Dead Island 2 Review

One of the first times I remember hearing about Santa Monica was the song by the Aussie pop band Savage Garden, where frontman Darren Hayes sings about getting coffee and dodging inline skaters in the iconic Californian city. It’s a city that has been used a myriad of times in various mediums, none more so than in films (shoutouts to Cellular), thanks to its picturesque beauty and famous Santa Monica Pier, and video games are not immune to its allure. Thanks to Dambsuter Studios, I find myself in Santa Monica in Dead Island 2, and unlike Darren Hayes’ depiction, there is no one throwing back a morning java or rollerblading through the streets. Instead, I am dismembering and slaughtering zombies, lining the streets with blood and guts. It’s certainly not something the great Darren Hayes would sing about, but it is nevertheless a good time.

Set in the modern day in and around Los Angeles at the beginning of a zombie apocalypse, Dead Island 2 sees you choose one of six survivors to tackle the outbreak with. Each character has their own skills, strengths and weaknesses, and there are no refunds – once you’ve picked a character, you’re locked in till kingdom come (the credits). I opted for Ryan, a firefighter whose key attribute is Toughness, while his innate skills (starting skills) are the ability to regain health when knocking down a zombie and getting a moderate force boost when blocking or dodging an attack. What attributes do or mean for your character is never explained, it’s more implied via their innate skills, which makes it seem a little pointless given you’ll go on to build your skill card deck, but more on that later.

The other characters are Amy, Dani, Carla, Bruno and Jacob, and some of their innate skills and key attributes include regaining stamina when hitting a zombie with a weapon throw (Amy – Agility), a moderate damage boost when attacking zombies from behind (Bruno – Critical Damage), and getting a moderate Toughness boost when their health is critical (Carla – Resilience). Who you choose to play as won’t drastically change the game but it is nice to have the option.

Saving firefighter Ryan

During the opening stages your character is bitten by a zombie, but as luck would have it you’re immune, and it becomes your mission to see how useful your blood may be to a potential vaccine while trying to escape LA. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, treading some familiar ground, but it’s well voice acted. Even if the writing and humour is hit and miss, I quite liked some of the twists they had and a couple of the characters were quite enjoyable. The whole experience has a schlocky, straight-to-DVD horror movie vibe about it that was certainly entertaining enough to keep pushing me forward.

In the current day, games set during zombie apocalypses are often serious affairs, with narratives that contain deep-rooted rules around morality that make players feel what they’re playing. Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us series is the perfect example of this, an experience that questions how far we would go for the ones we love and one that elicits a strong emotional response from players. But for as good as TLOU is, sometimes you just want a game that lets you fuck zombies up without all the emotional baggage, and Dead Island 2 is here to not only scratch that itch but to mutilate it. It’s something that I appreciate about Dead Island 2 – there’s no humans versus humans – it’s just good old-fashioned zombie slaying.

Dambuster’s LA is made up of several semi-open areas, including Bel-Air, Santa Monica and Hollywood, and it’s a design choice that helps the world feel much tighter and denser. Areas are still large enough that there’s plenty of exploring to do and loot to collect, but you don’t get the slog of having to travel yonks between missions, and players can fast travel between areas whenever they come across a map in the world (once an area has been unlocked). It’s also worth noting that LA is simply gorgeous, with the sun-soaked streets, swanky architecture and inhabitants – both undead and not yet dead – all brought to life with sublime visual fidelity.

Santa Monica isn’t so bad, except for zombies trying to eat you

Combat is king in Dead Island 2, with a ton of weapons to get your hands on. Swords, police batons, machetes, baseball bats, and generally anything you might buy from Bunnings are at your disposal, allowing you to hack and slash zombies to mincemeat till your heart’s content. It’s extremely gory and highly visceral, and it’s also a lot of fun. What makes it even more gruesome is the game’s F.L.E.S.H. system, which gives you a front-row seat to the mutilation of zombies as you dismember them. The level of detail is truly remarkable, if a little over the top, with players able to see everything down to the bone.

While weapon melee combat is the game’s bread and butter, you can also dropkick and utilise a Sparta kick that puts Gerard Butler to shame, and given how satisfying it is to do so you’ll be doing it regularly. Guns are available but they’re not the focus, as Dambuster wants you to get your hands dirty. There’s also Fury Mode, which sees your character unleash their inner beast and go ham on everyone nearby, which is activated by charging up your Fury Meter.

