Dead Island 2

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Remember bacon? Bacon was an Internet obsession for a little while. There were bacon recipes, bacon merchandise, bacon condiments…bacon everywhere. It got so bacontastic there was something of a manufactured backlash against bacon. Let’s take “bacon” and replace it with “zombies” and you’ve got the average response to zombie games: they exist, there’s plenty of ’em, average folk enjoys ’em and critics will sip their wine glasses and tell you they’re yesterday’s news.

Alas, I’ve dropped my wine glass and I’ve never really had the connoisseur gene anyway, so I must shamefully admit that Dead Island 2 is actually a pretty good time and I had a lot of fun with it.

via YouTube

LA’s become a pretty grim place, filled with crime, violence and sleaze. That’s the case in Dead island 2 as well, where on top of everything, there’s been a zombie apocalypse! Your character, a Slayer chosen from one of several quirky options, is one of the lucky few who’s managed to catch a flight out of the city. Unfortunately, the flight doesn’t turn out particularly well, and after some misadventures, our hero ends up wounded, bitten and stranded in the zombie-infested ruins of Hell-A. Things continue as you might expect, slathered with the series’ typical black comedy stylings. Expect plenty of Hollywood jokes.

Dead Island 2 reprises the more combat-focused gameplay style from the 2011 original games rather than embracing parkour as we saw in Techland’s pseudo-spinoff Dying Light and its sequel. Your Slayer’s armed with all manner of real and improvised weapons, most of which can be enhanced with crafted modifications and perks to make them extra lethal. That machete’s nice, sure, but it’ll be a lot nicer once you’ve strapped a battery to it so it’s zapping the zombos as you hack and slash away.

The combination of customizable weapons and some of the most solid melee physics since the classic Condemned: Criminal Origins makes Dead Island 2’s combat a treat, and you’re able to add firearms to the mix later to deal with baddies from a distance.

You’ve got more than just beatsticks and guns to help you survive the zompocalypse, though. As you re-dead the undead and complete objectives, your Slayer will level up and unlock Skill Cards that can be added into an ever-growing deck. These provide ability enhancements, such as healing your Slayer when they block attacks, and new moves like the classic and oh-so-satisfying drop kick. You’ll even obtain new abilities from boss battles, such as mimicking a brute’s ground slam, and later into the game there’s even more bizarre options available.

This constant stream of new abilities and gameplay tweaks helps Dead island 2 feel fresher than your average zomb-’em-up, if only just. It also allows for unique builds to spice up the game’s multiplayer. Dead Island 2 places a lot of stock in cooperative play, so it’s a great choice for friends who’d like to get together and scour the ruins of Hell-A as a group.

There’s a few other cute features that bear mention. Dead island 2 can connect to Amazon’s Alexa for voice-control features, for instance, a point that it sets from and center on at several occasions early in the game. You’re able to yell at zombos to attract their attention, select weapons via voice control and more. I found that buttons worked just fine, but it’s there if you like the idea.

There’s also something to be said for this game’s absolutely fantastic gore system. Smack a zed in the face a few times with a blunt weapon so their jaw is hanging off their face and you’ll get the picture. It’s a level of gruesome we haven’t seen very often outside of games like Mortal Kombat and it adds a visceral degree of brutality to the proceedings.

Indeed, if you’ve got a mighty PC with the horsepower to make it sing, Dead Island 2 is happy to take those resources and run with them (though it doesn’t exactly shamble on modern consoles), looking fantastic and smooth as butter. Likewise, sound design and voice acting are as nice as you’d expect from a big-budget summer blockbuster of a game like this one; one interesting point is the number of Brit voice actors here rival the Xenoblade series, but whether or not that’s the case in actual LA isn’t for me to know.

Those coming into Dead Island 2 expecting an innovative new twist on zombie games that’s going to disrupt the industry and lead us into a new electronic utopia…well, sorry, chief. Outside of the writer and influencer cliques there probably aren’t a lot of folks clamoring for that. Most players with a controller and a few hours to kill want is a fun romp through a zombie-infested Tinseltown and that’s exactly what Dead Island 2 has to offer. It’s an easy recommendation if you’re solo and a must-play if you’ve got some friends.