Dead Island 2 Preview: Slay in HELL-A

Since when was LA an island anyway?

Dead Island 2 asks and answers a simple question: could my day get much worse? Zombies, plane crashes and a particularly nasty bite on your forearm topped off an expansive hands-on preview session. As it turns out the answer is yes, and your soon-to-be slayer quickly realizes they need to get the hell out of LA.

The sequel to the 2011 Dead Island, the third entry in the series really stretches the idea of what an island is this time around — last time I checked, Los Angeles was decidedly landlocked. I suppose though that in a game where zombies are running rampant across a major metropolitan center of America’s eastern seaboard, we can allow some creative license.

After a plane crash somewhere in the hills of LA — or Hell-A, if you’ve seen the marketing — you’re offered a choice of six decidedly different individuals to facilitate your escape. Each player character offers slight variations on their approach to melee combat through their innate skills.

For example, Carla is a street smart stunt rider that offers up a damage boost while close to multiple zombies. Amy the Paralympian sprinter (who just HAS to get out of town for Nationals) gets a damage boost when taking on isolated undead. While seemingly small, these differences can have a large impact on whether you approach an encounter by charging in or drawing out foes a few at a time.

Once you’ve chosen your slayer, what follows is a pretty traditional intro sequence to drip feed the mechanics and get you prepped to survive. Let’s be real here, though – you’re just here to smack some zombies. Thankfully, you get to that pretty quickly and, wrench in hand, will be covered in the gore of a few former passengers from your ill-fated flight.

Unsurprisingly, the melee combat in Dead Island 2 is a feast for the senses. Sledgehammers crunch through skulls and bladed weapons cleave through groups with ease. What the combat lacks in weight it more than makes up for in glorious sound and impressive kill animations against the oncoming horde.

Have a runner coming at you? Target its legs to cut them off and slow that zed right down. Got an armored zombie shambling your way? Disarm it, literally. While spamming attacks can feel like the best bang for your buck, being more strategic and targeting a zombie’s limbs is almost always the best way to approach a fight.

While that’s all well and good for fighting them one at a time, that careful strategy quickly goes out the window when a mob is coming at you. One or two zombies are a cakewalk, but three or more of those undead can quickly overwhelm if you’re not careful. That’s when my other preferred strategy comes into play: running like hell.

While it may not be the most noble battle plan, running for your life as you kite zombies around the streets is more often that not the only way to stay alive. Even the most basic of undead can hit like an absolute truck and you’ll find yourself dying often if you take a bad fight.

Supporting that tactical retreat playstyle are the throwable items known as Curveballs. These extremely useful items range from simple pipe bombs and shuriken through to bait canisters to pull groups of zombies away.

You can’t run forever though, and those Curveballs do need to recharge sometimes; inevitably, you’ll need to turn to your trusty melee weapon. Hell-A is littered with all manner of objects you can pick up as improvised weapons, but the true connoisseur knows that the best weapon to brain a zombie with is the one you’ve crafted yourself.

While it feels like every game in 2023 has to have a crafting system, the one on display in Dead Island 2 is essential for your progression. The difference between a crafted weapon and some piece of junk you pick up off the street can often be the deciding factor in some of those bigger battles.

Our preview took us through the first nine or so main quests of the story, or around five hours of game time. While only a glimpse of the full campaign, it’s immediately clear that the series has shifted its tone substantially away from its more serious predecessor. Perhaps this is to distance itself from another melee based zombie chopping title, but the shift really works in its favor.

Embracing the campness of pulp horror movies allows Dead Island 2 to revel in its own ridiculousness. Nowhere is this more on display then in one of the last quests we played that saw us carving our way through a procession of movie sets – complete with thematically appropriate zombies. Overall the humor is decidedly more Borderlands-esque now, and in this case at least that’s a good thing.

Fans of the series are in for a feast in Dead Island 2 with the same zombie chopping gameplay the series is known for bolstered by an impressive level of detail in said chopping action. Weapon types handle distinctively, the finisher type moves are satisfying, and the gore is frankly a little disgusting. If you’re hunting for a B-Grade movie-like zombie killing experience that leans into its schlockyness rather than rejecting it, then Dead Island 2 may just be the game for you.

Expect Dead Island 2 on Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4 and PS5 from 21 April. We previewed the title once before, back in 2022.