We already shared some of our Dead Island 2 experiences with you during our Gamescom trip last year. But then we could only try one mission, and this time we already played the almost finished version of the game, smoothly from the very beginning (including character selection) through many main and side missions, for a total of about five hours of continuous play, in editorial comfort , on the Xbox Series X console. Although the game still suffers from some technical details, it again made a very good impression on us, especially with its great setting (from the beautiful setting of sun-drenched Hollywood to extremely detailed zombie destruction) and very addictive gameplay.
Los Angeles (nicknamed “HELL-A” in this game) is really great. The azure blue seaside skies of California are paired with the dark green hills of Beverly Hills dotted with celebrity and millionaire villas. The city itself is, of course, full of colorful tourist attractions. The rich colors and sun-drenched landscape are strongly reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto 5. Compared to it, however, there is much more detail, which is also due to the fact that you see the whole game with your own eyes and spend a lot of time in very complex interiors. It makes great use of the Unreal Engine, and the game may have also had a slow development time, which often allows graphic designers to work through individual models with more detail than they otherwise could afford. By the way, the game has been in development since 2014, and besides the original authors from the Polish studio Techland, several other teams were already working on it until it was finally completed by the British Dambuster Studios (Chorus).
To destroy zombies, you have dozens (hundreds?) of melee weapons, from ordinary boards to baseball bats, kitchen knives and even katanas. Firearms are also in the game, but at least during opening hours you don’t have access to them or enough ammo. However, you can attach various upgrades to your melee weapon, such as a freeze compound or a flashlight, so hitting with such weapons will deal additional damage or status to enemies. Weapons wear out and also have a certain level (traditional loot system), which forces you to constantly change them and try new ones. However, if you really fall in love with one, you can constantly repair it and level it up, but of course, this will cost you some extra resources. Either way, collecting and using weapons is a lot of fun.
Apart from the variety and fun of weapons, the enemies also work very well. This is mainly due to their diversity, where you can never be completely sure which zombie will jump out at you from around the corner or from the next room. In addition to the traditional slow zombies, there are scary zombie runners, as well as all sorts of super-strong zombies or completely unique bosses. Much of the fun of the enemies also features a detailed model of their body destruction, where you can not only cut off their legs, arms or head, but when you hit the body, you see how you cut off pieces of their body and expose the skeleton under the flesh. It sounds, of course, very painful, but this belonging to the genre and the feeling of satisfying the power of your weapon is greatly multiplied.
Also part of your arsenal are your character’s progressively unlockable abilities, but they don’t take the form of a traditional skill tree – instead, you have several sets of cards that you unlock gradually and can change at any time. One set of cards directly affects the physical actions of your character (combos, etc.), and the other set of cards affects the additional properties of various bonuses (faster charging of your energy, etc.). This is a simple and intuitive system, the best feature of which is the mentioned ability to rearrange the cards at any time so that your character works as you wish. By the way, each area of the map is divided by the level of enemies, and if you run forward too fast without completing side missions and without improving your arsenal, you can fly out very hard.
The game’s plot balances between exaggeration and horror, just like the two original games. More often than not, exaggeration and dark humor predominate (roughly comparable to the style of humor in the movie Zombieland), but here and there there is a more serious moment that works surprisingly well. The atmosphere of the game itself changes in the same way – in places you can expect ridiculously wild action-packed passages (throwing zombies into a puddle of acid or destroying them with pyrotechnics in a movie studio), and in places it will be exciting to “crawl” or bypass strong enemies along darkened night streets . What I didn’t really like was the completely wild bunch of playable characters, of which perhaps only one looks “normal”. While each playable character has a different story, the only difference seems to be the dialogue – they all start aboard the same crashed plane.
Technically, the Xbox game runs smoothly and looks really great. The controls are fluid, and it will be interesting to see if the creators can make some interesting use of the tactile sensations of the PlayStation 5/PC DualSense controller in such melee combat. One small issue that is currently plaguing the game is the “spawning” of enemies – apparently the system puts them in the game and then removes them based on the player’s distance/visibility, but sometimes this happens too close to your eyes. But this does not happen often, and, according to the developers themselves, they are still working on and optimizing it. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s already a very fun and story-driven game that in some respects could surpass last year’s Dying Light 2.
Dead Island 2 will be released with Czech subtitles on April 21 for PC (Epic), Xbox One and XSX|S, PlayStation 4 and 5.
Source :Indian TV
