as you know it’s the peak of a game that otherwise struggles to understand its own appeal.
And so, I give Into the Dead 2 for Nintendo Switch…
An OKAY rating. Arcade mode feels a little anomalous in Into the Dead 2 as it understands the quick punchy appeal its gameplay could have only for its other modes to stumble and struggle to get it right. Having a set end for a level in Story mode often makes stages feel like they cut off before they really put up too much of a fight, and while challenges are meant to push you into endangering yourself, the minimal rewards you get won’t make the process of unlocking any challenge that requires a good degree of effort worthwhile. You might pick your guns and special ammunition types appropriately and keep your eyes open for level specific objects like barns to run through or a chainsaw to grab, but it’s hard for stages to stand out when they’re all part of a much too long series of 60 stages where the plot feels like it’s moving at a snail’s pace. The side stories could have been better with challenges since they tell more concise tales but they leave out the challenges entirely, the gameplay not really that great if your only goal is to make it to a level’s end. Arcade mode strikes that exciting balance where you need to keep using your weapon, one that will often pack quite a punch, but doing so will put you at risk as your ammo could start to run out and the zombies start coming in greater numbers the longer you last. Into the Dead 2 is definitely not fully polished either, you might see a floating tree despite environments being set designs and sometimes swapping guns will have it display as both guns being out at once until you swap again. Likely, the monetization was stripped out without a careful touch for what should replace it, this mobile port having the same gameplay but not really adjusting itself where it needs to in order to provide consistently satisfying play.
It is a touch sad to tell a player they should ignore a good deal of content for a game to be good, so Into the Dead 2 earns its Okay rating because of how much of the game isn’t as smartly designed as the exciting Arcade mode. The Story mode levels aren’t without their moments and some side stories have something worth seeing, but Into the Dead 2 would likely be outright bad without Arcade mode to bolster my estimation of it. Arcade thankfully has enough levels that if you do play it you can find enough enjoyment in the mode it gets right, but it is likely better to wait for a steep sale or find some other zombie shooter that isn’t going to be burdened by a good deal of serviceable or outright boring levels.