Analysis of Dead Island 2- Sun, Beach and Bleeding Zombies

Almost 10 years after it was announced, we’ve finally received the long-awaited sequel to Dead Island, from Deep Silver and Dambuster Studios.

Back in the distant E3 of 2014, a trailer left much of the audience speechless. It was neither more nor less than a trailer for Dead Island 2. It has rained a lot since that day. And it is that something was wrong in the development of the zombie saga created by Techland. The game was developed by German developer YAGER, creator of Spec Ops The Line. In 2016, Deep Silver announced that due to development issues it would be handed over to studio Sumo Digital, but they also did not complete development of the title. After a long moment of silence it has been announced that Dambuster Studios, creators of Homefront: The Revolution will take over the game. Things looked bad, but finally, in the middle of 2023, we received this long-awaited sequel. Was it worth the wait? In ComunidadXbox you can know everything.

The B-series in its purest form

Dead Island 2 begins with an extensive cinematic where we are introduced to all the characters we can choose from and also tells us very superficially of the events that precede the story of the title. The game begins with the military evacuating civilians on a plane, a place where our protagonists will also be. It looks like everything will be fine, but there is an Infested and it causes the plane to crash, starting our adventure at this point. From this moment, our character, who is immune to the virus, must survive in the city of Los Angeles. The game has a very B-series story. There are totally weird characters like Hollywood stars, ex-rockers, and even influencers, who really exude a lot of charisma. But the truth is that the story is not the strong point of the title, it is rather anecdotal, an excuse to slaughter hordes of zombies. Personally, I enjoyed the side missions more than the main story, as the side characters tend to be more charismatic and with crazier backstories.

It’s not something so negative either, not all games necessarily have a story like Red Dead Redemption or The Last Of Us, but it’s true that they could have given it a little more seriousness , keeping the serial keys by dark humor which they work very well with the game. It should also be noted that you can play this sequel without having to play the previous Dead Islandsince with the exception of one character who reappears, Dead Island 2 is completely independent.

Burns, electrocutes and dissolves

To begin with, it should be noted that Dead Island 2 is not an open world game. And it is that in this episode we will have large areas to visit, but they will not be connected in a large open world, instead we will have to enter and exit each area, with the resulting loading time, which thankfully isn’t very long. Having clarified this, we can say that we are left with a first-person action game with touches of RPG, survival and crafting. At the start of the adventure we will have to choose between 6 characters, all with different attributes and abilities. Some will be more agile but less resistant, others more resistant, others will have more strength… This gives many different possibilities of play. We complete the adventure with Jacob, a very balanced character in his attributes. Our characters will also be able to level up, but not in a conventional way, since there is no skill tree here, instead it is replaced by skills in the form of cards, which we must equip as we please as we unlock them. . It’s not a bad system, but personally I would have preferred a good classic skill tree.

The title match is a lot of fun. We have thousands of weapons to kill all the zombies we come across, axes, knives, golf clubs and even firearms, all scalable and customizable. And it is that the possibilities we have to customize our weapons are crazy. We can create an ax that has electrical power and electrocutes the infested, or a katana with incendiary power. The fight is not very deep, since we can only attack, dodge or block, in addition to using special abilities such as fury mode, but all the options we have to finish off enemies make it very rewarding . All these weapons will be created with the resources that we obtain during the adventure, exploring every corner. We will also have various puzzles related to electricity and water, but these are completely anecdotal.

Brains, guts and blood, lots of blood

Another positive aspect of the title is the number of different zombies that we will find, normal zombies, types of tanks, runners, spitters… This means that from time to time a new type of enemy is presented to us, avoiding falling into monotony, although the way of presenting each new type of zombie does not please me too much. And it is that every time the game tries to introduce a new type of enemy, it will appear in the form of the final enemy. It’s a pretty original way to add new enemies and introduce them, but I think a great opportunity for memorable and clever combat was lost. Despite all that, I recommend playing Dead Island 2 in short game sessions, as playing long sessions can get repetitive quickly.. The main adventure lasted me about 15 hours, up to double the hours if you want to complete all the secondary content.

But the best thing about Dead Island 2 is the dismemberment and gore system it has. Every blow we give to a zombie will be reflected in its body. For example, if we hit the legs, we can see scratches with each hit, and if we keep hitting, we will end up ripping one off very realistically. It happens with all parts of the body. No video game I’ve played before has this level of detail in terms of dismemberment and gore.. It’s pure spectacle.

Los Diablos, a place that has fallen out of favor

Dead Island 2 is very beautiful, its environments are very well recreated and they look very good. From the mansions of Beverly Hills and Bel-air to Hollywood movie studios and the beaches of Venice Beach, all environments are breathtakingly detailed, especially the interiors. In Series X, the game runs completely stable without any type of frame drop or anything like that. For a title that also appeared on previous-gen consoles, it looks incredibly good. Sometimes it even looks like a photorealistic game, due to the quality of its settings.. The zombies and characters are also very well designed and recreated, and the gore, as we mentioned before, is spectacular. If we talk about bugs, I found very few of them, and none of them are very important.

The soundtrack is also very good, with quite epic songs that will play depending on the situation in which we find ourselves. The game has very well interpreted English voices, of a very high level. Although the voices are in perfect English, the game is fully translated into Spanish, which is pretty good. The ambient sounds are also very good, especially the sounds made by the zombies, giving us a bad feeling when we hear one and don’t know where it is. be honest the audiovisual section of Dead Island 2 borders on the exceptional.

dead island 2 conclusions

After years and years of waiting, we already have Dead Island 2 in our hands, and against all odds, it was worth the long wait. It is true that in many ways it seems to be a 2014 title, such as the semi-open worlds and the somewhat simple combat system, but graphically it is exceptional and spending a few afternoons with friends (and alone) it is totally recommended. Personally, I’m glad this title from Deep Silver and Dambuster Studios came to fruition. We’ll be waiting for a sequel to the saga that fixes the little flaws of this installment and polishes the formula, but for now we have this great Dead Island 2.