Zombie games are a dime a dozen in gaming, with there seeming to be more games featuring zombies than in movies. At this point in time, there are very few zombie games, however, which really push the focus away from the undead flesh eaters, and tap more into the human elements. Interestingly enough, the original Dead Island announcement trailer aimed to change things back in the early 2010s, but when it came out… it was a humdrum, yet enjoyable zombie game. The trailer for Dead Island decided to switch things up and relish in the dark comedy elements and gore, with another great trailer. Would the main game match that tone?
… Well, 10 years later and we finally find out.
What is Dead Island 2? 
Dead Island 2 is the long-awaited successor of the 2011 zombie hack and slasher, which came and went but left an impression as it was a fast, frantic and gory experience which attempted to match Dead Rising. A couple of years later a sequel was announced with, quite possibly one of the best reveal trailers of all time, but soon enough faded into the void and was trapped within development hell until a few years ago. Since then we’ve had the likes of Dying Light and the death of Dead Rising as main highlights, with the former taking the genre to new heights and adding in plenty of intriguing human elements.
Dead Island 2 passed through the hands of three developers, finally landing with Damn Busters who managed to push it over the finish line, just under a decade past its original release date. Taking the role of a badass zombie slayer, players will find themselves trapped within the ruins of LA, otherwise known as Hell-A, where zombies roam the glorious city, eating the flesh of the living, while those left alive try to survive by any means. The rich are not above anyone and must face Armageddon just like the rest of us.
Explore Hell-A, hack and slice your way through the hoards and find a way out. Simple.
Stream of the dead!
I’m going to be honest upfront and say that Dead Island 2 is not about delivering an engaging story, that reflects the horrors of humanity even in a crisis. This isn’t Day of the Dead (that would be great if we had a Day of the Dead game!), nor does it hit the high emotional notes of that 2011 reveal trailer for the original game. It’s all about glam, death, sun and blood, with an intense observation of streamer culture (yep, there are a lot of streamer references here).
Now I personally don’t mind a mindless adventure when it involves zombies, so long as there are some neat hooks to get me invested. Dead Rising had both thematic and gameplay hooks to elevate it above just a zombie game. Dying Light ½, while a little messy in their stories, have compelling dynamics to flesh them out whether it’s a cool setting or branching paths.
Dead Island 2 embarks on a generic tale which we have seen so many times, with a typical survivor plot where the main character finds out they’re immune to the zombie virus and decides to contact the authorities in order to escape the danger zone. Along the way a couple of roadblocks popup to slow down our hero, a detour or two is made to avoid immense disaster and meeting a few notable characters who help to dismantle the zombie menace … and really that’s the core of Dead Island 2’s plot, being simple, quite uninspired, and just plain dead in the water at times.
While something like Dying Light surely had a similar problem of being quite formulaic, it did have elements which kept raising the stakes with things like an infected main character who had to race against the clock to find a cure, a compelling and unique location to venture through, and a main villain who had some interesting threads to the story. With Dead Island 2, I’d be fine with the same thing, but even its supporting cast, dramatic events and the lack of a proper ending just make it feel somewhat braindead and not in a way. Take something even older like Dead Rising, which had a cool mystery, made even cooler but the dynamic time system, some excellent antagonists with the Psychopaths, and a leading man who was charming, funny and just the right amount of dickish we could love him.
I was hoping for something completely crazy to happen, or for the plot to take a dramatic turn and throw in a spanner in the works to heighten the tension. Even a game as mindless as DOOM 2016 had some awesome hooks during the campaign, some neat lore and great set pieces (both gameplay and story).
We do get jacked-up zombies, thematic notes telling us never to trust the government in a zombie outbreak, and a cast of characters who are either posh movie stars, Tik Tokers or punk rockers who have orgies for breakfast and small like Monster Energy 24/7. There are some laughs, a couple of coolish moments, and some neat scatters of lore and personal stories, but nothing that really left much of an impression.
A dead good time?
Okay, I hear most people say “Well Patrick, Dead Island 2 isn’t about a compelling narrative on the human condition featuring zombies”. And yeah, I get that, and I love mindless gore and mayhem and Dead Island 2 does indeed offer plenty of that.
For those who’ve played the original and other similar first-person zombie games, you’ll feel right at home here and grasp the concept of “grab a stabby, smashy or electric thingy and kill tons of zombies”. It’s incredibly animalistic, savage, and simple, yet enjoyable for multiple hours. Players will be allowed to choose one slayer from a lineup of fore mentioned Monster smelling, punk rockers, and randomly a dude who looks like a firefighter in a saucy charity calendar, each with their own perks, variation in stats, strengths, and weaknesses. Pick wisely and adapt your play style to ensure you can handle yourself when it comes to dealing with the undead.
80% of what you will be doing in-game is smashing zombie skulls and finding weapons for said skull smashing. But you’ll also be venturing through a number of different locations dotted around LA, from Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, Santa Monica Pier and the Hollywood film sets. It’s a glamorous environment, filled with plenty of zombies to kill and enough homes to scavenge for loot to make up some hefty weaponry.
While the concept of making up savage weaponry from random parts is nothing new, Dead Island 2 does a great job at offering variety and stylistic gore which never gets old. I admired the number of brutal weapons I could conjure up, adding in devastating modifiers that would either burn, electrocute or melt the flesh off the undead before me. I loved seeing the range of weapons including katanas, police batons, wrenches and iron claymores all rammed up to 11 and ready to rock.
While it never goes to Dead Rising 3 levels of stupid insanity, there are still some great tools of the zombie trade to craft, maintain and improve upon as the game goes on. There are special weapons that come here and there, and an ultimate level of Zombie Slayer weaponry much later in the game, which all adds layers to a tight and gratifying combat system. Even if some of the special stuff is a pain to get hold of.
