Shaun Munro reviews Dead Island 2…
The original Dead Island didn’t set the world ablaze back in 2011 – with an emotional, unforgettable cinematic trailer cementing misaligned player expectations – but the zombie-themed action-RPG still sold well enough that a sequel was announced in 2014. Since then, much has changed; Dead Island 2 has passed through the hands of three separate developers, with Dambuster Studios (Chorus) taking over the project in 2019.
With years of radio silence in-between and a development period veering dangerously close to a decade, it would’ve surprised few if a) Dead Island 2 never came out or b) Dead Island 2 was a terrible game finally sent out to die. Thankfully neither of these things are true.
Indeed, Dead Island 2 isn’t the disaster many will be expecting, but it’s not quite a pleasant surprise either. This is a just fun enough game that lacks the muscular meat on its bones to feel like anything but a dead-basic zombie-slaughter sim with some admittedly impressive production values and a tone that can’t ever be called “too serious.”
The sequel shifts the setting to a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles – or “Hell-A,” as it’s called here – so overrun by the undead that the U.S. government has effectively abandoned those trapped inside to their fates. No matter which of the six available characters you pick – I settled on cover character Jacob – you’ll wind up infected by the zombie plague in the early moments of the game, yet curiously won’t transform. As you attempt to escape Hell-A with other survivors, you’re also be forced to consider whether your uniquely-propertied blood could offer a possible cure. Needless to say, the storytelling and characterisation throughout the game are gossamer-thin. This isn’t something you’re going to get emotionally invested in.
Upon picking your character – each of which has their own innate skill buffs – you’ll be tasked with embarking on story missions which progressively unlock each of the game’s ten Californian mini-hubs, which comprise sun-kissed Bel Air mansions, Hollywood film sets, lush hotels, a neon-drenched pier, and even the city’s sewer system. Dead Island 2 splits the difference between being open-world and resolutely linear; the hubs are modestly sized with clear boundaries for anyone who ventures far off the delineated path.
The more restricted, carved-up game world may come as a bit of disappointment to those who enjoyed driving around the map in the original Dead Island – a feature which categorically isn’t on offer here. For those keen to reap dozens or even hundreds of hours out of their video game purchases, Dead Island 2 will struggle to get that much mileage – and, upfront, I would not recommend this as a full-price purchase – but for those, like this critic, regularly turned off by open-world bloat, there’s a refreshing quaintness to Dead Island 2′s modest simplicity. But also, there are limits to this.
If you merely wish to sprint along the critical path, you can easily clear the game’s story in a little under 15 hours, ensuring you’ll hop breezily from one location to the next before any of them can outstay their welcome. Though if you intimately explore each hub, you’ll find hidden goodies and plenty of wacky side missions to tackle.
At its core this is a blunt object of a game in which you’ll spend most of the time literally battering hordes of the undead with blunt objects like sledgehammers, decapitating them with swords, drop-kicking them across the room, and stomping their faces to mush. Melee combat is the clear focus and basic-but-fun, enlivened by an impressively comprehensive dismemberment and gore system which allows players to dynamically dismantle enemies with each attack, causing flesh, blood, and bone to fly off in every which direction.
This heavily incentivises players to change up their weaponry on the regular, not to mention trying out the various mods and perks which can be applied to your arsenal, such as buffing them with electricity, fire, and melting properties. It’s a bit of a shame, however, that household objects scattered around the game world – like, say, a gorgeous guitar found in a mansion – can’t be appropriated as makeshift weapons. Alas, things never get that creative.
Guns become available about 25% of the way through the story, and the gunplay here is generally solid. On PS5, with DualSense trigger feedback, opening fire on zombies feels crunchy and satisfying. Additionally, you’re also kitted out with “curveballs” – throwable weapons like Molotov cocktails, chem bombs, and even meat bait to lure the undead away.
Combat is supplemented by a skill progression system spread across four main categories (Abilities, Survivor, Slayer and Numen). You’ve got 15 skill slots to fill with skill cards which are acquired by both levelling up and searching around Hell-A; cards grant certain benefits and buffs that compliment particular loadouts and play-styles. As someone who finds so many modern AAA games overly invested in cumbersome, time-consuming skill trees, I respected Dead Island 2′s straight-laced, no-nonsense approach to progression. There are fun choices to be had, but you aren’t likely to feel exhausted or overwhelmed the moment you’re introduced to the skill system.
