After a very intensive introduction, I find myself on a plane on my way to safety, accompanied by a motley group of famous people. The zombie apocalypse has shaken Los Angeles, a city referred to by this title as Los Demonios. I decided to play the stripper Ryanthe game’s tank character, because he already knew the ride wasn’t going to be as smooth as it seemed.
As I noted in my first impressions, it would have been a bit anticlimactic if, after an almost unprecedented hellish development, the game had consisted only of a flight to safety and the adventure had been the end. Of course, the plane barely has time to get airborne before crashing. Luckily, Ryan survives and meets up with one of the surviving Los Angeles celebrities in Bel-Air, where the real adventure begins.
At first glance, you don’t realize how hard the creators worked to bring this title to market, which was passed from studio to studio like a basketball. This is Dead Island at its purest, a game I put a lot of time into when it came out. Many of its characteristic elements can be identified in this sequel: a holiday paradise invaded by monsters, a gameplay based on collecting all kinds of tools that can be used as weapons, skills to unlock, equipment upgrades, a fury mode you can activate and a world of survivors who need your help.
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At first it seems Ryan is immune to zombie bites, so he’s convinced he can help create a vaccine. This takes you on a tour of countless Los Angeles attractions. I think Los Angeles is incredibly well represented, especially during the day, and on numerous occasions I’ve wanted to book a flight there after smashing up a few zombie skulls on the palm-lined boulevards in the blazing sun.
Something bothers me from the first moment. I have a very hard time ignoring the fact that Dead Island 2 feels like an old game and works much better on PC with a mouse and keyboard than with a controller. There are many reasons for this problem, but one of the most relevant is that the creators didn’t provide a lot of variety in the dynamics. You have to search for countless objects to progress with a controller that seems too rigid.
The existing types of missions are very old-fashioned and the puzzles usually involve clicking on something, finding what you need (a battery, a watering can, a key…) and looking for it to continue. More complicated challenges arise from time to time, like using water to conduct electricity to an object. Even so, all of these actions are explained beforehand, so they’re never overly difficult. As you search for the items, zombies will appear for you to fight, and hopefully you’ll also find other materials along the way that you can later use to repair or upgrade your tools. However, I’m not entirely convinced that there are multiple items to collect in each room, as there is little fun in collecting the materials and there isn’t much variety. Without mouse precision, it was harder to pick up much-needed junk or electronics, so I had to stop and interrupt the flow of the game.
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Fortunately, the fights are much more interesting. The game is full of different types of enemies and it is important to have the appropriate equipment and skills to deal with them. The creators have boasted a lot that you can literally rip your enemies to pieces, which works surprisingly well. At the beginning of the adventure, I often chose to break my opponents’ legs so they would crawl at me with bones sticking out of their stumps, rather than quickly charge and run in a group. This feature remains entertaining throughout the game (slicing open a jaw enough to dangle from the fleshy zombie face never disappoints), but eventually becomes a trap of sorts against more difficult enemies whose body parts can’t be sliced as hard.
In combat there is also a block system that gives you the opportunity to counter quickly. It doesn’t feel foolproof, however, as the gameplay is a bit crude and can’t be used with the precision that I’m used to as a fighting game enthusiast.
You’ll often come across traps that you can use to cause spectacular deaths, like pouring water near loose wires or using gasoline to turn zombies into walking bonfires. None of them are particularly innovative or incredibly good, but they still work more than well and are entertaining, with the exception of the boss fights where the traps are more obvious and can be used to get an easy win.
In general, I think weapons that break in combat get in the way rather than add anything to the game. I understand that the creators want to introduce an extra challenge and increase the game time by constantly having to search for materials to repair them, but rendering a giant crowbar useless after destroying some half-dissolved zombie skulls doesn’t make much sense. Plus, you get so many materials that you never have to get rid of your favorite pieces, which you can repair an infinite number of times, so that wear and tear is just a nuisance. On the other hand, it’s very easy and fun to upgrade the weapons in the worktables that you find. Oddly enough, adding flaming properties to your golf club is quite satisfying.
Replacing a level tree with a skill deck is very welcome as it’s a flexible system that allows you to choose which skills you want activated at any time. The further you go, the more abilities you can have active at once, and you also have more different cards to choose from. I myself put my resources into the crowd control features which I found very useful.
Dead Island 2 offers a very believable world that has been hastily abandoned. Everywhere you can find traces of the ordinary life of many people before the zombie apocalypse began. It is very exciting to inspect the houses and guess what happened inside them. Many of the items found can be collected, adding even more information to the story. It also presents very good examples of social criticism, which I think you should discover for yourself.
The survivors I encountered often gave me side quests with various rewards. I’ve done quite a few, but few of them I can call good or memorable. Often they would try to go to a certain area and kill some zombies, sometimes with a twist like killing them with fire or throwing them off a high ledge. The characters who commission the missions are poorly characterized and their personalities are almost provocatively shallow, like the influencer you meet at the beginning who wants to film you killing zombies. A lot could have been done better in that regard.
Overall, Dead Island 2 is a very enjoyable adventure, especially when you have someone to play cooperatively with. It’s meaty, long, and sometimes magnificent. Like a little weird digital vacation in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, it’s also so faithful to the original that it lacks surprises and its structure looks very old. On the other hand, the original was a very good game and this one is too, although in the end it doesn’t reach the level of its predecessor.
