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

Your enjoyment of Dead Island 2 will depend solely on your expectation going in. If you go in expecting a fun but familiar 10-15 hours of mowing down undead then you will have a blast, but go in expecting anything more than you will likely be disappointed. Dead island 2s main selling point is its combat and gore and, most of the time, it is absolutely brilliant, keeping you hooked with dismembered limbs flying across the screen every time you decimate a zombie. It is the leg that this game leans on the most and because of this it is always satisfying to play. The game gives the player skills by using a card system, while the skills themselves are good I think the game fails to let the player make a build, like a tank for example, which brings the game down a bit. One of my two main issues with Dead island 2 is the level gating, this is a system which pisses me off extremely because there is no feasible reason to implement it, and no way to put it in without causing a myriad of issues. This level gating system nearly caused me to put the game down three quarters of the way through, this and one other issue. My next, and main, issue with dead island 2 is the different enemy types, which are both too common and too damage spongey, especially when they are a higher level than you. Most of them are not creative at all and they mostly exist to just slow you down and break your weapons, the worst enemy type for me being the crusher, which embodies my feelings towards these specials into a single form. Every time I saw one or two of these fuckers I audibly groaned as fighting them is like trying to kill a bear with a bread knife. Los Angeles is a great setting, the game introduces new locations at a steady enough pace and they are different enough from each other to always keep you interested. Dead island 2 always looks graphically sound to play and my performance was rock solid throught my entire 11 hour playthrough on a ps5. The story is fine same for the characters, they mostly exist to push you out into the world and kill zombies and they are clearly not the main focus, which means that I am more leniant on it's forgettable story that a game like dying light 2. That being said there not bad, alot of the characters are fun to listen to and the main character I played as, Jacob, was good to listen to. Overall, Dead Island 2 succeeds in what it sets out to do, it is the perfect game to play over the course of a weekend or two when you have nothing else to do. With fun combat and a good setting Dead Island 2 is here for a good time, not a long time.