THE first Dead Island released over a decade ago – 12 years, to be exact – and the sequel comes off the heel of an extremely lengthy period of development hell that saw Dead Island 2 switch between several different developers and studios.
Along the way, any possibility of creativity has seemingly been lost, as the game’s ideas transitioned from one party to another, repeatedly.
The game’s location also transitions from the original’s island, to the quarantined city of Los Angeles.
Set over a decade after the incident in the first game, Dead Island 2’s zombie outbreak takes place over several locations in LA.
Unlike the first game, which captured how the zombie outbreak started and kicks into overdrive within a single night on a luxury island, Dead Island 2 focuses on six people attempting to flee the quarantine on one of the last planes to fly out of LA.
When their plane crashes, the group of six – one of whom is chosen by the player to control throughout the rest of the game – are forced to work together, and with other survivors, to survive the outbreak.
Focused on humour
In case it is not clear, Dead Island 2’s story is not anything noteworthy, and no one is going to sing praises about the narrative. If anything, it’s bland and straightforward.
The real draw is the six characters who receive a bulk of the creative attention where the writing is concerned, as a lot of the entertainment comes from their hilarious dialogue throughout the 16 hours or so of playtime.
The relatively short – for this type of game – main campaign encourages players to switch to other characters for subsequent playthroughs, and that’s as far as the replayability value extends.
Dead Island 2 also humorously satirises the denizens of its location: the privileged, wealthy elite. But it does not go beyond “these people are useless in a catastrophic mass casualty event”. It’s surface level, much like the gameplay.
Tired formula
It’s true; no one expects – or should expect – deep writing or genre deconstruction in a game about obliterating zombies. The gameplay should come first and foremost, and suffice to say, Dead Island 2’s gameplay is about as “great” as its story.
The gameplay, especially the close-quarters combat, is dated. It genuinely feels like it in belongs in 2011’s Dead Island. Scratch that; they’re practically identical.
Enemies are killed in more or less the same ways – despite the variety of crazy custom weapons – and summon similar-ish animations.
You can only do it so many times before it quickly becomes tiresome, and then you’re shuffling about finding some other weapon to make satiating the zombie bloodlust passionate again.
This is made worse by how the game simply is not hard. The lack of difficulty settings, numerous checkpoints (in case you somehow mess up and die accidentally), and easily maneuvering around zombies just makes what is dull even more boring.
Scream bloody gore
That said, Dead Island 2 features the most impressive – and probably best looking – gore in gaming at the moment.
Dubbed by developer Dambuster Studios as the “Fully Locational Evisceration System for Humanoids” or F.L.E.S.H., the gore in this game is both spectacularly gnarly, and putrid.
A lot of extreme – and maybe somewhat disturbing – detail has been put by Dambuster into how each form of attack reacts differently depending on where it hits, who it hits, where the target is located environmentally, etc.
Say you come across a group of zombies who are well into their infection stage, where limbs are barely attached, skin has mostly peeled off, and is perpetually oozing with blood, and you decide to dropkick one zombie into the rest of its buddies. In any other game, the former will just hit the others, and they’ll fall down.
In Dead Island 2, most if not all the zombies – who are as fragile as red-coloured snowflakes – will explode like a pinata filled with bones, meat and litres of blood from the sheer force of having one of them kicked into the rest.
This applies to every other attack that players can pull off, from crushing zombie skulls causing its eye(s) to dangle out of the sockets, to covering entire rooms with dynamic gore and blood splatter from blowing up zombies.
Taking the shlocky entertainment value of the humour and violence, and weighing it with the subpar writing and uninspired gameplay should provide an answer whether Dead Island 2 should be picked up.
Do you like your zombie games to have a good story, or do you just want to mindlessly kill zombies for 15 hours or so?
