If there’s one thing in this world that I despise more than the nattering of neighbors chiming away about short-term loans, it’s spiders. Luckily for me, I don’t have to confront such a fear all that often; I reside in the UK, and so, the biggest form of arachnid that I have to beat with a broom handle every once in a while is, thankfully, no larger than my palm. Needless to say that the eight-legged pests in Kill It With Fire 2 are like aliens to me; in my mind, they’re creatures that you’d only find in the Outback of Australia—a portion of the globe that, quite frankly, I have zero interest in visiting. Thanks, spiders.


I will say this: setting a spider ablaze does seem a little OTT, even for me—a scaredy cat who’d soon rather flee a mile at the mere thought of one grazing the hairs on my neck than bash its legs in with a frying pan or the stem of an old apple core. But Kill It With Fire, weirdly enough, somehow makes such atrocities come across as pleasantly satisfying — so much, even, that I often struggle to empathize with their ill-timed predicament. Even still, I can’t say that the act of murdering an innocent arachnid with a bookend is the best way to exterminate the pest; it’s effective, true, but hardly a forgivable crime in the eyes of fellow pet keepers, mind you.


To cut a long story short, tinyBuild has just released its long-overdue sequel to the arachnophobia-centric first-person beat ‘em up, and so, naturally, I thought it best to rekindle a slew of my core fears and once again sport the ol’ broom handle — if only to prove to myself that spiders, regardless of their appearance, are absolute jerks.

We Meet Again, Mr. Skinny Legs

Exterminator avatar (Kill It With Fire 2)



Kill It With Fire 2 starts out in a similar fashion as its predecessor: there are several bug-infested biomes to explore, and a selection of general household objects that can be found, manipulated, and unlocked for the sake of beating the living daylights out of a few eight-legged intruders. Like before, the general purpose of the game is to maneuver through several of these animated worlds (or portals, as it goes), and essentially do all in your power to not only preserve the quarters that you unwillingly find yourself trapped within, but also exterminate the critters that run amok like pepped-up parasites in a pinball machine.


Believe it or not, there is a storyline here, though I personally wouldn’t get your hopes up and anticipate something extraordinary or out of this world. Well, perhaps a little bit out of this world; it centers itself around a multiverse—a network of realities that each share one common goal: to kill spiders, and devise new ways to make such a barbaric act look lighthearted and fun. That’s where you come in. As it turns out, the only candidate who’s fit for the job is someone who serves under the wing of The Exterminators, an outfit that aims to make short work of general pest control and other insect-related issues.


Aside from there being a relatively beefy campaign, Kill It With Fire 2 does also boast a co-op mode—a segment that allows up to four players to not only tackle these infestations, but also take on the roles of the enemy team. In other words, you can, as much as it pains me to admit, be a spider, and that, to me, is something of a double-edged sword. In the words of Ron Weasley: “why couldn’t it be butterflies?”


Tag, You’re It

Spider player (Kill It With Fire 2)



Gameplay isn’t all that different from its original, in the case that, when it comes to thrashing it out with your opponents, you have a room that’s seemingly rife with objects and other unlikely weapons. Like before, you have a set amount of goals to complete, with each level containing a criteria that needs to be met in order to progress deeper into the multiverse and its interconnecting levels. What’s different here, of course, is the architectural complexity of each stage; they no longer revolve around generic office spaces and other mundane scenarios, but rather, a hearty portion of alien-like locations. And that’s a major plus in my books, truly, because at the end of the day, I’m far less likely to contract PTSD when slugging through a haunted mansion than I am in a house that looks an awful lot like my own home.


Provided that you’ve already endured your fair share of flamethrower-oriented action in the first Kill It With Fire, you should already know how a lot of the tasks unravel: you move items aside, and use a myriad of makeshift weapons to either splat, stretch, or in some cases, burn your victims to a crisp. It’s a simple gameplay loop that doesn’t require a whole lot of planning, as it’s more or less the case of, well, winging it, and then hoping for the best possible outcome. Annoyingly, as spiders don’t take too kindly to just the one location, this essentially means having to move around a lot, all whilst setting the site ablaze with whatever tools you have at your disposal. It isn’t a difficult task by any stretch, but one that’ll make you hate spiders even more than when you first started. Spiders, eh — who’d have ‘em?


Pixels and Flamethrowers

Flamethrower setting kitchen ablaze (Kill It With Fire 2)



Kill It With Fire 2 isn’t the most graphically complex game on the market, that much is clear; in fact, a lot of its finer details and set pieces are comprised of minuscule pixels and low-poly elements. But that’s barely an issue, as its harmless art style does, in ways, disguise what would otherwise be a pretty relentless attack on innocent spiders and household pests. It’s comical, clear as day, and it makes no attempt to produce any lifelike effects that are likely to rustle a few feathers amongst conservationists and arachnid keepers. And even if it did, it goes without saying that, those cliques would also likely agree that spiders can, even on the rarest of occasions, be disrespectfully hostile, and thus, understandably earmarked for a beating. Setting one alight, on the other hand, is another story entirely.


When all’s said and done, there’s a lot to enjoy in Kill It With Fire 2, doubly so now that there’s an additional mode that allows you to play on the opposite side of the same coin. Granted, it doesn’t add a huge amount to the overall experience, but the fact that you can, after several years of waiting idly by for such a feature to be integrated, scare your friends senseless by setting traps and springing out from beneath the woodwork is reason enough to return to its quarters. Its single-player mode, too, isn’t half bad, as it not only amplifies a lot of the original gameplay mechanics that fleshed out the first, but it also generates a quality selection of creative maps and checklists that prevent the game from becoming overly repetitive and stale.


Verdict

Living room on fire (Kill It With Fire 2)



Kill It With Fire 2 isn’t a sequel that I thought I’d want, and yet, in the strangest of ways, I’m sort of glad that it did come to see the light of day. Sure, its gameplay loop isn’t all that different from the first, and its task lists don’t necessarily go much deeper, either, but the fact that it at least makes an effort to include a co-op mode and an additional slew of multiverse-based levels does, in all fairness, make it slightly more of a step in the right direction than a strafe to the side. Would a third installment be worth dipping into? Probably not, no. But then, I wouldn’t say no to a bit of DLC, either, provided that they don’t require some ludicrous amount of money in exchange for their assets.


It goes without saying at this point, but if you did enjoy setting furniture alight and stepping on a few spiders in Kill It With Fire, then you’re probably going to love just about everything that makes an appearance in its sequel. Don’t get me wrong, it is a great extension to the series, but it doesn’t do much more more than its prequel, therefore, if you’re only just starting out as a fledgling exterminator, then you could, in all fairness, probably get your kicks from either of the two available chapters. With that said, if you’re after the “definitive” experience — then you needn’t look any further than the newly formed multiverse.