Dead Island 2 Review – A Good Weekend Getaway To LA

Dead Island 2 has been announced only a few short years after the 2011 original, yet it took nearly 10 years to bring this sequel to life. Dambuster Studios was the third studio that worked on Dead Island 2. They used this time to develop their own Dead Island 2 completely. While assumptions might be made about a game that’s spent this long in development, jumping from multiple teams, the final game is a worthwhile follow-up, especially for fans of the original. Dead Island 2, much like its predecessor, isn’t breaking new ground narratively, but a good hook moves you through the game’s various Los Angeles districts. It’s the zombies that steal the spotlight, and all the bloody and customisable action they bring. In my experience with Dead Island 2, I mutilated over 2000 zombies, maimed them, electrocuted them, burned and obliterated their bodies. This carnage that my LA tour brought me was the reason I most wanted to roll credits. It would be great if the remainder of the game were as compelling. 

Dead Island 2 doesn’t take long to get into the action. After a quick cutscene setting up this idealized take on Los Angeles and how it’s become a dead island of sorts, I selected Amy, one of six slayers you can play as in the game’s story. She’s a Paralympian and an agile, speed-based character. The story of Dead Island 2 is not affected by the character I chose. Each slayer comes with a unique personality, backstory, and innate ability. Amy would occasionally comment about how she needed to get out of Los Angeles to make it to her next running competition, but other than that, her barks and lines felt generic enough that I wasn’t concerned I was missing part of the larger Dead Island 2 narrative by not playing through the game as each survivor. 

Unlockable skills cards provide more variation. Amy has 15 slot-equipables. With this many slots I decked her out to be more like the zombies that I was facing, using their ground pounds (pounding on the ground), screams and strikes. Some cards are useful against zombies, but others can only be described as benefits that come into play during combat. My favorite was the one that gave me a little health boost every time I made a good dodge or block. Amy was able to utilize her agility with this card and the others that enabled me to learn moves from nearby zombies. As I focused more on hitting often than hard, I saw how different cards might result in a completely new approach to combat. I enjoy collecting the cards because they are simple to use and easy to understand. This encourages me to experiment with different types of weapons. Players find that the system, and especially the weapons, are most different between each playthrough. 

The story of Dead Island 2 takes Amy through many of the locations you’d hope to visit in Los Angeles, from Beverly Hills to movie studio lots to the Santa Monica Pier and, of course, Hollywood Boulevard. It’s not an engrossing story, and quickly takes a back seat to exploring the world and killing zombies, but it’s serviceable, sprinkled in with the kind of characters you’d expect to run into in a post-apocalyptic LA like a Hollywood A-lister or washed-up rockstar. It’s also paced nicely, rarely overstaying its welcome and letting me return to the action right when I start to miss it. But ultimately, it’s not a story that will stay long with me, even if the team is setting up more adventures with this cast.

Each new location I went to made me excited. They’re lovingly designed, almost as if you were getting the greatest hits of each locale, perfect for the touristy romp through Los Angeles that Dead Island 2 ends up being. 

Dead Island 2’s visual design made each location even more memorable – the game’s art is stunning at times. Landscapes are bright, saturated and laden with blood and gore. The story of an end-of the-world is quite prevalent. Dead and living zombies cover the walls in celebrity homes, while caustic, corrosive guts spill out of the halls at renowned hotels. And my hacks only serve to make streets even redder. It was shocking to see the extreme bloodshed for nearly twenty hours. As I watched the weapons tear flesh, heads literally rolled. Arms were torn off and stomach cavities filled with guts. This action could have been a few hours earlier, but it escalated until the very end.

The ability to modify weapons in order to do more damage was a great feature. The weapons are varied in rarity, with rarer ones allowing for greater customization through mods and improvements. The perks allow you to change weapon speed, increase durability and do other things. It was nice that they offered both pros and cons. That forced me think about how I would like a weapon. Adding fire, electricity, caustic acid, bleed, and other enhancements to my weapons lent itself well to the immersive sim-like nature present in much of Dead Island 2’s world, as did throwable ”curveballs” like chemical bombs and zombie-luring bait. 

In Los Angeles I saw water spouts and electrical cables, as well as gasoline spills.  And they’re easy to read, too. The electric wolverine’s claws can electrify the water, and even the zombies in it. This gives the electrified status effects a persistent and damaging effect. It’s the same for gasoline, fire and other combinations. Once the game introduced shotguns, pistols, assault rifles, and submachine guns into the mix, I had even more range in combat, both from a literal standpoint and in that I could interact with Dead Island 2’s immersive sim elements in a new way. 

Dambuster Studios’ short and sweet challenges to get loot and collectibles are a great way to enjoy the game after the campaign. Side quests are fine, with some of the better ones leaning heavily into the caricatured version of Los Angeles I imagine most people who don’t live there, like myself, have of the city and its people to great effect. In one instance, I enjoyed using pyrotechnics on a movie set to destroy zombie hordes. The side quests shined, just like the main missions, when they were fast-paced. Sometimes areas are transformed into wave-based arenas, where it becomes tiring to kill zombies, especially towards the end of the game. 

The best combat is when you are able to take out a few zombies in a short period of time. Some setpieces can be a bit tedious when you are fighting dozens of enemies. The immersive sim and Skill Card capabilities help spice up the sequences. However, eventually, killing zombies repeatedly in a single arena becomes boring. The open-area battles that occur throughout the game are more exciting and often cut short by this issue. 

With Dead Island 2 behind me, I’m thrilled Dambuster Studios could take something we first learned about way back in 2014 and successfully bring it across the finish line with its own take on the series’ vision. Dead Island 2, with its system, plays, sounds, and looks like a 1990s B-movie. Dead Island 2’s core is the destruction of zombies, with plenty of tools to do so and tons of zombies. Its serviceable story does just enough to move slayers across Los Angeles’ postcard locations at a brisk pace, and I appreciate how much side content is available within them to keep each visit entertaining. This game won’t stay with me long, but I’m not sure it was meant to. With Dead Island 2, Dambuster Studios asks little of the player – only that you enjoy a good excuse to kill zombies in increasingly gory ways for a weekend or two – and in doing so, it delivers on the promise of what this series is all about.