Dead Island 2 is one of the most intriguing games of 2023, with the zombie affair set to finally release after multiple developers and even more delays. It’s been nine years since the game was first announced and after such a long time in the making, people are rightly sceptical. My first taste of the game a few months ago was positive, but given it was only a 20-minute demo, it was hardly enough to form a solid opinion. Recently, I was able to go hands-on with a sizeable chunk of Dead Island 2 – the first 12 missions to be exact. Nine of those missions were campaign missions and the other three were side quests, giving me a solid sampling of what players can expect when the game hits consoles and PC on April 21.
The game opens with you at the beginning of the outbreak in Los Angeles, onboard a plane in the hope of making it to somewhere safe if such a place still exists. Here, you’ll choose which of the game’s six characters’ shoes you’ll be jumping into – Amy, Ryan, Dani, Carla, Bruno or Jacob – with each character having their own perks and varying attributes. For example, Carla specialises in the Resilience attribute and has boons that give her a minor damage boost when fighting multiple zombies and a moderate toughness boost while her health is critical. Jacob, on the other hand, specialises in Peak Health and has a stackable minor damage boost when attacking in quick succession, and his critical hits regain stamina and have a moderate critical damage boost when his stamina is low.
I chose to go with Ryan, a firefighter specialising in Toughness whose ability to regain health when knocking down a zombie appealed to me the most, especially after I had my arse handed to me the last time I played Dead Island 2. His other perk is a moderate force boost when blocking or dodging an attack, which I had no doubt would come in handy.
Sadly, your escape doesn’t go to plan and the plane doesn’t get very far before nosediving back down to LA. After surviving the crash, your character makes their way to safety and comes across a group of survivors, which happens to feature the mega-famous actress Emma Jaunt. Jaunt and her PA leave you to deal with the inbound horde, but not before Jaunt gives you her address, and despite your best efforts to deal with the threat, you are bitten and become infected.
Panicking and not knowing what to do, you head to Jaunt’s house, which is located in the mansion-laden hills of Bel-Air, and the residents of the Jaunt household aren’t too keen to let someone infected into the house, but after dispatching a group of zombies threatening the house you earn the household’s trust.
Not long after your arrival, Jaunt is visited by Dead Island’s Sam B, who reveals that like himself you are immune. Believing that you may have the vaccine coursing through your veins, you venture out into the sun-soaked streets of LA trying to figure out exactly what to do and where to go next. In case you’re wondering, Dead Island 2 isn’t an open-world game, instead the world is broken up into several open areas, that players can fast travel between.
The bulk of the preview takes place around Bel-Air, which quite frankly looks stunning. Whether it’s the middle of the day or the dead of the night, LA looks a treat with its vibrant colours and glowing lights, and locations affected by the outbreak are often excessively covered in blood. From what I’ve played, Dambuster has done a great job at building a version of LA that feels just as swanky as you’d expect the home of Hollywood to be.
The real star of the show however is the game’s F.L.E.S.H. system, which amplifies the gore and makes combat extremely visceral
Dambuster Studios knows very well that Dead Island 2 is operating in the realm of schlocky B-grade horror and the Nottingham-based studio fully embraces it, so don’t expect any overly deep narrative beats. There’s a good attempt at the comedic tone that comes with these sorts of experiences, and while not all of it lands, there are some moments that got a chuckle or a wry smile out of me.
It’s clear that the beating heart of Dead Island 2 is the game’s combat, which is fun, fluid and very melee focused thanks to an arsenal of weaponry that includes axes, machetes, steel pipes, and other skull-crushing tools, all of which can be modified to increase damage and their entertainment value. For instance, you can modify that axe so it wields fire or a sword that sends an electric shock to its victim, and there are loads of more options available. Even better there are several types of zombies to use these weapons on, all offering a different type of challenge. Some examples include enemies who will simply take and deal out more damage, others who are immune to elemental damage, and others who can deal it out.
