A straightforwardly accomplished zombie action-RPG that doesn't quite make the most of its Californian setting. Our Dead Island 2 review:
Put those two things together and you have vintage triple-A culture in a nutshell: arty aspirations and smirking sleaze, prestige melodrama meets splatterhouse guts and cleavage, all of it orbiting a moderately entertaining co-op action-RPG about punching zombies for randomised weapons which, in hindsight, feels like patient zero for schlooters such as Bungie's Destiny.
The scenery is baroque, closer to Homefront: The Revolution than Dead Island in the sheer splendour of its clutter, with hotel corridors full of discarded belongings and storm drains plastered with offal and graffiti.
There are throwable"curveball" items to help with crowd control - timed explosives, shuriken, horde-luring vials of meat, with enemies mostly showing up in gangs of five or more. There are also countless terrain traps to seize upon, from the obligatory exploding oil drums to jerry cans of water you can lob at circuit boxes to form electric puddles. But the real thrill is simply herding attackers together so as to swat the whole gang off-screen with a single horizontal swing.
It all hangs together well enough. But it's nothing you haven't seen in other RPG-adjacent games, and there are the usual drawbacks for any experience based on looting and upgrading. Pretty much every side chamber, from janitor closets to portaloos, harbours a pinch of scrap for the DIY-minded zombie-botherer. These resources may spur exploration but they also stop you seeing the world, because you're too busy harvesting it.
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