How to Survive 2 Game Review: More Zombies, More Swamp, Same Old Grind
There’s something weirdly charming about a zombie game that drops you in the Louisiana bayou with nothing but a stick and tells you – good luck. That’s essentially How to Survive 2’s opening pitch, and honestly, it works better than you’d expect. Developed by Eko Software and published by 505 Games, this isometric action-RPG sequel landed on PC in September 2016, then rolled out for PS4 and Xbox One in early 2017. It had a decent foundation from the 2013 original. The question is whether it built something worth standing on.
Short answer: kind of. Long answer: it depends almost entirely on who you’re playing with.
From Tropical Islands to Louisiana Swamps – Setting the Scene
The first How to Survive took place on a fictional archipelago. Zombies everywhere, scrappy survival, Kovac being Kovac. It was simple, tight, and fun. The sequel jumps forward fifteen years – the infection has gone global now, because of course it has – and relocates you to New Orleans and the surrounding Mississippi Delta bayous. Which, credit where it’s due, is a genuinely interesting setting for a zombie game. Swamps, crumbling city blocks, the French Quarter going to ruin – there’s atmosphere here.
Kovac returns, too, which is good. The guy is eccentric in the best way – this armored, self-styled survival expert who talks to you through audio logs and tutorial missions like he’s the last sane person on Earth. He might be. His personality does a lot of heavy lifting when the gameplay starts dragging, and it will start dragging at points. More on that in a bit.
You kick things off as a customizable survivor – picking skills and building out your character as you level up. The setting has genuine personality. Whether you’re picking through a flooded parking lot in downtown New Orleans or navigating the swamp’s choked waterways, there’s a sense of place that a lot of budget-tier survival games skip entirely.
What Actually Happens When You Play?
Here’s the structure: you’ve got a main map, a base tied to Kovac’s underground bunker, and a mission loop that sends you into randomized zones to scavenge, kill, and collect. The core gameplay loop – go out, fight zombies, come back with loot, upgrade your camp – is satisfying in that low-key way that isometric grinders tend to be. Kind of like Diablo, but with less loot porn and more worrying about whether you have enough clean water to survive the night.
Combat is mostly melee early on. You start with a stick (really), then craft yourself a baseball bat, then better versions of it – weapons like “The Deathbringer” and “The Punisher” that have fun names and genuinely useful stats. Ranged options – bows, guns, eventually grenades and a grenade launcher – open up as you progress. The moment-to-moment fighting can feel stiff.
There’s no lock-on system, so you’re always pushing toward enemies and hoping your swings connect. In crowds, this gets frustrating fast. You’ll swing at a zombie in front of you, trigger a full combo animation, and take a bite from something behind you that you couldn’t redirect to in time.
It’s one of those friction points that never fully goes away. You get used to it, but “getting used to it” isn’t the same as it feeling good.
What does feel good – genuinely – is the base building. That’s How to Survive 2’s clearest upgrade over the original, and it adds a whole layer of strategy the first game didn’t have. Next to Kovac’s bunker, you build: an armoury for weapons, a kitchen for food, a foundry for metal crafting, storage units, walls, watchtowers, traps. As your level climbs, more buildings unlock and your camp starts looking like an actual defensible outpost rather than a pile of scrap.
Occasionally, zombie waves hit your base and you have to defend it – a tower-defense-lite mode that’s genuinely chaotic and fun, especially when friends are involved.
The Crafting System – Deep but Sometimes Confusing
The crafting in How to Survive 2 is one of its biggest selling points, and also one of its most cluttered menus. There are hundreds of craftable items – weapons, armor, food, potions, ammunition, building components – and almost everything you pick up feeds into something. Junk you’d otherwise toss can be melted in the foundry. A rusty can plus some cloth might be halfway to something useful. It’s the kind of system where experienced players develop a mental catalog of what feeds into what, and newcomers spend twenty minutes staring at a menu while a zombie dog circles them outside.
The game offers almost no hand-holding here. Early on, the lack of explanation about what you can craft and when is a real issue. There’s no pause button either – a design choice clearly inherited from the PC version that feels especially rough on consoles. Trying to navigate a busy crafting menu mid-mission while your health drops? Yep, that happens.
| Stage | Base Status | Weapon Tier | Main Challenge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early Game | Just Kovac’s bunker | Stick → Baseball Bat | Learning menus, food/water scarcity |
| Mid Game | Armoury, Kitchen, Foundry built | Upgraded melee + basic firearms | Resource grinding, mission repetition |
| Late Game | Full defensive camp | Specialized melee, rifles, explosives | Elite missions, base defense raids |
| Co-op Endgame | Shared camp with friends | Full kit, team builds | Managing griefers in public lobbies |
Solo vs. Co-op – Night and Day Difference
Here’s where How to Survive 2’s identity becomes clearest. Playing solo, the game feels thin at times. Missions repeat. The map environments reuse assets in pretty obvious ways – a parking lot in the city looks almost identical to another parking lot down the street. The grind for resources wears on you after a while. It’s not unenjoyable, but you start noticing every crack in the walls.
Add friends, and those cracks fill in. Up to four players simultaneously online, and up to sixteen players sharing your camp – that’s a lot of survivors. When you’re coordinating base defense, splitting up to cover different zones, or just chaotically hacking through a zombie horde together, the game clicks into something genuinely fun. The co-op is the strongest argument for picking this up, and if you’ve got two or three friends who dig survival games, it’s worth it at the right price.
