Dead Island 2 Review

A Good (If Familiar) Time

Yet for all of the granular options given to the player throughout Dead Island 2, there's an air of familiarity that plagues the experience throughout, as while it's indeed fun to smash your way through hordes of the undead and help out the bedraggled survivors within Hell-A, one has to ask the question: what is the title is doing to move the zombie survival experience forward? If you were to list all the elements of this game in one sentence without mentioning its name ("A beautiful zombie smash 'em up with a heavy focus on customization and a narrative sure to give you tonal whiplash as it veers between comedy and tragedy"), Dead Island 2 may well be confused for the likes of Dying Light 2.

While this is by no means a bad thing as the game is truly a solid and enjoyable experience, it's hard to see where the staying power lies. Outside of playing through once in solo and possibly again with friends, I can't see what will pull me back in for another run, and while the FLESH system and dedication it's taken to get this title to market are genuinely impressive, the sum of its parts make for an experience that falls short of being great by a hair. It does everything well, in some cases extremely well, but is that enough to give the game staying power? Will this move the cultural needle?

Overall, I truly enjoyed my time with Dead Island 2. It's easy to recommend; features are polished to a mirror sheen enough to forgive the narrative stumbles and clunk (and while this really should come as standard, it's still nice to play a next-gen game that just works with virtually zero technical issues), but Dead Island 2's impact is more of a light scratch than a love bite in the grand scheme of things.

Still, to Dambuster Studios I raise my glass (which in this case is a skull filled with Sangria) as getting this out after this long in gestation - and having it be this good - really does deserve merit.