Dead Island 2

Dead Island 2 was a pleasant surprise. Most games that go through development hell never come out or get lots of negative feedback when released. Dead island 2 went the second way. I strongly disagree with the people who hate on this game. While its cringy brainless and a bit generic and short I love it. I love the tropical, exotic and steampunk feel. It's a dark comedy massacre, I'm talking chainsaws, sledgehammer flamethrower, goofy but visceral horror. The in depth F. L. E. S. H blood and gore system is satisfyingly unique and disgusting. I love the copious amounts of playful, horrific chaos. It provided me with hours of fun (Not to mention the co-op) Its just open and fun. I'm also a big fun of the zombie genre. Simple, different and good.

I loved the first 2 Dead Island games (Part 1 and Riptide) I had a lot fun with them and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't doing the same with Dead Island 2.

But there are some really glaring issues with it.

First off, the graphics, for a game that's taken over a decade to make and it being released on the next gen consoles, the graphics in this game are pretty weak. There's some things that look good such as water effects but then there's other things that look straight out of a PS3 game, fire and weather effects, character models all look dated and they do take a while to get used to as it makes this feel like more of an indy game than a full price AAA game.

This also suffers from the lazy trope of having the same zombie models and items just being re used over and over and over again to the point where You're being hit with deja vue every few minutes. There's not enough variety and in one battle I was having, I was attacked by a stream of zombies coming through some gates that I had to fend off and I had to kill the exact same one 5 times, same face, same clothes, it felt thankless and it gets boring.

Secondly, and this is a big one for me, the spawning rate of the enemies in this game is ridiculous. You don't get to properly explore anything because you can spend half an hour clearing out an area, only for you to literally walk a few yards away and they re spawn, sometimes right in front of you. I've cleared areas in this and while trying to pick up some dropped items, a bunch of pixels has formed in front of me that has then turned into an attacking zombie and I'm left doing the exact same thing I've just done over again, it get's old and tired really fast and you never get to explore the areas you're in.

You can clear out an area and while trying to have a look around, a zombie will appear right behind you and start attacking you despite there being nothing around you for miles just a few seconds ago, almost like it's just fallen out of the sky. It kills the feeling of dread and wonder and the excitement of exploration.

At the start of the game you have to select one of 6 characters, all with unique skill sets and looks but the problem with this, is that it alienates certain people who are playing the game.

The best 2 characters for skill sets, meaning the 2 strongest overall players, are a wisecracking hipster black guy and a 'strong female kick ass Latina' character, which is great if you happen to identify with those traits, but myself, as a white male, the only 2 characters that cover that are absolutely useless, by far the weakest and worst of the characters there. It's like they've done it on purpose to push 'The message' that Hollywood and game studios are ramming down everyone's throats at present.

By all means, represent different types of people in games but don't do that by insulting and demeaning others. Seriously, all the tough, battle hardened and resourceful characters in the game are people of colour or women, all the while men in this are pathetic and weak, just why do that?

I don't understand why they couldn't have different characters and different types of skill sets and let EVERYONE who plays the game choose a skill set AND a character to go with it instead of pre determining these. Basically, if you want to play as a white male, you're punished for doing so with weaker skills and attributes, it's crazy.

The game play itself is pretty solid, weapons are plentiful and you can mod them to your liking and fighting and shooting feels fairly satisfying although for some unknown reason the game devs thought it would be a good idea to bring back one of, if not the worst gameplay mechanic ever created, one that almost everyone hates, quick time events. The amount of times I have been in battle and had the game thrust me into the same attack animation that I have to bash the square button until it fills a circle and then press R2 to get out of is crazy. NO ONE LIKES THIS, it's why most games stopped using it years ago.

The sound and music are not much to write home about, some of the music is so grating that I had to go into the options and turn it off as it was doing my head in.

Some of the characters in the game are just awful and some of the tasks and missions they give you are dire. One of them, an annoying social media influencer (yawn) wants you to fend off waves of zombies on a roof top and kill them in certain ways so she can film it for her social media account IN A POST APOLACYPTIC ZOMBIE INFESTED WORLD WHERE ALMOST EVERYONE IS DEAD. She's whiny, full of 'Oh my god, this is sooooo awesome yall' and 'Word up' type comments and it's been done to death a million times before. There's several stages to this and while she's waffling on and barely explaining what she wants you to do with the next wave, you're still being attacked and having to fight for your life and therefore miss what it is she's telling you to do. Then you're left with a mission objective that literally says 'Mop up for some epic movie B roll' HOW are you meant to understand what this wants you to do, I literally had to pause the game an look it up on Google.

Most of the voice work is fairly generic, not terrible but nothing really stands out.

Also, while parts of this game are open world, it's very small open world and most of what you do is linear and the whole thing feels like a scaled down version of the first game.

Overall, while the gameplay is solid for the most part and combat is enjoyable, there is some fun to be had here, I won't lie, but it has so many glaring issues for this to be a truly standout game and it just feels so bang average and for a game that's taken so long to develop, it's a massive missed opportunity.

Video games that are stuck in development hell for years usually end one of two ways - we either never actually see the game ever be released, or it's finally released to a cacophony of poor reviews. Thankfully, Dead Island 2 has managed to avoid these pitfalls. A mere 9 years after being announced, it's finally arrived. And it's an absolute blast.

Austrian developers Deep Silver have a mixed bag when it comes to the quality of their titles. They have given us excellent games like the Metro and Saints Row series, however they've also given us the appalling shambles that is Ride To Hell - Retribution. And, of course, there is their most controversial series - Dead Island.