Outside of the combat, though, Dead Island 2 feels far more rote and uninteresting. Story missions rarely stray from the fetch quest formula of tracking down a person, finding batteries to power circuit breakers and open doors, searching for clues, completing valve-related puzzles, surviving against waves of zombies, and very occasionally battling cartoonish boss-style enemies, who at least lend the game some welcome added personality. There’s painfully little imagination to the gameplay objectives, such that even if you cling to the golden path, you may find yourself feeling a bit tired of just how gracelessly the mission types are recycled.
Similarly, you may grow weary of scavenging long before your time with the game is over; the loop of hoovering up trash for upgrading weapons, crafting weapon mods, and consumables, never feels more than a mere perfunctory obligation. At least weapon degradation is relatively painless – melee weapons take a long time to wear down, and even when they do, you’re usually never far from a workbench to repair them.
Dead Island 2 has no difficulty settings to speak of, but isn’t really a game concerned with brutally punishing the player. I reached the end of the story a little below the recommended level with only a few sections putting up substantial resistance. Once firearms are introduced, many enemies trickier to engage in melee combat are near-trivialised, though some elite enemies are more-or-less immune to gunfire. All the same, few will struggle to make it to the end of this game, especially with robust checkpoint systems cutting down on the repetition, ensuring death offers up little penalty. This guarantees that, while you’ll probably die a lot – because the zombies do hit hard – Dead Island 2 feels a little lacking on the intensity front, and those craving a scarier experience may prefer to look elsewhere.
While I respect that the game doesn’t cheaply spawn zombies behind the player out of nowhere, crowd control rarely feels like a problem due to the sheer number of weapons and abilities you’ll amass from relatively early on. I favoured the upgraded Ground Pound ability, which lets you send zombies flying by pressing L1 + R1 at the same time. And then there’s Fury Mode, which lets you tap into an undead level of bloodlust and tear dozens of zombies to shreds in as many seconds.
Beyond the solo experience, Dead Island 2 does also offer online co-op functionality with up to two other players – both friends and randoms – though this wasn’t tested due to limited availability during the review period.
What might surprise players most about the game, however, is how genuinely well it fares in terms of presentation and performance. This is a legitimately handsome 2023 video game that doesn’t in any way feel aesthetically dated; the environments are lovingly rendered, with lighting effects proving especially remarkable throughout. Emerging onto the pier and glimpsing a neon, moonlit Ferris wheel honestly took my breath away for a moment. The art direction is also full of fun touches, like cute-if-superficial nods to horror auteurs George A. Romero and Dario Argento, and amusingly perverse environmental gags like stumbling upon a dead delivery cyclist’s corpse in the sewer of all places.
If the character designs sometimes verge on the edgy-for-edgy’s sake – “kicked through a Hot Topic” crossed my mind more than once – the cinematics featuring human characters do offer impressively lifelike facial animations. The cinematics themselves, however, are usually firmly on-rails and fixed-in-place, to the extent that you sometimes can’t even move the camera at all.
Dambuster also deserves credit for some decently tactile sound work here; play the game with headphones and you’re likely to second-guess your own character’s footsteps on regular occasion, and anxiously take note of the distant pained howl of a zombie waiting in the wings. Most of the voice acting is meanwhile adequate, even if the dialogue unfortunately ranges from mildly amusing at best to toe-curlingly embarrassing.
If many are surely going into Dead Island 2 expecting performance issues and bugs galore, it’s a pleasant surprise to report almost none of either in my 15-ish hours with the game. It appears to run at 60 fps without any noticeable hitches, even with a screen decently populated with undead foes, and aside from one hilariously bizarre cutscene glitch where a character sank through the floor, the moment-to-moment experience was shockingly smooth from start to finish.
Ultimately there’s dumb fun to be had within Dead Island 2, and it’s far from the disaster many wrote it off as many years ago, but at full-price in an era with so much choice, it’s not an experience that enthusiastically sells itself. At a hefty discount with expectations sufficiently calibrated, though, there are modest kicks to be had.
At times refreshingly simple and at others mind-numbingly generic, Dead Island 2 offers up no-frills zombie-clobbering both for better and worse.
Pros:
+ Gorgeous graphics.
+ Entertaining gore system.
+ Tactile sound design.
+ Refreshingly linear core campaign.
+ Straight-forward progression system.
Cons:
– Story and characters are paper-thin.
– Gameplay is incredibly simple.
– Repetitive, unimaginative missions.
– Cringe-worthy dialogue.
– Won’t be intense enough for some players.
Rating: 6/10
Reviewed on PS5 (also available for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S).
A review code was provided by the publisher.
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more video game rambling, or e-mail me here.
