Dead Island 2

After a long wait of 10 years, Dead Island 2 has finally met game lovers. Developed by Dambuster Studios and published by Deep Silver, the 2023 action role-playing game Dead Island 2 has been a subject of a number of sensational events. Will it be able to surpass the previous game, Dead Island? Let’s move into the review before having you wait any longer.

• The dose of dark humor is just right! It’s not a game that takes itself too seriously.
• Great body fragmentation mechanics.
• The playing time is a bit short.
• A chat has started on Discord that will stir up your interest! (Join us!)
• We are waiting for your comments on YouTube. Take a look at our videos!

In fact, the announcement of Dead Island 2 has its origins in 2012. Yager Development, who was in charge of development, published a job application for Dead Island 2. In 2014, they officially announced their game. Fans of Dead Island started waiting for the new game to come out. Yet, Dead Island 2 took an oath to never appear. Eventually, Dead Island 2 has met us on April 21, 2023, and sales figures for Dead Island 2 look pretty decent.

There are good and bad aspects of Dead Island 2. Dead Island 2 appears to be a good game when we compare them. Well, how good is it? Can it leave the first game behind? Is it worth spending your money? Hopefully, you can have the answers to these questions at the end of our review. Now let’s move on to the story, you’ll love the dark humor within the story.

Dead Island 2 Story

After choosing our main character, we wake up in a fallen plane. The game tells us that we need to find the first aid kit and the survivors of the crash. After moving further, we meet the famous artist Emma Jaunt. Emma writes her address on our arm and runs away from there. Meanwhile, our protagonist is trying to help someone and is bitten and infected while trying to do so. He tries to go to Emma, the first name appears on his mind. Hours pass and our main character is not infected…

When our character learns that he has not transformed, he figures out the things that will allow him to escape from this city full of zombies. After a dozen of incidents, our character speaks to the authorities outside the city through a radio. Authorities tell him that his blood is unique and that they need him to make the vaccine. And so begins our journey.

Dismember Dismember Play!

We have come to one of my favorite things in Dead Island 2: Gameplay. Dismember effects of Dead Island 2 are perfect! It feels really good to see the place you hit crumble.

 

Now we come to the worst part of Dead Island 2’s gameplay, the blocking mechanics. You learn to block almost everything in the game, and you regenerate a certain amount of HP when you block. But after a certain point in the game, you become completely immortal and can move forward by killing everything in front of you. By blocking, you can break the stance of your enemies and make a finishing move; it is nice to see that the game has different finishers for each weapon. Also, the variety of weapons is really great and I always found myself switching between weapons. However, the number of finishing moves is really small. There may be a lot of weapons in the game, yet there are only few finishing moves for each weapon in Dead Island 2. This is one of the drawbacks of the game.

One another drawback is playing time. Although Dead Island 2 takes an average of 15 hours to complete, the duration of the game can be around 22 hours when you try to complete side missions and the main story together. Additionally, the game starts repeating itself too early.

Missons and Open-World

In fact, one of the weakest sides of Dead Island 2 is its side missions. Apart from some of the side missions, it is not enjoyable to do side tasks. And on top of this, the city is designed like a narrow corridor which makes the first hours of the game very boring.

Dead Island 2 includes a total of 24 main missions and 33 side missions. The low number of missions is one the main factors that negatively affect the duration of the game. The main story is somewhat intriguing, though it is not possible to say the same for side missions. It’s really a problematic part of a game that presents a half-open world.

The open world of Dead Island 2 is made up of episodes, meaning the full open world definition for this game can be misleading. You switch from region to region and usually find yourself fighting in corridor-style places. This lets players feel like playing in a closed back alley instead of the free and open world of Hollywood. Thus, the desire to maintain playing the game diminishes.

Do skills hold any importance?

Unfortunately, the skills that are presented in Dead Island 2 are quite limited and they have mostly a flat and passive structure. This causes the appearance of a boring experience later in the game. For example, when you block attacks coming from enemies, you gain a small damage boost, when you avoid attacks from enemies you regenerate health, and so on.

Skills could have been designed better.

Dead Island 2 Graphics

One of the weaknesses of Dead Island 2 is the draw distance. Graphics are a bit behind by today’s standards, and NPCs’ facial animations and character animations feel a bit awkward. This can negatively affect the experience by ruining the atmosphere and realism of the game. Textures also feel odd. However, we should not forget that the development of this game dates back to 2014. I have not witnessed any problems other than a few texture bugs, I can easily say that it was a very stable gaming experience for me.

24/7 Rock and Music

Sometimes, there are great pieces of music within a mission theme, apart from that, the music is a little weak, and the ambient sounds could not go beyond the average degree. You often hear the dead silence of the city or the 24/7 rock music coming from the homes of crazy Rock Stars. All I can say is that the playlists of all the rock stars are the same.

Conclusion

If you’re a fan of Dead Island 1 just like me, I recommend you buy it. Dead Island 2 is a game in which you can kill zombies without thinking a lot like in the old days. In short, you can play with pleasure.

---

Author: Can Çiftci
Translator: Arda Bahçekapılı
Click here to see the original post.