Once in a while, the story behind a game’s development is more epic than anything being shown on screen. This is one of those occasions. Work on a sequel to 2011 zombie adventure Dead Island began in 2012, but the project has since been through at least three development studios on its tortured route to release. German studio Yager had three years on the project before publisher Deep Silver passed it on to Sumo Digital for another three years until it washed up with Dambusters, Deep Silver’s own in-house studio. It’s a credit to everyone involved that it actually functions as a finished product, albeit one that shows the scars of its troubled gestation.
The sequel shifts the action to a post-zombie-apocalypse version of Los Angeles, where the narrative stumbles between sprawling Beverly Hills mansions, Hollywood movie sets and sunny beaches. At the start you choose one of six characters, all with differing stats and special abilities, and while attempting to escape the city you must solve the mystery of how the contagion came about and whether or not there’s a cure. In between crushing the skulls of a thousand undead monsters, you also meet survivors – mostly stoners, preppers and superstar influencers – who all have a part to play in the emerging story.
The problem is action-adventure games have evolved quite a lot since 2012. Dead Island 2 feels like a relic from that era, exhumed and reanimated with very little acknowledgment that titles such as Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Last of Us, Assassin’s Creed Origins, God of War and Elden Ring have very much moved the dial on. This is a game in which all you really do is pick up weapons, modify them in safehouse locations (using components you’ve discovered in the environment) and then use them to bludgeon zombies that come in achingly familiar stereotypes. This one shambles, but this one runs! This one explodes! This one projectile vomits acid! We have been competing against this roster of undead enemy archetypes for 20 years, using the same weapons, customised on the same goddamn workbenches.
The game is billed as an open-world adventure, but the world is not really that open or indeed that adventurous. Most of the main areas are in fact highly enclosed hubs that force you along distinct narrative routes and barely ever incentivise you to go off-piste and explore. You can’t simply wander the world as you can in say, Dying Light or Days Gone because all the sections are gated off and you have to “fast travel” between them. Consequently, Los Angeles feels like a theme park rather than a real place, which I guess could be satire, but then it doesn’t make for an immersive world. This lack of emotional pull is accentuated by the fact that there’s not much you can do to progress your character in meaningful, trackable ways. Although you unlock new skills as you progress (via a hugely simplified collectible card game interface), you can’t directly level up elements such as health or stamina, and you can’t even change your outfit or appearance, so there’s little sense of intrinsic character progression.
OK, fine, this isn’t a full-on role-playing game and it never wanted to be. But for a hack-n-slasher that focuses on melee combat, it is also achingly short on interesting ways to kill stuff. You’ve basically got bladed weapons, bludgeoning weapons and then (slightly ineffectual) guns, as well as things in the environment that explode. But, although you can string attacks together to multiply effects, you don’t get cool toys like the energy leashes in Bulletstorm that grab and drag enemies toward you, or the intricate environmental traps of Days Gone, which let you booby trap whole areas of the map. Such systemic carnage is sadly overlooked here.
And yet Dead Island 2 is a lot of fun. You’ll enjoy running into a room filled with gurning zombies, kicking a couple over then eviscerating their mates with a samurai blade. You’ll enjoy using the Curveball items – a range of projectile weapons, including bombs with different triggers and detonation styles – to explode groups of your slobbering foes. And although putting the attack button on the analogue trigger was a strange design decision that makes combat feel sluggish, you still get the gutsy thrill of slicing the odd leg or head off. The dodge and block moves are necessary elements of the control scheme, rather than fancy adornments: you have to fight tactically, watching enemy movements and carefully timing counters – you can’t simply pummel away and hope for the best. This makes the process of tuning the skills and weapons to your specific needs a truly involving challenge.
Meanwhile, the narrative moves at a rollicking pace, throwing you around a bunch of excellent set-piece locales from amusement parks to shopping malls to subway stations. Everywhere you go is loaded with scenic detail, and there are lots of audio files and other artefacts for lore hounds to discover and collect. Throughout the story, the game maintains an endearing sense of its own ridiculousness. The characters are dumb, the plot is dumber and there are tons of daft jump scares with zombies falling out of lockers, portable toilets and anything else they can conceivably get themselves stuck in. Play in co-op mode, which lets three participants take on the missions together, and you can really crank up the carnage – and hilarity.
Dead Island 2 will amuse you for days with its stylish vision of a zombified LA, but it’s also limited in scope, and with skill systems that feel shallow and impersonal it won’t hang around long enough to achieve superstardom. This is one of 2014’s best zombie beat-’em-ups – it’s just a pity we’re in 2023.
• Dead Island is released on PC, PS4/5 and Xbox Series S/X, 21 April, £60
