Dead Island 2 doesn't have an island, but it is a fun, fresh take on zombie slayage

Killing zombies has been a fundamental part of video games for decades at this point. And why not? The undead are a Platonically perfect video game enemy: Slow-moving thing lumbers toward you in great numbers, violence is applied, repeat until horde is thinned or player is et. Sure, the advent of pop culture zombies not strictly derived from the Romero Dead movies—i.e., fast-moving thing sprints toward you in great numbers, violence is applied, etc.—has complicated things from time to time. But the basic formula works for a reason: Zombies are scary looking but simple to manage, and thus perfect fodder, typically mowed down in the dozens, if not the hundreds or thousands, without a second thought.

Dead Island 2, the ridiculously long-in-the-works sequel to 2011's Dead Island (and 2013 expansion game DI: Riptide), does a lot to try to demand that players take that proverbial second thought. It’s not like you won’t be mowing the dead down in massive amounts during your time with the game: after 20-plus hours, our kill count of Shamblers, Walkers, and worse in the undead paradise of Hell-A (their pun, not ours) must be somewhere in the low thousands. But developer Dambuster Studios—brought in to create this sequel after two other studios bounced off of it, over what sounds like a fairly miserable decade of development—takes multiple clever steps to keep players from ever taking its undead residents for granted. Sometimes, that’s as simple as keeping the enemies leveled up right alongside the player, such that you’re never more than 4 or so solid hits from even the lowliest of Walkers from death. But there are also more holistic touches, as Dambuster works overtime to turn the game’s setting into a massive playground of traps and hazards for players to navigate and take advantage of in equal part.

And that’s as good a place as any to bring up one incredibly petty quibble that’s been bothering us for the last two weeks of playing this game: There’s no fucking island in Dead Island 2. Instead (and as previously alluded), the sequel takes place in the outbreak-afflicted environs of Los Angeles, from the mansions of Bel-Air, all the way down to the dilapidated attractions on the Santa Monica pier, and taking in movie studios, Venice Beach storefronts, and the inevitable sewer level as it goes. Semantic irritation aside, dialing into the City Of Angels is an inspired choice: Dead Island 2 presents a gorgeous, gory image of L.A., filled with iconic locations and bright set pieces that contrast nicely with the horror in the streets. It’s probably as pretty, and as full, as the city’s ever looked in gaming; even broken up into neighborhood-sized chunks, it’s an impressive achievement.

But the setting also matters because Dead Island 2 makes it deadly serious business, thanks to a robust and detailed series of environmental hazards that have filled the disaster-afflicted city to the brim with arcing electrical wires, raging fires, and pools of bubbling caustic acid. Sometimes these elements form simple puzzles—water is spreading electricity, so your hardy survivor has to go track down a way to shut it off or risk getting fried. But they’ve also been liberally sprinkled around the more open portions of the game world, inviting the player to set up traps or bottlenecks to handle the hordes of the undead. Even late in the game, it remains satisfying to successfully lure a crowd of otherwise troublesome threats into a pool of acid or a waiting puddle of gasoline; the addition of “Curveballs,” unlimited grenades that operate on a cooldown, allowing the player to tweak the environment with a variety of effects, adds to the enjoyment.

These elemental effects are a core part of Dead Island 2's design, impacting everything from its weapon crafting to its wide array of more specialized undead opponents. (This is a game that never met an acid-vomiting giant zombie it couldn’t spice up by having it puke up burning kerosene, instead.) The fact that combat is skewed heavily toward an eclectic array of customizable melee weapons, over a much smaller collection of guns, means you’ll frequently be looking for ways to get a little distance; one of the best things you can say about Dead Island 2's combat is that it frequently pushes you to use most, if not all, of the tools it provides you with over the course of play. The result is a world filled with both dangers and opportunities, helping to keep the complacency inherent to the game’s sprawling open-world design at bay.

Because where Dead Island 2 is flawed (outside of a few technical issues we experienced pre-launch; zombies suddenly popping into existence here or there, the occasional wonkiness with otherwise solid hit detection), it’s in ways that are endemic to its genre. Which is to say that this is a big game with big maps, and big struggles with finding reasons to explore them outside the basic “Go there, kill that” quest structure. It’s not like the game doesn’t have rewards in its back pocket: New skills for its card-based character build system; new blueprints for weapon modifications; and, when all else fails, new weapons with slightly bigger numbers than the ones you’ve probably already got, popping out of its rotting people piñatas. But the game has to dole these things out over such a long period of play that nothing can ever feel really significant or game-changing; there’s nothing quite as frustrating as busting your ass and running across half the city to find some fabled treasure, only to have it be a sword that’s not even as good as the one you’re currently rocking. (A shame; these “Lost And Found” quests, which minimize hand-holding and have a focus on actual puzzle solving, are as interesting as the game’s quest design gets.)

All of this will presumably be ameliorated, at least in part, with multiplayer; we took our journey through Hell-A in the game’s single-player campaign, but it’s not hard to see how it would all go down a lot smoother with some friends in tow. (It also might insulate you a bit from the game’s story, which is serviceable and not much else; where it attempts to perform satire on the venality of the idle rich, influencer culture, Hollywood phonies, etc., we assure you it’s not anything you haven’t seen about a million times before, in projects both zombie-based and not.) But even alone, there’s a core of fun to Dead Island 2 that spawns from its blend of mindless thrills and occasionally thoughtful action. When the horde is on you, and you’re making split-second decisions to stay alive—swapping out weapons, dodging around traps, setting off chain reactions of explosions or electrical bursts—the game makes zombie slaying feel fresh again. No small feat in 2023.