Dead Island 2 is a fun enough time. Hell-A is a gorgeous rendition of the city of Los Angeles (or parts of it) where zombie guts fly in stylish, gory fashion. If you've played the previous Dead Island games, or Dying Light, or any zombie game really, you'll find that Dead Island 2 is an inoffensive addition to that roster. I got the Ultimate Edition for half price and the 33 or so hours that I got out of it was a generally good time, even as a solo player. The story isn't Oscar-worthy by any measure and by the time the last boss fight rolled around, I was ready to call it quits.

In honor of the Hollywood cinema adjacency that's loudly present in the game, I'm going to separate the rest of this review into The Good, the Bad and the Ugly segments respectively.


The first thing I noticed when I landed in Hell-A was the lighting and environment design. It's absolutely beautiful to look at, almost suspiciously so. I had to figure out why—and the answer is that Dead Island 2 uses baked lighting and a choice between day and night when entering regions (doesn't seem to affect gameplay in any way) instead of raytracing or a dynamic day-night cycle. This approach can sound and might even be a negative ultimately, but what it does do is lend itself to some gorgeously lit scenery.

Once I stopped staring at the burning Hollywood sign and admiring the shrubbery, Dead Island's classic melee gameplay came in swinging (and kicking) hard for part two. The sheer amount of modifiable weapons, fun skill cards and the many ways to slice, maim, kick, stomp, burn, electrocute, and otherwise brutalize the undead make the initial hours a blast.

The variety of zombies is equally impressive, many with unique resistances and attacks, forcing you to make use of different weapons and status effects to take them out. It's a dynamic opportunity to try out different ways to play the game until you find the most fun approach for you. For solo play the difficulty also seemed to be just about right, although there is a skill card to make things super challenging—if you wish.

Being the global center of stardom, you'll run into some colorful characters in LA—be it old movie stars, legends of rock, or even those loud "influencers" of the modern day. The player character of course plays a huge role as well. I played the game as Dani, an Irish rocker chick with a dark sense of humor—and to my surprise, I was very entertained by everything she had to say. I can't speak for the other characters, but if they're anything like Dani, their dialogue will be a fun accompaniment to the sh*t you'll get into.


Unfortunately, the beautiful world of Hell-A isn't an open one. The first game was the same, but it still feels disappointing. The regions are pretty small overall and you'll be running up and down what feels like the same five streets constantly.

With that back and forth you'll notice the constant respawning of zombies. The undead is right because they'll find every way to come back. They'll crawl out of the sewer grates, the ground, the vents, the bushes—absolutely everything—and sometimes they'll even say, "F*ck it!" and spawn out of thin air right in front of your face. Towards the end of the game, you've seen those f*ckers a hundred times at the same spots.

Getting through the common rabble got boring, sure, but the boss fights are downright dogsh*t. The final boss is just a regular apex variant you've already seen multiple times by that point. The DLC bosses aren't any better. Haus's is a disappointment and SOLA's is absolutely terrible. All bosses also have a constant stream of common zombies that will harass and distract you during the fight, making them take longer in a cheap way—instead of introducing interesting mechanics from the boss itself.

Speaking of filler, you'll get real familiar with the phrase "Mop 'em up," as many missions will artificially pad their length by throwing a small horde or two your way. You might think, "It's a zombie game, why are you whining about having to fight zombies?" but it's more about if it makes any sense for the quest. I like killing zombies in this game!

Similarly, there's a ton of jogging to different regions during a SINGLE quest—seemingly just to waste your time. Why is the car that these keys go to in the region across town more often than the street I found them on? Why is the chest this guy stashed his loot in on the very spot where fifty zombies decided to bury themselves in the sand? Why are the vents of this random garage full of zombies? How did they even get in there?? These questions don't have a satisfying answer inside the game, but a very clear one outside of it.


Dead Island 2 suffers from what I call "stand-there-itis" where the NPCs almost exclusively stand still and talk at you—and the game makes great efforts to come up with reasons why they simply cannot follow the player out into the open world to help with quests, interact with their surroundings, or move at all for that matter. They only relocate when you're not around to see it. Maybe they're shy about their limp? It makes the game feel extremely artificial.

Sometimes you'll run into a situation, like a guy stuck in a closet, where you think "There's no way this guy will just stand there after I rescue him," and yet when you open the door, he'll have conveniently turned into a zombie to kill. This happens multiple times in various ways. It's bizarre, for some reason Dead Island 2 is allergic to dynamic NPCs.

The crafting system in the game is decent overall, but there are some oddities in it. For some reason repairing items costs money, not resources (must be some funny commentary on rich Hollywood people or something). You also can't buy back weapons you sell to traders, so be careful! Luckily legendary weapons can't be sold.

Last (and probably least), you'll be stuck at a max of 16 weapons, 5 medkits, 3 fuses, and set ammo counts for ranged weapons for the entirety of the game. Who thought that was a good idea? Why can't I upgrade those caps? Why can I carry 16 weapons, but four fuses would be too much? I guess it's the old straw-camel idiom on that one. But seriously, being able to upgrade the amount you can carry would've been nice. It's not the biggest deal because traders are easy enough to come by, but you do end up running back to them to sell sh*t and buy fuses—a lot.

Another W 100% at my disposal! Thanks Brux for the lending hand!

The devs kicked everything what made the first dead island great and threw it out of the window to replace it with cringe and quirky dialogue, forgettable characters and even worse combat.
the puzzles are for 9 year olds and the constand hand holding from inner monologues on what to do throws off. but i guess thats the modern audience for ya