Dead Island 2 first impressions
Dead Island 2 is a reasonably entertaining experience that suffers from a lack of innovation and a fairly stodgy melee combat system. If you’re desperate to smash up some zombies it’s worth a try, but otherwise you might be better off saving your money.
By Ben Vernel
Dead Island 2 has been a long time coming. First announced in 2014, the sequel has gone through three developers and a whole lot of angst (finally settling with developer Dambuster). Finally, here in 2023, we get to see the result of all this turmoil and hard work. And boy, it really does feel like this game should have come out in around, oh, 2016.
Visually, it’s up to par with modern first-person action RPGs: your Atomics Heart, your Outers World, your Cybers punk. Realistic design is depicted with high-framerate smoothness, showing us a burning, crumbling Los Angeles (and later in the game, San Francisco) right off the bat. A snappy, well-edited opening montage introduces us to our character options (six in total) and the apocalyptic L.A. we find ourselves in. I was pleasantly surprised that this game featured genuinely different characters, speaking in different ways, with different approaches to humour and different vernacular. It’s sad that this was a surprise, but that’s modern writing, baby!
I chose to play as Jacob, a charming English lad with a couple of key traits that reward blindly attacking multiple enemies - just about all I’m capable of in first person melee games. Your evacuation plane crashes in L.A. and you meet some survivors, find a safe haven and set about trying to save yourself. All of this was reasonably engaging, and none of it was particularly off-putting.
Of course, it doesn’t remotely approach the social commentary of Romero’s films, the humour of Shaun of the Dead, the thrilling momentum of 28 Days Later, or the heartbreak of The Last of Us, with it’s most hard-hitting dialogue approaching a high school level of political nuance. If I had to describe the style of characterization and storytelling it would be “Grand Theft Auto-like” which, to be honest, could be executed a lot worse than it is here in Dead Island 2. It’s going for a lighthearted and entertaining vibe, and it hits it.
What it doesn’t hit is the… hitting. FPS melee combat has never been fun, and this 9-years-of-development-hell game has not managed to finally crack it. Swinging lead pipes, baseball bats and machetes feels about as enjoyable as fighting off a bear with a pool noodle, and just as impactful. The combat and movement controls are fine - very Cyberpunk 2077 - but it’s the actual mechanics and weight of combat that feels completely off. Dying Light 2 is a game that went a little under the radar, but at least the parkour was well-designed and felt enjoyable to participate in, but the very 2012 first person exploration in DI2 just doesn’t do it for me.
The game presents itself as a series of interconnected open world areas, shown in the menu by a local and then world map, broken down into sections much like a Persona 5 for example. The locations themselves look nice enough, with a hellish Hollywood Hills presenting backyard pools filled with body parts and smeared blood in the backstreet as your first or second gameplay area, and the design funnels you through logically enough.
In a very Fallout feeling way, buildings are packed with food items and scrap, used to upgrade and repair your destructible melee weapons. This creates a lot of busywork for little reward. Skills are presented as switchable cards, and are gained both through the normal campaign and via other context-specific means. All of this is presented in easy-to-follow tutorials and menu screens, but none of it feels particularly fresh.
At this early stage, I’m having a bit of fun with Dead Island 2, but I’m struggling to find reasons to play it over other games on my list. It’s totally fine, but when the combat feels sluggish and literally everything else about it feels about 9 years out of date, I can’t say it’s a massive recommendation from me. If despite all of this it still sounds appealing, by all means it may be the perfect game for you. For me, this first impression was nothing more than fine.
Available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC. Played on PS5.