As you level up you’ll come across more powerful weapons, so it’s rare that you’ll hang onto a weapon for a long time, but if you do become attached to a weapon the game gives you the ability to match it to your current level at a cost, which is a neat addition. You can break down weapons you don’t want for scrap or sell them to a trader for cash. Disappointingly though, as you progress through the game, weapons never really expand beyond being better versions of their predecessors, and I know that’s part and parcel with these kinds of games, but I would have liked to have been treated to some ultra cool weapons late in the game.

Off with their head

Where the combat gets a little creative is by letting you modify weapons. This is done by finding Modification Blueprints in the universe and using resources at a workbench. Upgrades can allow you to increase damage, make weapons lighter, more (or less) durable, as well as adding elemental damage such as electricity, fire, and caustic acid. Helping you embrace your creative side, LA is littered with environmental hazards, such as fuel canisters that can be used to ignite part of the world, or water canisters that can be utilised to electrify areas. LA is a gory sandbox that can more often than not be used to your advantage.

Skills are sold as also a vital cog in the Dead Island 2 gameplay machine, as you’re able to pick and choose between various skill cards and then utilise the ones that suit your playstyle the most. Your deck is broken down into four categories: Abilities, Survivor, Slayer, and Numen, which includes perks like stamina and health regeneration, damage boosts and building your Fury Meter. However, much like weapons, all the skills seem fairly similar and I wasn’t blown away by any abilities. I never felt like I was building my own deck, more that I was picking the best cards from an average bunch. It’s an area of the game that could have elevated combat but instead it feels wasted.

Thankfully it’s not just regular zombies that you’ll come against, with varying enemy types keeping you on your toes. Enemies range from basic zombies, to those being able to run quickly at you, scream at you to slow you down, and big units that take a solid beating to put down. You’ll find that some zombies are immune to a particular elemental attack or have elemental attacks of their own, while others can regenerate their health by feasting on corpses around them. It does mean you need to be somewhat tactical with your loadout and it did encourage me to try some different things at times.

The big units don’t go down easy

But although the combat is satisfying, gnarly and full of panache, it also gets very repetitive, and once the appeal starts to wane, the game doesn’t have anything up its sleeve to reinvigorate the gameplay – it’s simply more of the same weapons, modifications and skill cards. The whole thing is rounded out by a pretty frustrating boss fight that feels artificially difficult as a result of the game simply overwhelming you with enemies.

My brief time with the game’s multiplayer didn’t convince me that playing with mates would significantly increase the enjoyment either. Not to say that it wasn’t fun, but when playing with a higher-level friend, they were able to bring their beefier arsenal along with them (which makes sense), which allowed us to breeze through missions a little too easily. There’s certainly fun to be had, but I would assume to get the most out of the multiplayer you’ll need to play with someone going at the same pace.

Surprisingly, Dead Island 2’s performance is pretty solid for the most part, running at a tasty 60fps. However, it isn’t without its issues, I had zombies appear (and vanish) out of nowhere, characters and enemies would get stuck in the environment, the camera would flip out and move my position, and I had mission objectives bug out a couple of times, forcing me to restart. Aside from the objective bugs they were all fairly harmless, and it’s worth noting that the day one patch hadn’t been deployed yet, so these issues may be mitigated on launch.

Gordon Ramsey’s bathroom after appearing on Hot Ones

Final Thoughts

Dead Island 2 has been a long time coming, and after the 15 or so hours it took to roll credits, there’s no denying that Dead Island 2 is every bit the video game Dambuster Studios wanted it to be. It harkens back to the old action games of generations gone by, where crazy combat is favoured over narrative depth. Dead Island 2’s strengths lie within its combat – an experience that is both satisfying and visceral – but it’s also where its weaknesses stem from, with repetition eating away at the enjoyment the longer you play and mechanics not hitting their potential. If you played and enjoyed the original Dead Island and even the Dying Light series, then combat repetition is unlikely going to phase you. For some people, all they want is a mindless zombie slasher and that’s exactly what they’re going to get here.

Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

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