Dead Island 2 is a Sauceless Game — The Zombie Game That Took Almost a Decade, One Year Later
80Dead Island 2 is a Sauceless Game — The Zombie Game That Took Almost a Decade, One Year Later
I've always been a little fond of the Dead Island games. Yes, that one viral advertisement set it up to never quite meet expectations but the brutal, gory, scrappy gameplay always stood out to me. As a series, it has been consistently mindless but in a way that feels quite nice to have a podcast on in the background.
Dead Island 2 never felt like a game I'd line up at midnight for or get installed for day one but it felt like a no-brainer (HA) to pick up once it hit the bargain bin. The state of physical media being what is, that bargain bin came in the form of the game being bundled into my PlayStation Plus Premium subscription. Despite playing it virtually free of charge, I'm only partially convinced that Dead Island 2 cleared the pretty low bar I had set for it ahead of time. While it gets plenty of things right in a technical sense … Dead Island 2 feels so utterly sauceless. Dry. Devoid of flavor. Wholly and absolutely lacking in sauce.
Here's why
First, I'd like to acknowledge it's a mini miracle that this game even launched, and getting out of seemingly almost a decade's worth of development hell is impressive in its own right. Techland, the team behind Dead Island and Dead Island Riptide was originally set to lead the game but stepped away to work on Dying Light, which is the best zombie game they've ever worked on. Since its first announcement, four studios have worked on the game but it was Dambuster Studios that finally managed to get it out of the door in early 2023. Though the game has been in development in a technical sense since 2014 or 2013, it seems Dambuster as a team worked on it for four. This is still longer than the first two Dead Island games were in development for but the timeline doesn't feel quite as unrealistic.
Dambuster's previous releases include the pretty awful Homefront: The Revolution, and Chorus, which I haven't played. Though I can't speak to the latter, Dead Island 2 is much better than the former. I think the cultural outlook on Dead Island 2 wasn't exactly optimistic before its launch. A game being in development hell is a worrying sign, the studio behind the original games went off and made something better and more consistent, and the game's fourth major development team had yet to prove themselves in a project this big.
Dead Island 2 is not as bad as that development history might have you believe, but it's just really not that good.
A brighter, more ironic, and wilder take on the series, Dead Island 2 is an attempt at what Saints Row 2 did to the GTA-soaked streets of the first game. With a handful of survivors to choose from, Dead Island 2 seats you in a plane after a zombie outbreak takes over Hell-A (LA). When that plane is shot down for accidentally housing the infected, you have to help a band of survivors get out of the infested lockdown you've found yourself in. This involves meeting up with Sam B, who is de facto sort of the main character of the entire Dead Island series, finding himself in all mainline games, Dead Island: Survivors and even Dead Island Epidemic, a mobile game that shut down in less than a year. (RIP)
It's a neat way of rewarding the player for knowing the series and the game's super ironic and detached shell lets it away with finding Sam B once more. In a more grounded tale, Sam B being, well everywhere, during every outbreak, would be a smoking gun indicating that he's the big bad behind it all but it's treated with just enough irreverence to sort of work. He clearly has history with Emma Jaunt, an actor who allows you to hide out at her house, and this is one of the driving points of the narrative. Jaded and getting on in age, he wants to simply wait the whole thing out with the supplies in Emma's house. You, or I, or well Dani, the Irish girl I chose to play as, needs the story to progress and thinks her zombie immunity is her key to getting out of the city. Being a roller derby racer, she has high stamina and health, yet low recovery. I mostly just chose her so me and my partner can see how authentic her Irish accent and phrases are. Though sometimes quite random, the Irishness of the phrases are charming, if a little ham-fisted. Once again, the ironic callbacks to the luck of the Irish and her mum's stew only really get by because of how far Dead Island's tongue is shoved into its own cheek.
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Thanks, Abi for making the thumbnail and giving feedback on this one! https://bsky.app/profile/crasscookie.bsky.social