Kill It With Fire 2 – PS5 Review

Kill It With Fire 2 from Casey Donnellan Games is the follow-up from the original that we reviewed in 2021.  That was quite a fun tightly focussed puzzle game. Our anticipation was that this would be more of the same, having been in early access on PC for more than a year, only now getting a release on PS5.

As the first task on your clipboard suggests, here we go again. Fundamentally, Kill It With Fire 2 is similar to the first game in many regards, though with a greatly increased arsenal. On the face of it, you appear to be killing spiders in an apartment, just like before.

Except in this case, it turns out you’re in an IKEA store, at least KIWF2’s take on it anyway. The initial apartment was in fact a show home. It’s a tutorial of sorts, we expect to introduce the premise to those not familiar with the first game.

The action really starts soon after and you find yourself in what amounts to the hub, the HSF Vindicator. You have to carry out tasks to fulfil multiple objectives, generally variations on a theme of kill spiders or move X item to this location.

The main currency is Compound X, granted upon completion of specific tasks. This stops you from accessing all the areas in the game from the off. The first is a crumbling mansion called Artois Manor, with subsequent levels being in Arachnitopia, a city inhabited by spiders; the IKEA level as mentioned, a wild west level and finally a showdown in Spider Hell.

The schtick is your spaceship has a Stargate type portal that you can dial up these locations on. It does mean that Donnellan can have set piece levels rather than a more coherent theme, the idea being that each level is a distinct dimension.

The weapons are far more plentiful than in the first game, with a veritable arsenal on top of some that make a repeat appearance. While you have the not entirely surprising pistol and hairspray with lighter, you’ll also find yourself defaulting to weapons that don’t need ammunition. Our preferred being the rolled-up newspaper, though in reality we tend to go with the glass and a piece of paper to put the spider outside instead.

As you go through the levels, you’ll also find money secreted throughout. These allow you to unlock weapon upgrades, at least once you’ve fulfilled challenges specific to either weapon anyway. Some you’ll have managed without trying too hard, but others need a rather specific set of tasks done.

You’ll also begin to realise that you can’t do a lot of things the first time you play a level, revisitation being the key. The thing is, we didn’t find ourselves having as much fun as we did with the first game. It somehow feels more laboured this time around.

There’ s a co-op mode available so you can play with a PSN friend, unfortunately our editor and usual co-op partner didn’t fancy it. And lets be honest, neither do we. Kill It With Fire 2 is almost trying too hard for its own good. By giving the game so much cross-pollination across the different levels, it spreads itself too thinly. Not for nothing have we effectively sacked it off for almost two weeks.

That’s not to say we didn’t have any fun throughout the eleven days we played KIWF2, it’s just that we simply didn’t feel the desire to go back. The intent is you go back again and again until you’ve unlocked everything, but we fear that ship has sailed for us. Perhaps over Christmas, but for now we’re done.