3.5/5 ★ – DanteHR's review of Dead Island 2.

Most of us have been eagerly waiting for this game since the first reveal in 2014, I can only say that it's a long wait for a mediocre delivery. "Dead Island 2" made and published by "Deepsilver" delivers a rather mediocre experience, especially in a zombie FPS. The game has some good aspects and a lot of bad aspects. From very bad optimization for PC, to the very generic and tiring gameplay and then to the very annoying difficulty that you cannot change. "Dead Island 2" is the expected sequel of the first game in the series, and this gives us to understand that it will have many similar things. The game starts with a very short cinematic showing us the characters which we can start our playtrough. We can see from the cinematic that in "Hell-A" there is a total zombie apocalypse and anyone bitten by them becomes a zombie (zombie apocalypse generic). When it comes to combat, "Dead Island 2" delivers fabulously good gore, attacking zombies with various weapons feels incredibly satisfying. Each weapon giving some damage to the bodies of enemies. Melee Combat is very similar to the one from the previous games or the "Dying Light" duology, only that compared to them it adds something Furthermore. "Dead Island 2" is the first game I've played in which you have to choose between dash and block, I myself am not a big fan of the "cards" in the game. I find them boring and very uninspired. You unlock the ranged weapons only after about half of the story and you find out that they are overkill for zombies, a legit cheat code if we could call it that. In the Bosses section, "Dead Island 2" nailed it, the bosses are either faster zombies with a certain unique ability, or a super-tank which you can't kill even with a black hole, then , the game adds them as some enemies that you meet at every corner. The game also delivers a "crafting station", but not a very good one. Crafting-stations, also known as workbenches, are a rarity in "Hell-A", but even when you find them, they are used to repair weapons that you own or for improving weapons, adding attachments and abilities to the weapon. The way it works is very simple, for attachments you need one "blueprint" that you find randomly through "Hell-A" and to repair weapons you need materials, which, of course, you also find through "Hell-A". The Number of attachments you can put on the weapon varies from the rarity of the weapon, the higher the rarity of the weapon is, the more attachments you can put on it. As in every Zombie FPS, each melee weapon also has a charge attack, being much stronger than a normal one. The biggest problem I encountered in "Dead Island 2" is the difficulty, the game is surprisingly hard for a zombie shooter. The game does not deliver any difficulty setting, but uses a scalable difficulty system by levels, the higher the enemy's level, the more DMG it does and the more life it has. Although the gameplay is not that bright, the graphics deliver a lot. Visually, the game looks great to the naked eye, the character design is very good, LA, please, "Hell-A" is inspired very well and you can see the details. The game's emphasis on gore is extremely remarkable with strong violence, dismemberment and body physics. Although "Deepsilver" used an outdated engine, they managed to make the game visually superb with some details and top notch gore. One of the problems I noticed was the facial expressions, I couldn't understand the emotions of the characters because of the bad facial expressions. On the part of optimization, the game failed again, even with an $1500 system the game cannot run smoothly with the high preset without AMD FSR. Also, the game tends to give crashes many times in a playtrough, many times making it unplayable. I don't think we need to talk about the visual bugs and the ones that affect the gameplay (they are terrible). In terms of sounds, "Dead Island 2" delivers some very good sounds, especially on firearms. Also the sound of cutting zombies is super satisfying and the sounds that the zombies are making theirselves are quite disturbing. When it comes to the music, the game brings us that nostalgia from a decade ago, for a newbie in "Dead Island" , the music won't "hit" as hard. The story of the game is quite simple, but solid. "Dead Island 2" begins with the 6 protagonists of the game, escaping from zombies with the help of a plane. Then the plane is destroyed due to the reason that a passenger was infected by a zombie. Your protagonist that you choose at the beginning miraculously survives and realizes that he has some kind of immunity against zombies. Then our beloved protagonist from the previous games "Sam B" appears. The story continues with the protagonist of the story trying to escape from "Hell-A" together with the friends he made throughout the story. The story has all kinds of very unexpected plot twists and the dialogue is very solid, but also very vulgar. "Dead Island 2" managed to present us with a more solid story compared to the other games we've had so far this year. "Dead Island 2" delivers a casual experience if you want to patrol through Los Angeles infected by zombies, but it also brings us a lot of problems. From major bugs, to repetitive gameplay and ultimately very hard difficulty for a Zombie FPS. "Dead Island 2" is a solid game for fans of "Dead Island" or zombie FPS itself, but the game screams mediocrity. 7.2/10 Made by DanteHR