Weapons will deteriorate as you use them and can be repaired, however it’s likely in the first few hours as you quickly level up and better weapons become available you won’t need to worry about this. Ranged weapons will feature, but they were not present in the first few hours of the game, and I got the feeling that Dambuster would much prefer you get up and close with the action. The only concern I have is that by the end of the preview, combat was starting to feel a little repetitive. It’s worth noting that the preview build was limited to single-player and I have no doubt that playing with mates is going to mitigate some of the concerns around repetitiveness.
Perhaps one of the most enjoyable mechanics in gaming is the ability to kick people, and it’s something that Dead Island 2 understands completely, with players able to dropkick or stick the boot into enemies with a flying “This is Sparta” kick. And trust me when I say that you’ll be kicking almost everything you can in Dead Island 2, not only because it’s fun but because it stuns the receiver. In one of the missions there was a swimming pool filled with caustic acid, and certain events near the pool triggered a sequence involving a wave of zombies. You better believe I kicked every single zombie into the acid pool (although a couple were immune), because I’m a simple man – I see an acid pool and can kick, what else am I going to do?
This just highlights how the world and its surroundings can be used to your advantage too, and the game gives you the toys to make this playground as deadly as possible. There are water and fuel cans aplenty scattered across LA, and these can be used to electrify or ignite areas to cause a great deal of damage to a cluster of zombies. But the world is also used for environmental puzzles too, with one example being that I had to electrify a pool of water to connect broken electrical circuits to get the power running.
The real star of the show however is the game’s F.L.E.S.H. system (Fully Locational Evisceration Simulator for Humanoids), which amplifies the gore and makes combat extremely visceral. The level of detail in the animations is truly impressive, with players able to target body parts and quite literally tear zombies apart limb by limb and see their insides.
Crafting is very much a core part of Dead Island 2, with blueprints and resources strewn throughout the world which allow you to upgrade, modify and repair weapons, which can be done at workbenches. Skills come in the form of cards and are unlocked as you progress through the game, and some skills can only be utilised by certain characters. Skill cards give you all kinds of benefits and can be swapped out on the fly to suit your play style.
For me, games of this ilk have always had the challenge of making missions feel continuously fresh and worth the player’s time. Dambuster has done a decent job of making missions seem interesting, even if the act of killing zombies is rather repetitive. One of the missions tasked me with heading to the Halperin Hotel, where a military division had supposedly set up shop. Upon arrival it was apparent that a wedding was interrupted by the outbreak and here I got my first taste of the game’s environmental storytelling as well as a boss fight, facing off against a shredded zombie bride whose power stomp would put any wrestler to shame. Another mission saw me interacting with a stoner couple that apparently missed the memo that the world had ended, while in one of the preview’s later missions I was tussling with infected inside a film production studio, which was pretty cool. In terms of side mission variety, one had me helping a content creator film a montage of zombie kills on a roof, while another had me helping a veteran Western film star rid his house of zombies.
There’s no denying that what I played of Dead Island 2 was fun and enjoyable, but after five hours of slicing and hacking zombies across Los Angeles, I’m still waiting for the game’s hook to sink into me – that element that makes it unique. The problem is that I don’t think it’s coming. I don’t think Dead Island 2 does anything new or adds anything to a genre that has been saturated with entries, but I also don’t necessarily think it needs to. But if we compare it to Dying Light, which has parkour and the day/night cycle, Dead Island 2 lacks that something that sets it apart from other games in the genre.
After a handful of hours with Dead Island 2, the experience is exactly what I expected – a fun and gory romp through a vibrant LA that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Whether that will be enough to stave off the combat’s repetitiveness or lack of any meaningful story in the back half of the game is hard to know. For some people, the thought of a Dead Island 2.0 is more than enough to satisfy them, and if that’s the case it looks like they are in for a good time.
Dead Island 2 releases on April 21, 2023, on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC (via Epic Games Store).
Previewed on Xbox Series X // Preview code supplied by publisher
