I walked down the sandy capitalist dunes of Santa Monica Pier in Dead Island 2 for a solid hour and not a single dude tried to sell me his mixtape. A few zombies tried to tear my guts out and were met with a polite dismemberment, but otherwise Dambuster Studio’s rendition of the City of Angels is arguably more peaceful than the real thing. The apocalypse slowed traffic to a standstill and you can actually walk everywhere, albeit with the threat of imminent death looming overhead. No changes there then.
The game is pretty good too, often better than it has any right to be. Dead Island 2 was first announced way back in 2015 and lumbered through development hell much like the legions of undead you spend hours reducing to a pulp, so to see it saunter in all these years later so confidently aware of its own legacy is a treat to behold. It’s better than the original and a sight more enjoyable than similar efforts like Dying Light 2. Whether you’re playing as a foul-mouthed Irish punk rocker or a timid macho firefighter, this open world epic is savage, simple, and exactly what it needs to be.
Updated April 26, 2023: We've updated this article to include our very own video discussion between Eric Switzer and Jade King regarding the merits of Dead Island 2. It includes footage of the early hours of the game, complete with hilarity and gore!
While it exceeded my expectations, Dead Island 2 also feels like an experience out of time. It begins with an explosive cutscene where a plane evacuating a motley crew of rebels is flying out of Los Angeles, only to be ambushed by some pesky infected celebrities. After selecting a dude or dudette you’d like to play as, you emerge from the wreckage and stumble into the ruined city. It isn’t an island, but has apparently been sealed off by the military, so it passes from a metaphorical perspective. Just ignore it I say, since the game rarely ever tries to take itself seriously. It falls flat when it does, veering occasionally into awkwardly sincere bouts of storytelling. You won’t care, and I’m still figuring out whether it ever wanted me to anyway.
My heart belongs to Dani, the Irish rocker I mentioned earlier with a charming personality and adorably sapphic snark. She kicks ass and delivers dialogue that actually manages to be funny. You can tell that every line coming from NPCs in cutscenes or otherwise has been written for all playable protagonists, so there are a few weird slivers of dissonance, but Dead Island 2 does an otherwise confident job of telling a story that links together plenty of melodramatic intrigue and oddball personalities to keep me pushing to the next excessive locale. You’ll have to trudge through the mandatory sewer and subway sections to unlock a fast travel system that is introduced way too late to be useful, although these mundane stages are a necessary evil once you’re unleashed onto beaches and strips that are a delight to get lost in. There’s also plenty of zombie murder brought to life by exceptional gore.
The combat system is basic on the surface, yet hides a deceptive amount of depth. You’ll have to make do with pool cues, iron pipes, and golf clubs in the early hours as you trudge through abandoned Bel-Air mansions, but your arsenal only grows more varied as the solo campaign progresses. I began with wooden poles pulled from storage rooms, and concluded with a sprint down the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a flaming sledgehammer that sent all of my foes flying as they were reduced into scorching balls of infected decay. Every limb, layer of skin, and piece of anatomy can be reduced to nothing if you’re savage enough, and this laughable brutality isn’t just for show.
There’s a strategic nuance to blowing off the legs of faster zombies, so they have no choice but to crawl toward you, meanwhile there’s plenty of time to slash away at standard walkers or prepare for the towering bruisers ready to duke it out on the horizon. All the predictable enemy variants are here, and aside from the occasional bullet sponge mini-boss they are all satisfying to duke it out with.
Dead Island 2 also offers up a trinity of elemental properties you’re expected to toy with. Los Angeles is filled with abandoned cars sporting exposed batteries, which can be torn out and tossed at enemies to electrocute them, or into open bodies of water to create small barriers of protection. Fire operates on similar metrics, albeit with obvious red barrels and oil slicks strewn about the place. A poisonous green substance appears later on too, which dissolves enemies into nothing if you’re savvy enough. All of these things affect you too though, and you’ll need to be constantly aware of your surroundings or risk a quick and clumsy demise.
You have plenty of unlockable abilities too, which lean into the comical absurdity the game is constantly going for. Our hero is infected - because of course - and this allows them to adopt a number of superhuman powers and abilities that make no sense, but are a blast all the same. Overpowered too, since I quickly found a skill that accompanied each use of a healing item with an AoE attack that stunning all zombies around me. There’s also a deadly palm strike that more often than not opens foes up to an insta-kill execution animation. Dead Island 2 tries and fails to tie some cool lore into how we get these powers and what it means for the viral outbreak, but a mixture of hammy acting and inconsistent pacing meant I never cared enough to be invested. Things ending on a cliffhanger doesn’t help either, since the primary narrative is already set to be concluded in one of the many planned pieces of future DLC.
Locations like Venice Beach and Beverly Hills are ripe for exploration and experimentation, so it’s a shame the open world design is otherwise so archaic. Confined stages are split into individual zones separated by loading screens, and visiting some for the first time often requires you to slash through endless hordes of zombies before reaching wherever your objective might be. Los Angeles is awkwardly split apart in real life too, but I’d much rather Dambuster take liberties with its interpretation instead of delivering a take on things that can’t help feel outdated. Dead Island 2 was always going to be like that though, given the game only exists to satisfy a creative vision that initially came to light almost ten years ago.
Despite a history of disappointing delays that nearly doomed Dead Island 2 to obscurity, it’s here, and it’s both confident and capable in almost everything it does. Arduous quest design and the occasional repetitive tedium is a flaw, but you’re often too drowned in zombie guts and cringe-inducing creativity to care. Dead Island 2 isn’t going to change the world of zombie games, nor does it intend to, but the fact it has emerged from the ashes in a state this immaculate is a miracle in itself. Hammer some nails into a metal baseball bat, set it on fire, and start swinging. I guarantee you’ll carve out a good time beyond all the viscera.
Dead Island 2
Dead Island 2 brings back the first-person, zombie-killing mayhem for a brand new episode. Your job is to rid the city of Los Angeles of the undead, using a range of weapons and killer moves.
