Dead Island 2 takes place ten years after the first part of the game. The action takes us to the sunny Los Angeles, which fights for the zombie epidemic, which has been cut off from the world by the quarantine.
This time we have six available characters from which we choose our zombie. However, some veterans of the series will appear during our adventure. The goal is to get out of the infected city, but before that, we will meet a lot of original characters who we will try to help and with time our priorities will change. The story may surprise us with nothing to discover. Okay, maybe beyond the one interesting point, there is no place here for the top-of-the-line phrases, stories about sacrifice and moral choices. The whole thing is treated in a casual way, with a pink eye and already the presentation of the characters. At the very beginning, she bought me her luxurious, sometimes flying, cringe, climate. My zombie masquerader was the black skin of Jacob with a white whip, which generally seems to have everything somewhere and fits nicely into the whole convention. Thanks to the fact that the game lacks weight in terms of, for example, such a Dying Light, the whole thing is easier to accept, it does not get wet and allows for an uncrumped fun.
And I appreciate it for a very big plus. We have 24 main missions ahead of us, plus a few side missions. Dead Island 2 is a game with an open world, although not, come back with open maps. The whole Los Angeles is divided into several separate maps. We have the most well-known and cultural locations here. We will visit Bel-Air, where the rich plundered in their pools at beautiful villas. We will visit Hollywood studio, famous Ocean Drive or a happy town. It is enough to say that each place is strongly differentiated and has its own zombies. I will develop it in a moment. It is difficult not to be surprised by the locations we visit, even my wife, who generally interests in this type of games, which has already commented on the well-made interior of the Bel-Air bridge.
And yes, you can see here that the developer put a lot of work to buy us places. These are really well-made, with a lot of details and, above all, it does not copy and paste one house a few dozen times. Closed and a little smaller maps allow you to focus on the smaller amount of available locations and develop them into the smallest detail. Some villas look like they are simply taken out of the developer's catalog. You can see that they are prepared with their heads and know about the design of the interior. Almost every house or place we will visit has its own story to tell through the great Environment Story Telling. You are able to tell who lived here or in what circumstances the tragedy came into play. Really great job. Next to beautiful places, you could not miss the traditionally favorite locations of every respected player, the metro and the canals. Which is true, there is not much of it and rather full of the functions of the fabulous locations, but still. When you see how Ocean Drive looks, it is then difficult to cross the canals where everything looks the same.
Fortunately, we do not have to return to them later, and all beautiful locations do not close in front of us and we can always return to any place thanks to a special map of a fast journey that we will find in some places. We have, of course, side missions recommended by different types of routes. It is usually a task to go and find something. However, this allows you to enter the places that were previously closed and sometimes you have to combine them. And this is to find a house replaced with a zombie that has a key or to look for a good battery. It's cool because the game often does not give us the indicator exactly what to do. You have to combine it yourself. If we manage to get to such a location at the end, we are usually expected to have some challenges, for example, defeating a false zombie in a specific way for the Tiktoker or traditionally defeat everyone. There are not too many finessees in it and rather these tasks will not surprise us as much as the original. I also liked how the inhabitants of California were presented. For example, those rich people are entrusted in themselves, egocentric, unable to find themselves in new reality, often living their noisy career. Recently, the well-designed side characters of various martial arts were in Far Cry 5, so here I have to praise these grotesque places of the individual.
Our basic task in Dead Island 2 is to fight zombies. There are their chmars, they lie down on the streets, sometimes hide in the bushes. Almost every location has its own zombies. Over the ocean, we meet a thick woman with a cellulite in a pile of clothes, or servers, or zombies, which are made of sand. In the rich districts, decorated with gogushes and labyrinths dressed in sequestered clothes. In the film studio, security workers or statists dressed in costumes are a lot of different skin types for dead bodies and, after some time, they will finally start to repeat themselves, but there is still so much of them that before it happens, there is not much time left. It is worth mentioning that not all of them look fresh, as if they just came out of a pit of another zombie. Sometimes they are some kind of rotten dead bodies that came out of the pit after 20 years, so there is a lot of difference.
For everyone, something nice. Of course, not only different types of looks, but also zombies species are suggested. There are those who are afraid of electricity, fast runners, who are avoiding our punches, powerful breakers, who can withstand a few powerful punches, there are those who blow up or burn, there are thick, shooting dead bodies or rags, resembling Wolverine. For everyone, there is a different tactic, but also a weapon. Getting to know the usual in each zombie gives us the advantage of fighting. There is no way to shoot an explosive zombie in a group of ordinary trapers and see how the explosion of the skin from them in an effective explosion. The game allows for a lot of combination and tactics, and this is another great patent. Our zombie is not defenseless, the game again puts the weapon on a white or hollow weapon rather than on a burning weapon, although this one will also be found. Each weapon is a different massacring of a rotten sword. A sword or a katana will effectively save the head, hands or legs. If the patient survives the amputation, he will regretfully choke on our side. The explosion weapon will allow to break the limbs, making it impossible for the opponent to attack. And the explosion of the skin will cause the skull to start hanging on one hang. The cool thing is that each weapon is a different animation plus a different anime of attacks from the enemy, depending on the area of the body.
For example, with a katana we will be able to blow up BBH attacks and tasaks, for example, by hitting the written weapon. The weapon can also give different additional effects, for example, bleeding, but not all of this. You can combine it with elements that we will find on the battlefield. There is no problem to blow up a zombie with a gas and bring it to fire or pour water and throw it into the battery, causing an elegant shock. The game also encourages us to such experiments very often, for example, a situation in which a few zombies jump into the pool next to the cable and generator and already know what to do. These places are also interestingly solved, because sometimes you have to, for example, close the circuit by pouring water between two cables or start an alarm in the car if the battery is just there, which will lead to the death of the zombies in our place. It is clear that a lot of work has been done to be able to simply play with the available options and choose your way of fighting. In the end, there will also be pistols, shots, carbines, but also, for example, nails, but I will admit that their effectiveness was not as big as the one in the baseball kit, which sent a zombie into the air with one blow.
