The zombie genre has, in recent years, become kind of serious, hasn't it? As The Last of Us establishes itself as the new king of zombie television, and recent years have been shaped by games like Days Gone, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, and even Resident Evil (to a lesser extent), what's happened to the zany, flamboyant zombie games like Dead Rising, and, well, Dead Island? The ones that show us we don't need to take a zombie apocalypse that serious?
Having played Dead Island 2 for several hours (parallel to our hands-on previewer Kyle), I can say that the game rediscovers the silly side of zombies and gore and decaying flesh, which is partly inspired by Game Director David Stenton's own history with the genre.
"I'm a massive fan of the late 70s, early 80s zombie movies, like Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters," he tells me. "But you're totally right that there are many stories already out there of zombies just becoming the backdrop in a tale about humanity's ills and that kind of thing. For Dead Island, we absolutely wanted to establish that we are about zombies at the core."
The game feels comfortable in its familiarity and, to some extent, its simplicity. I played for some five hours, during which time I fence-hopped my way through the zombie-infested mansions of Bel Air down to Beverly Hills, eventually finding myself in a Hollywood movie studio, where I fought a pustulant poison-hurling boss in the shadow of a giant animatronic spider.
I do appreciate that obnoxiousness is part of this whole vapid semi-comedic LA world that the devs are going for here. In my several hours with the game, I came across bygone rockstar in satin panties and his ladyfriend nursing a heavy hangover, asking you to get rid of the remaining guests (i.e. zombies) at the party; there’s a Hollywood actress and her catty, campy aide Michael who’s just desperate to be her savior; and all manner of other misfits who cross your path. "LA is such a fantastic melting pot of different cultures and subcultures and personality types and really fantastic postcard locations," says Stenton. "Obviously you have humans within the story, but they aren't just navel-gazing about how bad everything is. This is very much about the personalities within LA, so establishing charisma and a heavy dose of personality in the game was absolutely central to us."
Combat is largely melee-based, with a focus on interchangeable ‘cards’ that you can swap in and out to give your character different specialties. Some are passives, and some unique to specific characters — like how Jason’s damage output increases with each successive fast strike — while others are explicit abilities.
During my playthrough, I unlocked a ground-pound type move, as well as a drop-kick and slide-dash attack (though oddly, you can’t have the latter two equipped at the same time). The drop-kick was particularly fun, sending zombies ragdolling weightlessly away into electrified puddles or hotel pools filled with caustic goop. "All of this is framed within what I call like our 'combat sandbox,'" Stenton tells me. "We absolutely wanted to be best in class, first-person, brutal melee combat, but also give players many ways to kill zombies using things like fuel and electricity."
I didn't get my hands on any guns during my hands-on, but Stenton lets me know that they will feature in the final build of the game. As expected however, they'll be a precious resource, and Dead Island 2 isn't going to devolve into a conventional shooter. "You acquire weapons partway through the story, and it was a goal of ours for them not to usurp melee weapons," Stenton points out. "So although they are absolutely awesome to use (there's nothing quite as satisfying as taking a shotgun to a zombie's chest and seeing those shotgun pellets flay the flesh off the chest), but they are limited in ammo."
Dead Island 2’s combat really clicked for me in how it let you use the environment to your advantage. You can electrify puddles, set alight oil slicks, and turn Grenadier Zombies into ticking time bombs, who can set off a chain reaction of explosions, mayhem, and flying body parts. As I was slashing my way through a Hollywood film backlot towards the end of the preview, there was a particularly jolly little sequence where I could use studio pyrotechnics and rain from a control panel, creating a deadly gauntlet for the undead to shamble through.
On that note of flying body parts, the vaunted F.L.E.S.H. system, which fills each zombie with dynamic organs, bones, and muscle tissue, ensured that, even though the combat was pretty simple, it had all the squelchiness and gore I want from such a game. I’ve seen brains wobbling out of skulls like jellyfish washed up on the shore; I’ve broken the legs off of Runner Zombies, essentially turning them into far less effective ‘Crawler’ zombies; I’ve seen untold amounts of things that should stay under the skin splattered around the glamorous residences of Hollywood’s rich and powerful.
I do like that juxtaposition, too. The first portion of the preview entailed weaving through homes in Bel-Air, and there’s something very satisfying about dismembering and brutalizing zombies in these affluent (and very detailed) spaces; electrocuting zombies in a private pool, sending their brains streaking across a marble kitchen worktop, drop-kicking a ghoul into a Room Service trolley — it all feels novel and subversive, heightened by the extra-glossy graphics in both environments and gore.
And yet, after just a few hours, things started getting a bit lonely out there in post-apocalyptic LA, and I felt increasingly like this is a game that really needs the presence of a few beers and a few friends (the final game will support three players in co-op). Dead Island 2 will have three-player co-op, and Stenton reassures me that "you can play the overwhelming majority of the campaign together as three players."
While the story progressed in a fairly linear fashion during my hands-on, the deeper into the campaign you go, the more of the map you unlock, so you'll be able to head with your friends down to Venice Beach and cause some chaos there, or go looting the Hollywood Hills mansions. "LA unlocks as you progress through the game," says Stenton. "And then you can revisit previous districts to complete side quests, other types of tertiary content, and sometimes you'll be asked to revisit districts as part of the story."
Dead Island 2 certainly stays true to the spirit of the original games, which is both for better and for worse. While the game’s got a lot of presentational swagger, it does at this point feel a little mechanically limited compared to some of its peers in the co-op-slashy genre. But maybe there’s something to be said for a game you can jump into with pals where you mindlessly bludgeon zombies with modified hyper-powered golf clubs and shriek in delight at the perversely procedural gore. What I’ve seen of the LA setting is impressive too, and if the game exploits that (both in terms of cool locations and spoofing that most spoofable of cities), then that could really help it stand out from the horde of zombie games out there.
Dead Island 2 comes out on April 21, 2023, one week earlier than initially planned.