Nine years after it was first announced, Dead Island 2 is finally launching in April 2023 and - thankfully - it seems to be worth the wait. Multiple delays and studio-switching can often mean a game is doomed for failure, but Screen Rant went hands-on with Dead Island 2 for a six-hour gameplay preview, and it looks as though the dormant series has returned from the dead with a vengeance.The lengthy gameplay preview offered a super-sized dose of Dead Island 2’s story, combat, characters, and setting. At the time of writing, it’s still unclear just how long it will take to beat Dead Island 2, but six hours into the game left plenty to discover.
Setting & World
Dead Island 2 takes place not on an island like 2011's Dead Island’s fictional Banoi, or Palanai from 2013's Riptide, but in Los Angeles, which is affectionally referred to as “Hell-A.” While Banoi and its archipelago made for a fun and refreshing playground, L.A is just as entertaining to explore, albeit a lot less tropical.
The game’s large map is split into 10 districts, each with its own side-quests, points of interest, and main story missions. Unlocking each district is linear, which means players can’t easily wander into an area that’s too OP for them. This makes the game feel a lot more contained than it really is, and the more districts a player unlocks, the more chaos becomes available.
Playing on Xbox Series S, Dead Island 2 looks and runs great, and wandering the streets of Hell-A offers a very good current-gen experience. The environments in particular are a stand-out in terms of their graphics and design. One element missing from the original Dead Island is its sweeping views of the beautiful landscape of Banoi - Hell-A is a bit too industrial for that level of beauty, at least in the first six hours of the game.
Characters & Skills
There are six different characters to play as in Dead Island 2, known as Slayers. Each Slayer has different perks to suit players’ various combat styles. They also each come with two unique skill cards which are used to build out a skill deck, which replaces the traditional RPG skill tree.
Having six characters offers some replayability to Dead Island 2, though players will have to start a new adventure should they wish to try a new character. This reviewer played as Dani, an Irish woman from County Cork with a quick wit and sharp tongue, which caused a lot of genuinely funny moments during cutscenes and general interactions with the world.
Dead Island 2’s characters, whether NPCs, the player character, or a certain familiar face, are all created with humor at their heart. Thanks to Dead Island's generally silly premise, based more in high-action and fast-humor than anything else, there are a lot of fun moments with the characters, including some laugh-out-loud sections.
Combat & Gameplay
While Hell-A and its characters are fun, it’s the combat and general gameplay of Dead Island 2 that make it worthy of the Dead Island name.
The game implements an impressive combat system that lets the player attack zombies with great detail. Different weapons will leave different marks on a zombie, while different movements and attack placements will impact different parts of their bodies.
Thanks to the game's FLESH system, hitting a zombie with a wrench to the face will leave a large, wide gash, but slicing their legs with a sword will swipe them clean off. This gives the player not only a lot of control, but a lot of gory and often shocking moments - especially when it comes to using the environment as a weapon. Electric shocks, caustic acid attacks, and fire, all make for some gruesome killing sprees which are as grisly as they are fun.
Dead Island 2 suffers from one of the issues faced by its predecessors: killing zombies can get boring and even annoying when you're simply trying to travel from point A to point B, especially as enemies level up alongside the player.
However, Dead Island 2 is the best in the franchise at mitigating this sometimes tedious gameplay, offering a wealth of weapons with mods and perks, impressive killing action, and the skill deck. These features also make boss battles a lot more fun, especially when it comes to strategically using the environment and Dead Island's breakable weapons to beat stronger enemies.
Early Review Summary
The Dead Island series has been a mixed bag so far. The original Dead Island’s PC Metacritic score stands as an impressive 80%, while Dead Island Riptide received a much less favorable Metacritic score of 61%.
While it's impossible to say where Dead Island 2 might fall when it comes to review scores, from Screen Rant’s time with the game, it’s clear it takes what made the original so great, while ramping up the silliness, the gore, and the combat to 11. Fans of Dead Island who’ve been waiting almost a decade for a true sequel are in luck - Dead Island 2 is shaping up to be more than worth the wait.
Dead Island 2 releases on PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on April 21, 2023. A preview code was supplied by the developer for the purposes of this preview.
Source: DeadIslandGame/Twitter, Metacritic (1, 2)
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Dead Island 2
- Franchise:
- Dead Island
- Platform:
- PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
- Released:
- 2023-04-28
- Developer:
- Dambuster Studios
- Publisher:
- Deep Silver
- Genre:
- First-Person Shooter, Action RPG
- ESRB:
- M
- Prequel:
- Dead Island
- How Long To Beat:
- 14h 55m
