Vidjama Gmaes Work

Man I love Gamefly #notsponsored.

If you had told me a year ago that Dead Island 2 would not only release but as a solid video game, I’d call you an idiot. I’m all in favor of developers delaying games to make them better, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve been playing and writing about games long enough to know where you hit the point of diminishing returns. That being when the game changes through multiple studios, sees several restarts, and just can’t seem to figure out where it’s headed. Those games tend to come out as broken messes that never really get fixed in post.

Thankfully Dead Island 2 is a great game.

I’d like to start off by saying that Dead Island 2 has some pretty solid controls on PS5. You’d think that wouldn’t be an issue, but considering Redfall and a small handful of other games launching with damn-near unplayable control setups by default, it needs to be pointed out. Dead Island 2 works fine right out of the box.

Dead Island 2 is an open-ish world zombie hack and slash game in that it takes place in a series of isolated zones you can freely travel between where you unlock more as you go along and complete main story quests. As one of the few people immune to the zombie virus it’s up to you to present your booty to the CDC and maybe help get a cure developed using your blood. Maybe. Unfortunately this means surviving the post-apocalyptic world that is Los Angeles.

Burning buildings, cannibalistic homeless people, bodies in the streets, the roads covered in sludge and other toxic elements, and nobody there to help the people in trouble? How did anyone in LA realize the zombie apocalypse was happening? You’ll want to explore prior zones for weapons, resources, missions, and you gradually find more named enemies who hold keys to open more stuff and get more stuff. As George Carlin would say, Dead Island is all about finding a place for your stuff.

The core gameplay loop in Dead Island 2 is basically the same as Dead Island 1 and any other ARPG of the sort. You level up, gradually finding better weapons, and your hits do more damage to enemies who also level up. The attempt at balancing almost makes the whole thing pointless, since zombies level up with you and you never feel particularly powerful. Most zombies seem to take the same number of hits to kill no matter what level you’re at, and given they also hit harder your increase in HP also seems worthless in the long run.

Don’t get me wrong, the game is fun. As a fan of this type of thing, I have no problem mindlessly hacking and slashing for hours on end. I did use guns far more in Dead Island 2 than I ever did in Dead Island 1, they seem more viable here and understandably so. It does get exhausting after a while, especially since some of the missions throw waves of enemies at you that just keep coming and they don’t stop coming and they don’t stop coming and they don’t stop coming and if you die you have to start all the way over in the fight.

Oh yeah, the drop kicking in this game sucks. Maybe it’s because of the clunky controller setup, or because of the somewhat awkward way you move, but I felt like drop kicking a zombie was much more obtuse than it really needed to be. I found myself missing roughly half the time because my character started moving in a weird direction the moment I hit jump and then kick.

There’s a lot of crap to do in this game. 84 various challenges, 24 main quests, 33 side quests, 15 lost & found quests, 85 blueprints to discover, hundreds upon hundreds of named zombies, journals, Zombiepedia entries, and more. If you’re one of those completionist types this game will keep you satisfied for a very, very long time while you hunt down everything there is to find in the various areas. It took me 15 hours to get through the story mode plus about half of the side missions. I might actually buy this once it is dirt cheap to finish them off.

One thing I think we can all agree on is that whoever developed the mesh textures for the zombies deserves a raise and a kiss on the mouth. Dead Island 2 has a whole system in place to figure out and show damage on zombies, and it looks beautifully disgusting. You’ll chop, burn, bludgeon, explode, and shock zombies and watch their bodies reflect the damage with gaping wounds, cooked skin, dissolved flesh, etc. It’s actually horrifying in a way, throwing a vat of acid on a zombie’s face only to have it survive and grab you.

Would I recommend Dead Island 2 as a rental? Absolutely. Would I recommend it as a purchase? Sure. It is not the kind of game you want to marathon, otherwise you’ll hit burnout after a few hours of playing straight. On second thought wait for the full version to come out. The game’s plot suddenly ends on a cliffhanger and it seems obvious they didn’t have time to get the full story done.