Dead Island 2 – Review
After being promised for so long, Dead Island 2 has finally been released, nine years after its initial announcement. We’ve started exploring its nightmarish Los Angeles by chopping and cutting our way through its streets, alleys, mansions, and movie lots to see how it compares to its defunct predecessor. We’ve had a blast wreaking havoc on the undead in Hell-A, and you should too if you enjoyed the original Dead Island. The sequel doesn’t try too hard, so it neither disappoints nor disappoints those who enjoyed the original.
The name of the game, Dead Island, told you everything you needed to know: it was a game about zombies on an island. That’s not the case with the sequel, though, so the title is a funny misnomer. Instead, we find ourselves in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, where you can interpret the island reference in the title however you like. In the opening sequence, a misfit group makes it onto the final evacuation flight out of the city before everything goes to hell and they crash to the ground.
We crash, choose one of six playable characters, each with their own set of advantages and disadvantages, and then (grotesquely) learn that we’re immune to zombie bites. You’re stuck with your character pick until the end of the game, which is a bummer, but you can change up your loadout with new abilities you unlock as you play. Quite quickly, we’re assisting a wide variety of survivors in the Hollywood hills, going from mansion to mansion in search of aid and eventually moving deeper into the city as leads present themselves.
The story in this game is pretty standard fare; it’s delivered knowingly, but there’s just enough of an emphasis on exposition that you might want to bypass some of the more tedious conversations. But since we don’t expect heartfelt narrative in a game like Dead Island 2, the lack of nuance isn’t a deal breaker. However, the tale usually just gets out of your way and leaves you to wander around destroyed neighbourhoods, mansions, hotels, studio backlots, and more. As you travel, you can expect to encounter a wide variety of zombies, including those that walk, run, crawl, and smash.
Building and maintaining these weapons at stations using stolen materials can yield everything from simple lead pipes to elaborate elemental slicers. In the first few hours of play, we invented a tyre iron that zapped large groups of people at once and some knuckle dusters that had us pounding larger targets faster than the speed of sound. The melee system is a lot of fun, allowing you to target large swaths of zombie bodies with your reticle and featuring vital dodging and blocking mechanisms. While the controls can be a bit sloppy at times, we had a blast making our way through waves of foes, and we especially liked how the game felt different depending on the weapon we were using.
While it’s satisfying to discover a go-to implement, the most exciting times occur when an essential tool fails just as a battle is heating up, forcing you to improvise with a less potent weapon. The stages of Dead Island 2 are full of little optional tasks you can do, from avoiding some buzzing electricity to loot a side chamber to more substantial possibilities and whole sidequests. One of these early cases involved rescuing an old film celebrity from his residence while guarding him on a slow stairlift, and another involved us carrying out bespoke killings in front of the camera lens of a burgeoning influencer at a Hype House–style man cave.
Again, neither script was groundbreaking for its category, but the accompanying stories are entertaining enough to warrant your time. The fact that Dead Island 2 has been in development for so long raises concerns that it may finally release with technology that is now, frankly, obsolete.
We played the demo on Xbox One X and evaluated it on PS5, and neither the game nor its visuals looked out of place on modern systems. You can make Dead Island 2 more enjoyable and fluid by increasing the field of view, but the city of Los Angeles is bright and colourful during the day and as dark and eerie as you wish at night. The zombies steal the show from the pleasant outdoor settings, which are authentic to the many localities they are emulating. If you’re looking for a zombie game that boasts about its dismemberment technology, go no farther than Dead Island 2.
The procedural, observable harm done to zombie corpses by slashing and smashing had us very outraged at times, but in a good way. Dismemberment, including amputations, torso bashings, and decapitations, are all possible. We’re not happy with the way it portrays us, but it does provide an interesting layer of strategy to the fights; figuring out how to use the system to achieve more bloodier kills is reminiscent of the meaty indulgences in Sniper Elite 5.
There aren’t a tonne of memorable moments in Dead Island 2; nothing that will stick out in your mind years from now thanks to outstanding visual effects or designs. However, there’s nothing wrong with a technically solid showing like this. Given its lengthy production time and at least one complete rework, Dead Island 2 delivers exactly what it promises. Anyone who enjoyed smashing through the swarms of zombies in the first game will find this bloody spin on the genre to be a welcome return to form.
If you’re seeking for dumb bloody fun, this is a terrific option; however, if you’re expecting a groundbreaking plot, you’ll be disappointed.