Elite quests – the game’s hardest mission type – give you one attempt to hit your objective. Fail, and you start over. Solo, these are brutal and kind of punishing. With a coordinated group, they become memorable high-stakes runs. That tension is exactly what survival games are supposed to deliver, and How to Survive 2 earns it when the stars align.
Comparing How to Survive 2 to Its Predecessor
Fans of the original have mixed feelings about the sequel, and that’s fair.
| Feature | How to Survive (2013) | How to Survive 2 (2016) |
|---|---|---|
| Setting | Los Riscos Archipelago | Louisiana / New Orleans |
| Story focus | Tight narrative arc | Mission-based, minimal story |
| Base building | None | Full camp building system |
| Co-op | Limited | Up to 4 players simultaneous |
| Survival meters | Core mechanic | Less punishing than before |
| Environment variety | Island biomes | City streets + bayou swamps |
| Crafting depth | Basic | Deep and extensive |
| Mission repetition | Moderate | More noticeable |
The first game had a story that you could sink into. The sequel trades that for a broader sandbox – more systems, more players, less narrative pull. Whether that’s an improvement depends on what you were there for in the first place.
How to Survive 2 Game Review: What Works and What Doesn’t
Let’s be direct about it. Here are the clearest wins:
- Base building is genuinely satisfying – watching your camp grow from a stick-and-cloth shack to a fortified outpost hits the right notes.
- Crafting depth rewards patient players – if you’re the type who loves tinkering with systems and optimizing gear builds, this will keep you busy for hours.
- Co-op is the game’s beating heart – chaotic, funny, and far more enjoyable than the solo experience.
And the honest downsides:
- Mission design gets repetitive – the loop of go-loot-return doesn’t evolve much as you play.
- UI and menus feel unfinished – clearly designed for mouse and keyboard, the console version in particular suffers from clunky navigation.
- No lock-on and priority animations in combat make crowd management a chore early on.
The sound design deserves a mention. The music actually does something smart – it shifts dynamically based on how much danger you’re in, ramping up as zombies close in and settling when you’re safe. It’s subtle, but it works. Voice acting is solid when it shows up, and Kovac’s oddball humor lands consistently. The ambient sound effects – zombie groans, water, distant gunfire – build a reasonable atmosphere even when the game’s visual assets feel recycled from the first installment.
Visually, this isn’t a AAA production and doesn’t pretend to be. The environments look decent. The camera is fixed isometric with three zoom levels, and there’s a clever transparency effect when buildings or trees would block your view of your character. It occasionally gets confused in the woods – clearing out border-wall trees and making it look like there’s an open path – but the transparent map overlay helps compensate.
Who Actually Should Play This?
Honestly? If you’re a solo player who loved the first game for its tightly crafted story, How to Survive 2 will probably disappoint. The narrative thread is thin, the mission structure gets grindy, and you’ll feel the absence of a strong story hook around hour four or five.
But if you’re looking for a co-op survival game that doesn’t cost much and offers a surprising amount of content for the price – especially on sale, where this regularly drops below five dollars on Steam and PlayStation Store – it’s a pretty solid pick. The survival genre can feel overwhelming when you’re looking at something like DayZ or Rust. How to Survive 2 is an accessible entry point. It’s not asking you to learn server configs or deal with thousands of players. It’s asking you to build a camp, kill zombies, and not starve.
And at that, it does a decent job.
FAQ
Is How to Survive 2 a good game for solo play?
It’s playable solo, but it’s clearly designed with co-op in mind. Solo, the mission repetition becomes noticeable faster. It’s worth it at a low price, but don’t expect a rich single-player experience.
How many players can join in co-op?
Up to four players can play simultaneously online, and up to sixteen players can share your camp. Local co-op supports up to four players on the same machine.
Is How to Survive 2 harder than the first game?
In some ways, yes – base defense and Elite quests add genuine challenge. But the hunger and thirst mechanics are actually less punishing than in the original, which disappointed some survival fans.
What platforms is How to Survive 2 available on?
PC (Steam), PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It released on Steam Early Access in 2015, with the full PC launch in September 2016 and console versions in early 2017.
Does How to Survive 2 have a story?
There’s a loose premise – you’re a survivor in zombie-infested Louisiana guided by the eccentric Kovac – but the narrative takes a back seat to the mission-based gameplay loop. Don’t go in expecting The Last of Us.
Is the crafting system hard to learn?
The game doesn’t explain it well at the start, which can be frustrating. Give it a couple of hours and you’ll get a feel for what feeds into what. Veterans of survival crafting games will adjust faster than newcomers.
Is How to Survive 2 still worth playing today?
At full price it’s a harder sell given how crowded the survival genre has become. But on sale – which it frequently is – it’s a solid budget option, especially for a group of friends looking for a low-stakes co-op zombie game.
Verdict
How to Survive 2 is a game with a solid foundation and a few too many rough edges to be truly great. The base building adds real depth, the crafting system rewards patience, and co-op makes almost everything better. But the mission loop gets repetitive, the UI was clearly built for PC, and the game sheds a lot of the story warmth that made the original feel special.
It’s not a step forward so much as a step sideways – different priorities, a bigger sandbox, less soul. But at budget pricing with the right group of friends, it scratches the zombie survival itch well enough. Kovac would probably say that surviving isn’t glamorous. Neither is this game, but it gets the job done.
Score: 6.5 / 10
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