A lot has happened since Dead Island 2 was first revealed. This site was still in its infancy, Dying Light wasn’t even a thing yet, and TiK ToK was just an annoyingly catchy Kesha song. It feels almost surreal to finally be playing Dead Island 2 in 2023, but perhaps the most surreal thing of all: it’s actually pretty good.
Make no mistake, Dead Island 2 likely won’t sweep The Game Awards, but there’s more than enough here for even the most jaded of zombie fans to sink their teeth into. If you wanted just an obscene amount of gore and to be able to make the undead look like shredded pork, you’ve come to the right place.
Ahead of its April launch, I had the chance to experience the first few hours of Dead Island 2 as the zombie plague swept over Los Angeles. The most obvious thing you will notice as soon as your evacuation plane crashes is just how much of a looker Dead Island 2 really is, with some of the slickest, most detailed visuals I’ve seen in some time. You’re going to want to play this on current-gen if you can. The second thing you will notice is how Dambuster love to cake those visuals in all the viscera imaginable — the game wastes absolutely no time in painting Tinseltown red.
It’s really hard to talk about Dead Island 2 without talking about its FLESH system, which does for bodily mutilation what Red Faction did for blowing holes in walls back in the day. Depending on where and with what you hit a zombie, you can absolutely carve them up in grisly fashion. There are many games that let you dismember your enemies, but few that show skin peeling off ribcages, flesh melting in real time, or bits of skull chipped away bit by bit. It’s really a crazy accomplishment in tech that keeps throwing out even more gruesome sights the more you slash, immolate, and maim, to the point where you begin to feel like you’re making some kind of mince art. Even the horror hounds who think they’ve seen everything will get a kick out of the brutality on offer here.
Dead Island 2 lets you choose from six survivors (or “Slayers”), each with their own different personalities, strengths and weaknesses that can be further impacted by skill cards. I played as Jacob, a solid all-rounder who can deal more damage the more he attacks, which meant that I started to feel like a Stand user as I leathered zombie faces in with a pair of knuckle dusters, especially due to the hefty audio feedback of each hit. I didn’t quite have the time to play around with too many other Slayers or experiment too wildly with the preview build, but it will be fascinating to see just how much chaos you can sow in the full version.
A game often lives or dies by its tone, how it presents its world and characters, and while some might’ve worried that Dead Island 2 was looking to appease a younger, more terminally online generation like another recent Deep Silver game, those who love British-style satire will get a chuckle or two out of proceedings here. Dead Island 2 takes a lot of shots at everyone and everything, but particularly the more vapid side of influencer culture. Its goofy in the same way that made Peter Jackson’s Braindead such a romp while also being sure to crank up the drama factor in spots. It does have to be said, though, that the player character is a bit rapid-fire in their narration, though I found Jacob to be a charmer who clearly hasn’t dealt with his mother’s passing well. There’s surprising depth to the characters here.
What also might surprise some is that Dead Island 2 isn’t an open world game, more a selection of sandboxes like something you’d see from Arkane. In fact, there’s a touch of the immersive sim to proceedings here (yes, really), as you’re able to utilise your environment and experiment with it in order to find secrets, and go about combat in multiple ways. A leaking water faucet means you can use your electric weapons more effectively, while a fuel spillage is obviously calling out for some fire.
Dead Island 2 doesn’t have the most complex sandboxes in the industry, but they provide a lot more player choice than some might have predicted. Side quests allow you to explore new locations that are full of interactivity (an influencer mansion being a particularly low-brow highlight) and there are plenty of locked crates that you have to backtrack and explore to gain access to, Throw in a bunch of different weapons that absolutely dice up zombies in all manner of frankly gnarly ways, and you have maybe the most joyously brash zombie-slaying that rewards experimentation since the first time Willamette Parkview Mall opened its doors.
The only real reservations I have about Dead Island 2 from what I’ve played so far is that I’m yet to see much of a reason for skills to be assigned to cards and it instead feels somewhat limiting, though this is something that will likely become clear when you have a full deck to use. I also didn’t see too much variety from the quests in the short preview, as they all boiled down to going to location A and killing zombies, going to location B and killing zombies, and so on. However, it really does remain consistently fun to do all that killing and Dambuster seem to know what a good thing they’ve got going here.
Dead Island 2 really has a lot going for it in general. Visually, it’s captivating in all the shiniest, grossest ways, its characters are charming and varied, and there’s a level of depth here that might lend itself well to multiple playthroughs in a similar way to what makes Resident Evil so replayable. Whisper it quietly, but Dead Island 2 may go on to become one of 2023’s surprise hits when it releases this April.
An EGS key was provided by PR for the purposes of this preview.
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