Well, but that's the point of what we like. In the game, we collect tons of different trash, not only weapons, but also evil, money and many others would seem unnecessary, but their value is indescribable. Thanks to the trash, we will be able to upgrade the weapons on the found special tables. For example, adding new exciting elements to the murder tool. If you want to blow up the French key, there is no problem. Or maybe the games that cause the destruction of the skin, here you go. And all these wonders are not the only inscription. It will be decorated with the appropriate elegance of the animation, for example, the destruction of the skin. But we will still get to the repair. The weapon, like the previous one, sometimes destroys, so we can also repair it on the tables, but also, what is interesting, raise the level. The game has a scaled enemy level, so if we really like, for example, multi-functional graves, we can adjust their level to our current level and do not get rid of them if we have a sentiment to these graves. Of course, the weapon also exists in several types of rarity, which is reflected not only on its level and image, but also on its durability. Testing the variety of the orange is a pleasure in itself, and even after killing a thousand zombies, you will not be bored of the destruction of their mouths with a stick or a happy cut of the lower limbs with a double-handed sword. The fight is extremely pleasant, spectacular and, above all, brutal and bloody, that normally you would not be ashamed of such things as Mortal Kombat. My favorite hit is the situation when, after sparring, the zombie falls on the knee, and we have an effective ending animation. The first hit with a stick makes the typical eyes fall out of the eyes of the monsters and they will inevitably hang on the nerves.
The second shot is massacred by my still unreachable cape. Yes, these actions are here on a daily basis. We have a lot of the same schemes for the orange, up to 85, but some of them only fit into the specified type of armor. So it's worth looking at them, because some of them are real orgies of superiority. Next to the orange we can also develop our hero, and here, unfortunately, the system did not fall into my taste. Instead of a linear progress or a tree, we have special cards that we get on missions, or many of them can be found in different locations. Each card has a different property. Now we have four sets of such cards. The ability to survive, the size and the number. Depending on the set, we can assign two, four or five cards to the given category. And now, it's nice to have a unique and, for example, a pair, but there are two skills here and they answer for two different cards, and at the moment we can only have one active one. So either a unique or a pair. It doesn't allow you to create a character for the fighting system you like, but I still had the impression that something was missing and I still missed something.
And when I found my own gold set, I didn't want to change the card for a new one. Definitely, here, the traditional tree skills would be about the sky, because it's a better solution. The card itself is a lot, because it's 64, but we can only use a few of them for a given moment. Our hero with time gets access to the fury. These are short-lived shaw, in which the hero literally breaks the balls of the naked hand. We can activate the shaw after filling the special box, and it's worth keeping it on the more powerful bosses, which in this mode are easy to deal with children. The fury system itself can also be expanded through the cards, adding additional skills, for example, a flute, a face, or a special scream that weakens the zombie. There is also one more autofagy system, adding detailed statistics. This one has 3 degrees. We raise the level after placing the autofagy icon in the set. The higher the level, the higher we have the possibilities, but also add some negative effect, for example, reduced energy recovery. Dead Island 2 also offers a co-op game for 3 players.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to play in this mode, but I hope that in 3 massacres it can be even more exciting. If you have the opportunity, make sure to check out this mode. In the game, of course, we will find different types of finds, notebooks, but also, for example, zombies with names, which are also a kind of finds. Some of the doors we will find a lot of, okay, we will open them with special security guards, which we will buy from the shop. Sometimes you have to combine them to get where we want to get, and then start something, and then move it somewhere, no less. The search will find who cleans the pleasure, because everyone has a location, hides some, well, passive attractions. Although after a while we will notice that locations outside the environment with storytelling do not offer anything that could interest us, especially when we have all the weapons at high levels. The game is off-roading. There are no tracking of changes here and several graphic modes. On the Xbox Series X, the game lights up in the only decent mode in 60 FPS and elegantly.
I think the most in the game is our attention of the zombies, in which there are a lot of work to be done. Sometimes, when we see rotten apples in our vicinity, you can really see the art of graphics. Each shot can be seen on the skin of the rotten one, and this is a torn flesh, under which the bone stands out, and from under a cut skull with hair you can see a pulsating brain. There are a lot of such interesting flavors here, although during the murderous fight a lot of things may close us, but it is worth paying attention to a moment to get closer and look at what has been prepared for us. You know, it's worth it. And to this comes the mentioned great locations, full of details. The game also has full cinema facilities, so we will read everything in our native language. Dead Island 2 surprised me with a luxurious approach, a well-designed fight in the hands, which is not boring even after a dozen hours of gameplay. In addition, exceptionally masterful locations and zombies, which are attacked by the orange with various properties and watching what is happening with them, are the same pleasure. For me, this is one of the best zombie games available on the market. There is no traffic, clean, unpainted gameplay. The blood and the flak are pouring thickly and you can see that this topic was treated by the developers with exceptional care.
The whole can be closed in 20-30 hours, depending on how much we want to collect additional things. Discussive topics are the unfortunate development of the character. It is possible that some of them will fall to the taste, but not very much. The game also has a very open ending and you can see that the next part, or the addition, which ends the open episodes, is just a matter of time. And cool, I will definitely come back to LA again, not even to do tasks, but for a clean fan and brushing around the buildings, because this is also a masterful game. Dead Island 2 made me a lot of surprises, because after playing Demia on Gamescom, I had some fears, but now I see that they are essential. There is power, there is blood, there are flak, what more do you want? I invite you to the massacre and of course I recommend it.