And I have to give a massive shout-out to the gore system, which is ridiculously glorious. Seeing the highly detailed dismember system in play was a pure treat, as hacking, and slashing felt meaningful (in a sick kind of way) but also played a dynamic part in how zombies moved after you when taking them apart, and witnessing the result which was often a big mess really satisfied my lust for zombie violence. Not since the RE2 remake, have a seen a cool zombie gore system perfected so beautifully.
And I’m thrilled to see a game in 2023, pull off such amazing-looking elemental effects that work beautifully well with said gore system. It feels like a lifetime since I’ve seen elemental effects react dynamically to the world you’re in, on both environments and enemies. I recall Bioshock making this a thing, where you could electrocute water to damage enemies … and never was this cool gameplay feature ever really been seen again, until now!
Dead Island is staggering when it comes to burning, or melting the skin of a zombie, revealing that red, bloody tissue sack underneath. You can zap water, and ignite oil to create fire and alter the spread by applying more water or oil via cans scattered around the environment. It’s just neat to see such an organic display where you can use fire, acid and electricity to defeat enemies, in such a spectacle.
You have your typical variants of zombies, from the bloated, the super roid-up zombies, and the spitters all making an appearance, plus your typical super-fast ones which will royally mess you up if you’re not careful. They’re perfectly fine and fun to fight, but much like every other zombie game in the last ten years, we’ve seen them all before. I was again hoping for something a little more messed up, like seeing something akin to the Rat King from TLOU2, or maybe even more sinister (if that’s possible). It’s a shame, as the core combat is quite enjoyable, but the enemy roster is lacking and incredibly dated.
The only other neat feature here is a rage mode, which triggers after filling up a meter, and this allows you to unleash a savage display of ultraviolence, which is admittedly awesome to see unfold time and time again.
A world divided like a hacked-up zombie
One of the things that kept coming to my mind was the feeling that Dead Island 2 felt like it was truly from another age in gaming. Such as the countless times we've seen the same enemy roster in other zombie games and nothing new is added. But one thing that really stuck out (and not entirely in a bad way) is how the open world is broken up into smaller chunks, which are interconnected via various entry/exit points. Dead Island 2 does not offer a massive, seamless open world but something more like the original Dead Rising, which took place in a huge shopping mall, with various halls, outdoor spaces and underground that were connected via a loading screen.
It’s noticeable and I don’t fully understand why this might be, since open-world video games both indie and AAA have managed to make massive spaces without the need to break them up with loading screens, or at least hide them well.
But then again, I personally quite like the approach of having multiple hubs, each distinct and with its own stories, rewards, and dangers. Each hub is indeed distinct and has plenty of places to loot, plenty of zombies to kill, and its own visual flare that the entire game world itself feels quite diverse. The lavish homes of the Hollywood hills ransacked by the undead, the beautiful coastline where the sand and waters run red, or the iconic film sets of modern Hollywood where epic sets for massive Blockbusters all resemble a chilling horror film come to life. You do get your crummy sewer sections, and not every house is accessible, but each hub is still quite large enough and has enough side quests, content, and discoveries to make them worth venturing back through again and again as the game progresses.
There’s a decent amount of backtracking needed, as you’ll find plenty of locked containers, areas blocked off and much more which can only be accessed by finding key items throughout the game. For your efforts, you’ll obtain even more powerful weapons and snippets of interesting lore which does add further depth to the world.
Plus, I love the fact that this game runs superbly well, and having an open world broken up into hubs has made this possible, then I’m happy to see it more often in gaming. I’m not going to lie, it’s a little sad when you play a game that runs perfectly well, knowing that plenty of other AAA games can’t do that upon launch. Credit where it’s due as Dead Island 2 ran beautifully well on my HP Pavilion laptop even on the higher settings.
Overall?To wrap things up, I feel the best way to sum up Dead Island 2 for me, is a dated gem. This, among many other games I’ve reviewed recently, does feel like something that was locked away from the world for whatever reason and released to ensue a wave of nostalgia and profit. Dead Island 2 was meant to launch back in 2015 and since then, we’ve had many other zombie games including Dying Light which came from Dead Island’s original developer Techland. Dying Light in my opinion moved the genre forward, be in with some bumps in the road, and if Dead Island 2 came out the same year, there would be a debate about the better game, but arguably Dying Light would have a stronger case.
From its fragmented open world, simplistic mechanics, and lacklustre story, Dead Island 2 amounts to something from a generation of gaming long gone (arguably the 7th). Yet there’s a strange sense of enjoyment to be had and seeing certain elements be done so well compared to other AAA games is quite marvellous. Presentation and performance are top-notch, the broken-up open world is vastly detailed and enjoyable to explore, combat while not perfect is immensely fun and gruesome, and to see a game do elemental/environmental interactions so well is mind-blowing. Especially since other recently released games have done it so poorly.
Dead Island 2 while not reaching the high bar of the zombie genre, does indeed offer a great time filled with gore, guts, zombie mayhem and plenty of energy drinks to down. It’s silly, brain-dead at times and a tat dated, but it is still charming, highly enjoyable and a dead good time if you like your zombie splatter.
++ Immensely fun combat and weapon crafting
+ Performance and presentation are great
+ Elemental interactions with the environment are insanely good!
+ Cool locations and exploring
-- Lack of any compelling narrative elements or neat story dynamics
- Same old enemies from other zombie games and lack of anything truly new
- Obtaining legendary loot can be a grind
A PC review key of Dead Island 2 was kindly provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
