Gonna write down these tips before I forget, to anyone that's sane enough to have bought this and still playing as of release version (me)

1. If your hands ever bug out (used a bandage and cant switch weapons), vault over any object to fix it. Get close to any object and jump over it.
2. When reloading, shove instantly [F] when you see the bullet count. Skips animation.
+ your flashlight auto-turns on after every reload. Turn it off if you care
3. In melee combat, use up all your stamina. You regen stamina much faster when you regen from empty (seen as red bar). Whack a zomb till you're red, run away, rinse and repeat.
4. Get to any high places as vantage points to distract zombs for your team. Do not stay for too long if there's nothing of interest left.
5. Running and jumping makes you harder to hit whilst using the same stamina rate. (not so tested)

With that out of the way, onto the review.

It's 2024 and an Early Access (paid) Steam Game is about to release, what could ever go wrong?
Almost everything. Latency issues, teleporting zombies, chemotherapy bullets... just look at the vids online. Still, there's some room left in hell, so I'll just quickly state the goods and bads of this game. This is my first time writing a full review for a zombie game I've been waiting a long time for. I've only played 3 games so far as of writing this, and I'm a SEA player.

The Pros:

• Great atmosphere and sounds (music, voice acting, weapon sounds)
• A very huge map (albeit only one), with numerous journeys you can get through to get to the final objective (which is unfortunately the weakest part of the game)
• Visuals are raw and good. I run on medium texture and the environment still is stunning. Light and dark contrast will you keep on your toes with your flashlight
• Melee is more satisfying than first game mechanic wise. Needs the head-popping effect though, and ALOT of jank fixing.

The Cons:

• No infection system (yet). Huge con.
• No zomb diddies... kids
• Button mash to free yourself off a zombie bite with no penalty.
• Extremely buggy "death from infection". On my last run, I just get on the heli and my hands start tweaking like I'm doing a ritual, and I died. That ended my lvl20+ character.
• Bugged skill selection (sometimes).
• Very, very janky zombies thanks to server-side latency problems. Stop motion lunging makes it hard to cover teammates, and breaks immersion
• Pipe bomb sucks ass. Please buff
• Game is highly prone to crashing. Worst if you're mid-game, as this will wipe your character I think. (someone cite this)
• The final objective, aka the Power Plant, feels like the devs really wanted to force a ~15 mins last stand by making us run around the plant to keep the generators going. Takes at least 12-16 gens to complete "keep the power going", all whilst zombies keep flooding in. There's also no ammo at the plant, you're expected to be fully prepped before going in.
• The huge map is severely underused, since only the Train Station/Checkpoint are main objs. Especially if you play with people that've already played the map >3 times, they will speedrun the obj while leaping around with guns blazing.
• Voice chat is just bad, words cut off, some mics have too much grain etc
• Zombies go bald when you headshot them. Teammates only have head sometimes. Floating brains. So, no head?
• many more that other people have mentioned

Others:
• I've not died mid-runs so far, so I don't know if you spectate after death or get sent right back to menu.
• Not tried visiting the map borders
• Being a SEA Player, English is 80% of the time NOT a common language. Good luck fellow asian players.

Conclusion:
Don't buy this game if you're a hardcore fan of the 1st game. Actually, just dont buy it if you want a functioning game on release. This game was priced RM72 for me, and I feel it's only worth RM25 ( ~$USD5.75) right now. I can see this game really heading towards the looter shooter genre. Ammo and weapons are more abundant here, making the difficulty easier than 1st game. At last, I do hope this game doesn't turn into Back 4 Blood.

When there's no more room in hell, maybe make some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ server rooms first?

The next gen Roblox game. Only if there was VAC...