preview Dead Island 2: 9 years after its announcement, is the zombie game ready to return from the dead?
Announced during E3 in 2014, Dead Island 2 has attracted bad omens over the years. It was postponed several times, went through the hands of three development studios, to finally be ready in 2023. Nine years of struggle that will come to an end under the bright Los Angeles sun. What a well-deserved vacation for Dambuster and Deep Silver? The JV editors were able to play it for six hours, here are their impressions.
Summary
- On the deserted beach…
- When zombies and Los Angeles go hand in hand
- A promising RPG aspect
preview conditions
Dead Island 2 preview was made on PC. Our impressions are therefore based on this version of the game, impressions that may differ on other media, since Dead Island 2 is also expected for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series.
On the deserted beach…
Twelve years after the first installment of Dead Island, publisher Deep Silver revisits the formula that caused so much excitement when releasing this first-person shooter (or FPS): a heavenly atmosphere, heaps of gore with feel-good dialogue that add up to a game that fully embraces his Nanar side. This time the player will put his bags on the Los Angeles side, but not in the way he really imagined. : While he is traveling to the City of Angels by plane, the plane suddenly crashes. Its passengers learn that LA is in total quarantine due to zombie proliferation: the Californian city is cut off from the rest of the world and the American government doesn’t seem to want to lift a finger.
And the player in all this? He embodies one of the (unfortunate?) survivors of the crash, among six characters available at the beginning of the game. He then meets Emma Jaunt, a recognized actress who has a house down here: he can join her there in case there’s trouble… if he survives until then. Thus begins the protagonist’s journey through Los Angeles, renamed to Hell-A for the opportunity to find the home of the star. Intended to serve as a quick tutorial for zombie extermination, but also as an introduction to the actual storyline, your character is one of the few people in town who doesn’t turn into a mindless individual after being bitten. What you should use to explore the City of Angels in search of help but most importantly to share your situation with the whole world. An easy-to-understand storyline that shouldn’t put off players who haven’t tasted the first work.
When zombies and Los Angeles go hand in hand
[[image:|position=gauche]]It is Emma’s house that serves as a bulwark against the forces of evil. It salutes the potential survivors you encounter on your journeys through side quests or the main story. Everyone has their own personality, their own vision and how to cope with survival: It is precisely such crisis situations that should show the true character of people and it must be recognized that actions do justice to this feeling. Despite the six hours of playtime at Hell-Ait’s easy when you don’t cling engaging emotionally with those who share the same situation as you.
What is supposed to be a source of motivation to explore Los Angeles to find help whatever it is. Dead Island 2 is a semi-open world: every iconic neighborhood of the California city from Bel Air in Beverly Hills above movie studios, is a great playground for taking out zombies. The sea and the luxurious surroundings of the city definitely make you want to spend your vacation there, despite the invasion of unsavory creatures. The soundtrack also fits very well with the general atmosphere of the game, flirting with the land under the sun but also knowing how to be unconventional: during a boss fight against a bride boosted on steroids, the music does not hesitate to sit down with a wedding tune forward, which gives the confrontation a special spice.
A promising RPG aspect
But it’s obviously about struggle and survival that Deep Silver and Dambuster Studio put the title front and center. They do not reinvent the wheel of the genre and do not deviate from the proposals of the first installment. Dead Island 2 emphasizes melee with ideas of role-playing games that make confrontations with zombies more tactical. As mentioned above, the player must first choose between six different characters: they have starting stats (health points, stamina, resistance or even agility) that are not the same and have one of each special ability (passive or active). For example, Jakob gets a damage boost from attacking multiple times in a row, while Amy restores stamina with each successful weapon roll.
Personalization that doesn’t stop there. After each defeated zombie and at the end of each quest, the player regains experience points that allow him to level up. At every level (at least during our experience) a special card is acquired: It represents an ability (passive or active again) that must be equipped in one of the four trees between Abilities, Survival, Slayer and Numen. You’ll need to make quick decisions, therefore, as you’ll quickly reclaim more cards than you have available slots, especially since they can also be recovered through questing and Hell-AT’s (meticulous) exploration.
There are many workbenches.
An essential aspect of the RPG to face the different types of monsters that lurk there. Dambuster made sure to vary the pleasures with infected ones, fireproof ones, others with blunt weapons, or even some still lugging their water jugs on their backs. Fortunately, the makeshift weapons encountered along the way are just as numerous. Baseball bats, crowbars, hammers or claws à la Wolverine… A lot of utensils that can be improved and customized thanks to the various workbenches installed in Los Angeles : There are several ways to decapitate or dismember your enemies with the same ultimate bloodbath.
According to the developers and the return of several journalists who had access to this preview, Dead Island 2 is a challenging but not insurmountable game. To illustrate the point, we’re quick to appreciate the difficulty of defeating zombies with the sole power of makeshift weapons found along the way. You need to be smarter and use eco-friendly tools to cause great damage in the area, such as: B. Water cans to throw at bare power wires, or even a gas tank to wield blowtorches. Once the stamina system is integrated, the tactical possibilities in relation to the environment are taken into account and the equipment is made to look like you want to play, most of the fights are appreciated with taste: We remember how much fun we had kicking zombies one by one into a poisonous pool. A pleasure that is all the more noticeable as our preview knows how to run technically almost without a hitch: the rare unexpected freezing of images and the few image stutters could not spoil the experience for us, especially since these are problems on which developers work. The biggest flaw of this preview would be the perfectable AI. It shows an often high response time, which sometimes makes the confrontations soft: a black point that could be corrected by the release of the game.
No impressions
Two months before its release, Dead Island 2 confirms the first impressions it made on us last year. Without revolutionizing the concept of its predecessor, taking up the codes of a zombie invasion in a coastal environment, despite the disparity of certain fights, thanks to a soft AI, this sequel seems to be a perfect outlet for fans of zombie action games. While the many studio shifts and ownership changes may be the source of concern about Dead Island 2’s approach, Dambuster and Deep Silver seem more than ready to come back from the dead. Final answer on April 21st with the definitive release of the title on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series.
Editorial review
promising
