Earn to Die 2 Review

It’s pretty obvious when you start up the game that this is a straight mobile port: the buttons are large and clearly designed for touchscreens, and while playing there’s lots of empty screen space for touch controls. Fortunately, Toffee Games have actually included the keyboard controls straight from the web version of the game.

The aim of the game is to travel from the west coast of America to the tip of Florida on the east coast, ploughing through boxes, concrete barricades and zombies as you go. There are ten levels, each with two checkpoints and a unique vehicle; at the conclusion of each level you find a new vehicle and forget your last one entirely. This is a little annoying, especially since after 30 minutes to an hour of just earning money to upgrade your current vehicle, the game forces you to just forget it and start over, often with a slower vehicle.

Strapping a rocket to a police car has never seemed like a better idea

The levels are well crafted, and there are lots of different paths that you’ll get to learn as you progress through each section. Each level has a rough theme, with the early levels starting out pretty simple and unpopulated building up to much more complicated and populated levels. There’s also a variety of different zombie designs, from the standard kind of shamblers to guys in riot gear who chase your car to huge monstrous zombies. During the course of each run your vehicle can take damage, to the point of large sections of your vehicle flying off, such as your roof, door or entire back chassis.

Earn to Die 2, which definitely should have been called Earn 2 Die, revolves around the constant upgrade mechanics. After each run, you earn money with which you upgrade your vehicle. Each successive upgrade costs more, and the upgrades to later vehicles cost more still. This means that by the last level, you’re earning billions of dollars for running over zombies. I get the need for progression, but I thought that this was just a little overboard, especially since the upgrades for the most part are uninspiring.

Like deer in headlights

That is, of course, if you get to the end. I played for eight hours to get there, and that was way too long. The online game is missing a lot of content and is probably the better experience, because the Steam version outstays its welcome and feels unnecessarily padded. Toffee Games locked away the Missions mode, which would probably benefit the main story more than it’s own mode just by adding in some variety and challenge.

By the time I unlocked the missions, I had lost my interest in playing any more. The game is fun and I definitely found myself laughing at various bizarre scenarios, like when my back chassis came off right at the start and I had to proceed with just the front of my car, my ass scraping along the floor, or the time I didn’t think I’d make it so I boosted diagonally upwards, losing parts all the way, landing on the checkpoint with just a front tire and my steering wheel.