At midnight, the full moon shone on the surface of the Pacific Ocean. You can see the low tide of the coastline, and the light is scattered differently on the surface of the waves than on the surface of the sand. You can hear deep guttural moans as the water washes over and Crocs dragging across the sand. There is an undead woman – with a mass of flesh hanging from her cheek – limping towards you. No urgency, no pressure. She might get drunk at another time and place and go for a walk in Venice Beach.
But this is not Los Angeles. This is HELL-A, according to the enthusiastic Dambuster representative who was basically our guide on this unlikely trip for this doomed West Coast vacation.She told me to soak up the vibe of this doomed LA – the sights, the sounds and *deep breath* yes, even the rotten sweetness – as we sat and enjoyed it for about an hour Dead Island 2. Her guidance is appreciated as this is an amazing game.
“We really wanted this to be a personal journey, right?” said art director Adam Olson, as I recalled studying the undead woman — watching the way her skin moved independently of her body, watching her in the sand How to twitch, drag, and shake when struggling. “We want you to really get up close and personal in our games. So many games, the developers just fill them in. We don’t want to do that – we want to really fill our space; there’s details everywhere. It should be It feels like a rich world. I think when people get to our game, they find that everything has these fun little details and fun things to look at. It’s carefully handcrafted.”
I can tell you right now that this isn’t some well-rehearsed PR gibberish.Well, it might be, but to be fair, because damn This game looks good. Whether it’s the soft neon lights illuminating the blade of your katana clinging to your body in a powered-off arcade, or the flames licking out of your axe that makes the skin you’ve just chopped off a zombie’s head crispy , Dead Island 2 is an intoxicating visual feast.
A lot depends on how the undead react to you and your breakable weapons: put your fist through their eyes, pierce them with a spear, sever their limbs…everything All unfold in front of you as you imagined should be. It’s not “realistic” per se (although the level of detail and how light and physics work is pretty close), but more polished: pulpy, hyper-violent, overdone. It’s like Tarantino got into “sugar” and has no one overseeing and having a fully paid Unreal Engine account.
The gore and gratuitous body horror comes mostly from what Dambuster calls the FLESH system. Apparently, it’s an acronym that stands for “completely positioned visceral system of humanoids.” This basically means that whatever you want to do to a zombie, it will react as it should – fire, electricity, corrosive materials and other similar “elements” in the game’s sandbox. Hit a masher and the skin will fit – you can almost smell it cooking from the inside out. Burn one and the skin will blister and deform just like in real life. Pour the acid on it and… well, you get the idea.
“Zombies are at the heart of this game – we’re a zombie game for zombie lovers, and a tribute to anyone who loves the genre,” explains Design Director Adam Duckett. “We just wanted to make sure we could make the best zombies possible. So, for that, we put in unhealthy hours — ridiculous unhealthy hours — to make [FLESH system].
“We want players to feel like they can see everything they do with these zombies; every scratch, every punch, every kick…all of this with instant feedback that’s very satisfying. In order to make all of these Work went well and FLESH was a big part of the game from the start.”
You can tell – with or without taste – that this crippled engine is at the heart of Dead Island 2; whether you’re headshot at 50 meters or shove a charged bear claw into the neck of a nearby giant zombie, you can watch to the precise and actual damage done with each beat.
“[This level of detail] Sounds like a zombie killer, right? Olson continued. “You can knock out a zombie’s eyeball with a blunt weapon. You can punch them in the head. Being able to chop off the head of a zombie, or chop off the torso with a sword…that’s a lot of fun! Simple and happy. ”
You might be thinking “well, that’s a bit too much” – this gorgeous level of gore, dismemberment and extreme violence will come to your mind. Dambuster realizes this and tries to make the whole game so terrifying that its own brand of carnage is distinctly different from what you see in the real world, God forbid, the real world.
“Yes, there was blood,” Duket said. “But we want the blood clots to be mushy. That’s the tone we want, here. We want to make sure the tone of the game goes with the gore — and it’s all done with a wink at the camera, really “We try not to take ourselves too seriously and I think we struck a good balance between technique and tone.”
The Dambuster team likes to market the game as a fantasy in which you’re a “thriver, not a survivor.” That’s why your avatar — no matter which of the multiple player characters you choose to incarnate as — will be so happy as you walk through the bustling streets of Los Angeles, fully armed and ready to dance to the undead. This game is a celebration of zombie games and wants you to jump into its ridiculous world first and experience this chaotic and pulpy theme park with no strings attached.
Whether the whole experience will stand up to scrutiny remains to be seen, but for now, one thing is for sure: No matter how it all comes together, it’s going to look pretty good.
Dead Island 2 is coming to the Epic Games Store, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S in February 2023.