The original Dead Island is perhaps best known for its genius marketing campaign, and although the game just wasn't able to live up to the hype, it was nevertheless a fun, gore filled, zombie slaying romp. A follow up, Dead Island Riptide, arrived a couple of years later, although it was hard to differentiate between the two games, such was their similarities.

And now, finally, Dead Island 2 has arrived. Developed by Deep Silver's own team at Dambuster Studios (the first two titles were developed by Techland), Dead Island 2 encompasses everything that was good about the first two games, and makes it all a whole lot better. Switching the action from Banoi to Los Angeles, Dead Island 2 allows you to plough through various areas of the city of angels, committing your own brand of zombie butchering mayhem. Dead Island 2 is beautiful to look at, taking in the scenery of areas like Bel Air & Beverly Hills as you stain the streets red with zombie claret. Just like in the previous games, you can choose from an array of characters, then get down to the serious business of crafting a wide array of melee weapons and firearms to take down the undead horde. A wide array of different zombie types keeps things interesting as you utilise different ways to take them down, whether it be an electrocuted sword, acid soaked crowbar, or a rifle that fires incendiary rounds. There's also tons of environmental hazards you can utilise to turn the tide in your favour, whilst the choice to either play alone or online with other players remains a choice, just as it was in the previous games. Finally, a mixture of main missions, side missions, and the newly introduced lost & found quests (where you track down either missing people or missing weapons), keeps you busy while you maurade around the ten different areas of LA.

Without going into too much detail and running the risk of spoilers, I'll finish with this - Dead Island 2 will likely be 2023's most pleasant surprise. A game we feared may never arrive has arrived. And it's a ton of fun, a gorgeous looking game packed with things to do. If you liked the first two Dead Island games then you'll love this. Mindless, zombie slaughtering mayhem has never been so enjoyable. Bravo Deep Silver & Dambuster Studios - bravo!

9/10.

Pushing things too hard can prevent us from achieving good results. Dead Island 2 is a good example. It spent nearly 10 years in very troubled development and when it came out we were left with a boring game that was way behind its time and offered nothing new or special. The Dead Island series was already buried after Dying Light because it couldn't release new games. When they tried to dig it up and revive it after so many years, the name meant nothing to anyone. A lot of zombie related content has been produced in these 10 years and it's not as popular as it used to be. In short, maybe Dead Island 2 is an average game that you can play in your spare time, but never more. I hope they don't plan to make a third game. Just like its name, it would be better for everyone if this series really is "dead".

The most clever thing Dead Island 2 does with is writing is refer to zombie overun Los Angeles as "HELL-A". Every other line of dialogue in this game is incompentnet, annoying, boring, and steryotypical cringe; its the infuriating combination of attempting to avoid anything that could be considered offensive whilst also trying to make a parody of an entire subculture of people. Its very easy to clown on Californians, but these people fail to say anything funny the whole game that actually takes itself quite seriously when it shouldn't. To produce something this completely unfunny and uninteresting after a decade in development is hella embarrassing. Skip the cutscenes and ignore everything the characters say, because they're all idiotic stereotypes and the story is every zombie trope you've ever seen and nothing else. Its never clever. Its never smart. Its never funny. Everyone who wrote for this game is incompentnet as a writer, not as people, not as a developers, AS WRITERS. Please next time pay someone to write for your game who knows how to write, maybe someone funny huh?

There is one thing the game has done better than any other game to date. Thats of course the extremely detailed gore-dismemberment technology for the zombies. For a game where you smack zombies over and over and over and over again, it takes a while to get old. Its the pinnacle of being desensitized to violence, and will be disgusting to some people, but the gore is still not as gross as the game's dialogue. In fact, I think this system might be the only reason the game wasn't canceled altogether, because without this it would have absolutely nothing new, and nobody was begging for another Dead Island game anyway. The technology will transfer over to future games and its certainly impressive (if you can stomach it). But remember, writing that is this horrible is the true threat to society, not violence or zombies.

You dont kill massive hordes of zombies, but instead get right up in their face and bash them apart bit by bit. You also have some creative ways to use the environment and some powerful abilities, things you would expect in any modern game, and you can probably put together some really crazy builds. However, Dead Island 2 being modernized in every way possible is also a mistake. I can turn off all the stupid unnecessary HUD stuff, the hitmarkers, health bars, stun meters, damage numbers. But I can't do anything about the fact that I can wander into an area where the zombies are just arbitrarily higher level and slap me dead in 1 hit. This game doesn't need a damn leveling system, it doesn't need crafting and resource gathering. It doesn't need weapons to have damage numbers, or any of these pointless stat buffs and RPG elements. Because its not an RPG, its a game that is fun to slay zombies mindlessly in for a while while you also suffer listening to incompentnet writers from an English dev studio portray what they think Californians are like.

This game is really big, and enjoying it really just comes down to enjoying cuting zombies apart and becoming increasingly more powerful. Its fun for a while, but I personally think a game like this would just be way better as a minalmist zombie slaying simulator without most of the RPG nonsense. But I guess when you're in development hell for so long you just need to invent things for people to do. The game doesn't even have a continuous open world or any other dimension to the gameplay, no vehicles, parkour, or real exploration. Its just smacking and slicing zombies thousands of times across pretty landscapes and iconic spots in LA.

You dont laugh, you don't think, you aren't challenged, you move pretty slowly, you don't listen to the characters, and you really just want to get past all the crafting benches, shops, inventories, item crates and number screens as quickly as possible so you can get back to thirsting after gore and violence. I mean seriously, who is this game made for? Wait a second....