California is not an island. That's all I'm gonna say about that.
Anyway Dead Island 2 has come out after 12 years and three separate development studios. The sequel to Techland's 2011 zombie melee FPS is finally out and it's you know....more of the same I guess. Dead Island 1 had a level of satire and unseriousness to the whole thing that I think Techland didn't really want because they broke away to make their own game which was basically the same in all concepts but with a far more serious tone in Dying Light.
DI2 keeps the satire and doubles down on the zombie carnage. So the game is an FPS game based almost entirely on melee weapons made from makeshift shit you find lying around. Things like wrenches, poles, pipes, hatchets, etc etc. These weapons all have different aspects to them such as pipes having more impact damage when you hit a zombie with them which makes the zombie stagger more, or blades which will cut zombie parts off and dealing more raw damage in general. I would say that the different weapons allow you to specialize your play style but that's not really the case. Due to the RPG-like numbers game being played here you'll just use whatever weapon does the most damage in most situations and not think about anything beyond that.
Unfortunately my favorite thing in the world of video games, weapon durability, makes a heavy return here however it's not nearly as bad as Breath of the Wild's horseshit. This is due to a couple of reasons, mainly even the crappiest weapons will last you a good ten minutes of zombie bashing before breaking, and better weapons can beat zombies for so long that when they finally break you'll have forgotten that they even COULD break. The final thing is that at any workbench in the game you can repair your favorite weapons, meaning you don't ever have to give up a weapon you like. Even better there is a Level-match system which allows you to bring your favorite low-level weapons up to your current level so they never go obsolete. Additionally the crafting bench allows you to add attachments and mods to weapons such as a zapper which builds up lightning on zombies and will stun them after a few hits.
But the most entertaining aspect of DI2 is the sheer playground aspect of how you can kill zombies. See zombies in a pool? Throw a battery into the water and watch them fry. Hitting a propane tank will send it rocketing off like a missile, hit a zombie with it and KABOOM. Even your weapons can have combinations, throw a water balloon on a zombie then hit him with your shock weapon and enjoy. Zombie standing by a window? Running dropkick his ass out the window then.
There is a lot of mayhem to be had. However there are a few problems with the combat. Because you are in first person it can be hard to keep track of zombies around you if you get swarmed, plus your melee swings can sometimes be disorientating. The game also vastly swings between no challenge at all, to super zombie swarm ridiculously hard which is really jarring. The dropkick is overpowered as it instantly knocks a zombie down which means anytime you are fighting only 1 or 2 zombies at a time, you can drop kick them and beat them to death as they try to get up, putting you in zero danger. But this tactic doesn't work when they throw a swarm at you because there are too many and the dropkick also knocks you down for a second.
The characters themselves are fun and the narrative is cheek enough to be amusing most of the time though. The game strikes me as a fun game to turn on for an hour or two and just bash some zombies around, then move on to something else. While the carnage can be fun, there is also still a level of janky that layers over the game like a thin level of sludge. Moments of cool zombie kills are tainted by a game that's really just average. There is nothing I can point at directly and call outright bad, but there is also nothing great about the game either. It's alright.
Dead Island 2 is the definition of "Mid". Which honestly is a lot better than I thought it would be considered the development cycle of that game, and maybe that's a win for someone.
Anyway Dead Island 2 has come out after 12 years and three separate development studios. The sequel to Techland's 2011 zombie melee FPS is finally out and it's you know....more of the same I guess. Dead Island 1 had a level of satire and unseriousness to the whole thing that I think Techland didn't really want because they broke away to make their own game which was basically the same in all concepts but with a far more serious tone in Dying Light.
DI2 keeps the satire and doubles down on the zombie carnage. So the game is an FPS game based almost entirely on melee weapons made from makeshift shit you find lying around. Things like wrenches, poles, pipes, hatchets, etc etc. These weapons all have different aspects to them such as pipes having more impact damage when you hit a zombie with them which makes the zombie stagger more, or blades which will cut zombie parts off and dealing more raw damage in general. I would say that the different weapons allow you to specialize your play style but that's not really the case. Due to the RPG-like numbers game being played here you'll just use whatever weapon does the most damage in most situations and not think about anything beyond that.
Unfortunately my favorite thing in the world of video games, weapon durability, makes a heavy return here however it's not nearly as bad as Breath of the Wild's horseshit. This is due to a couple of reasons, mainly even the crappiest weapons will last you a good ten minutes of zombie bashing before breaking, and better weapons can beat zombies for so long that when they finally break you'll have forgotten that they even COULD break. The final thing is that at any workbench in the game you can repair your favorite weapons, meaning you don't ever have to give up a weapon you like. Even better there is a Level-match system which allows you to bring your favorite low-level weapons up to your current level so they never go obsolete. Additionally the crafting bench allows you to add attachments and mods to weapons such as a zapper which builds up lightning on zombies and will stun them after a few hits.
But the most entertaining aspect of DI2 is the sheer playground aspect of how you can kill zombies. See zombies in a pool? Throw a battery into the water and watch them fry. Hitting a propane tank will send it rocketing off like a missile, hit a zombie with it and KABOOM. Even your weapons can have combinations, throw a water balloon on a zombie then hit him with your shock weapon and enjoy. Zombie standing by a window? Running dropkick his ass out the window then.
There is a lot of mayhem to be had. However there are a few problems with the combat. Because you are in first person it can be hard to keep track of zombies around you if you get swarmed, plus your melee swings can sometimes be disorientating. The game also vastly swings between no challenge at all, to super zombie swarm ridiculously hard which is really jarring. The dropkick is overpowered as it instantly knocks a zombie down which means anytime you are fighting only 1 or 2 zombies at a time, you can drop kick them and beat them to death as they try to get up, putting you in zero danger. But this tactic doesn't work when they throw a swarm at you because there are too many and the dropkick also knocks you down for a second.
The characters themselves are fun and the narrative is cheek enough to be amusing most of the time though. The game strikes me as a fun game to turn on for an hour or two and just bash some zombies around, then move on to something else. While the carnage can be fun, there is also still a level of janky that layers over the game like a thin level of sludge. Moments of cool zombie kills are tainted by a game that's really just average. There is nothing I can point at directly and call outright bad, but there is also nothing great about the game either. It's alright.
Dead Island 2 is the definition of "Mid". Which honestly is a lot better than I thought it would be considered the development cycle of that game, and maybe that's a win for someone.
