More than a decade after the first installment hit store shelves, Dead Island 2 is finally here.
After spending years in development, with fans gradually losing faith that it would ever see the light of day, it’s actually happening. Dead Island 2 is real and finished, and ready to join your game library alongside its predecessors. So long as you’re willing to shell out $60 for a game that, at many points, feels like a glorified expansion of the first.
It’s not a bad thing to stay true-to-form, especially when relying on elements that already proved popular, but I’d argue that more needed to be done to make Dead Island 2 feel like a truly new game rather than overwrought — and admittedly beautiful, in its own bloody way — DLC. If you’re looking for a brand-new zombie-killing experience, outside of what you enjoyed in Dead Island or Riptide, it feels safe to say this game is not for you, but if you enjoyed its predecessors and are looking for more of the same, Dead Island 2 offers up a delightful, gore-soaked romp.
As I roamed familiar-feeling streets and dispatched zombies with the same type of weapons I used in the first two games, the biggest question I found myself asking was why Dead Island 2 took so long to make. If it changed up the formula, added in exciting new elements, or boasted a massive leap forward in graphical fidelity, I might understand the timeline a little better, but it took a full decade to release a game that, in many ways, is just a revamp of the first. It’s got a new, more fleshed-out story, sure, and a brand-new cast of barely-likable characters, but it doesn’t sport the “newness” or shine most gamers would expect from a title that was conceived prior to the launch of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
All that being said, Dead Island 2 is still fun, and very much worth trying out for the zombie lovers in our midst. It’s over-the-top, gore-soaked, and utterly chaotic, and there’s no denying the deep satisfaction you’ll get from jump-kicking a zombie off a balcony. Its biggest failure resides in its excessively formulaic nature, which simply makes gameplay tired after a while. Each new area presents the same general challenges and risks — despite plenty of new zombie types — and eventually, it gets boring to approach each new area in the exact same way.
The actual gameplay is quite enjoyable and guarantees at least a few hours of fun for pretty much any breed of gamer. The map is comprehensive and clear, guiding players through a relatively open, free world that encourages exploration by tucking weapons and materials away in dark corners and hidden containers, and combat is seamless and well-realized. Movement doesn’t have the freedom of sister title Dying Light, but it is smooth and fluid, allowing players to leap atop cars or dart around obstacles to put some distance between themselves and the ever-present shambling horde. Markers guide you from goal to goal, and the world is carefully laid out to make traversal challenging — with environmental obstacles and plenty of undead in your path — but still straightforward.
Overall, Dead Island 2 improves on all the elements that made the original so popular, just not in a way that I found adequate for a release that took so long to produce. Interactions with NPCs are satisfying, the player characters — or “Slayers” — are far more developed this time around, and the addition of Skill Cards allows players to better define how their characters evolve over the course of the game. Weapons are extremely familiar, offering up the option to hoard a range of tools — from pool cues to machetes — and give them a boost with elemental upgrades for maximum damage.
Dead Island 2‘s combat is inarguably what it does best. Zombies are extremely diverse, something the team behind the game clearly put effort into, and the act of brutally bisecting them is massively satisfying — and hugely intuitive. You’ll discover dozens of ways to take down the game’s far more robust offering of undead — which range from slow-moving Shamblers and sprinting Runners to locust-spewing Swarm Zombies and sturdy Brutes — and it will likely take you several hours to tire of the sheer fun of chopping off a zombie’s arms or luring it into a busted fire hydrant for a good death by electrocution. Of everything included in Dead Island 2, your ability to massacre the undead clearly got the most love from the development team. Zombies really show the effects of your attacks, losing specific limbs based on your angle of attack, and gradually diminishing to mush in the wake of your bludgeoning. Accompanied by grotesque but satisfying sound design, it’s hard not to feel empowered by the game’s most vital inclusion: zombie killing, plain and simple. Eventually, however, this element of the game starts to get old — and, without it, there’s little to enjoy in Dead Island 2.
You’ll have to look elsewhere for a breakdown of how the game’s Alexa game control addition improves things — it certainly sounds interesting, but my Alexa was boxed away in some deep drawer several years ago, never to steal my personal data again. The idea of shouting at zombies to get their attention or interacting with the world via vocal cues certainly sounds intriguing — and just a bit gimmicky — but I enjoyed my play-through without any assistance from Amazon’s official in-home spy.
There’s no real depth to Dead Island 2, but one has to ask: does it need it? The game never tries to be anything it’s not, instead leaning on the sheer fun of taking out zombies by the dozen with your carefully upgraded weapons and the various environmental hazards littered through the world. Still, for a title that was in development for so long, you’d think a few more bells and whistles would have been added to the foundation laid out in the first game.
That’s not to say there’s nothing new about Dead Island 2. Zombies can dodge your attacks, which certainly adds a new element of challenge, and the parkour-flavored movement does add a bit of fun. More variety in the side-quests would be nice, instead of relying so heavily on finding and repairing power sources, but there is plenty to do as you traverse the lovely, chaotic streets of “Hell-A.”
At the end of the day, Dead Island 2 delivers exactly what it promises, but charges far too much for it. If this game were selling for $30, I would encourage fans of hack-and-slash titles to buy up a copy right away. But for its current price, the game feels a bit too much like a revamp of the original, with far too few new elements included, to feel worthy of your hard-earned cash. That’s not to say that plenty of people won’t enjoy it for what it is — a stellar excuse to hack apart zombies in every way imaginable — but less gore-minded gamers might think twice before buying up a copy.
This review is based on the PC version of the game. A copy was provided to us for review by Deep Silver.
It’s not necessarily a failure on Deep Silver’s and Dambuster Studios' part, but Dead Island 2 simply doesn’t feel like a game worthy of a decade-long wait. It maintains all of the elements that made the first few games popular and expands on several in fun and interesting ways but does far too little to separate itself from the titles that came before it.
