Dead Island 2

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Dead Island 2
Welcome to HELL-A, Slayers!
Protagonist(s): Jacob Amy Ryan Carla Dani Bruno Genre(s): Action First-person shooter Role Playing Platform(s): Windows PlayStation 4 Xbox One PlayStation 5 Xbox Series X/S Release Date: April 21, 2023 Developer(s): Dambuster Studios Publisher(s): Deep Silver Country: United Kingdom Series: Dead Island

Dead Island 2 is an action role-playing video game from Dambuster Studios, published by Deep Silver, and released on April 21, 2023. This game was infamous for having a very difficult development period. It had not one, not two, but three different developers working on the game before it was shifted to Dambuster Studios. However, when the game was released, it received positive reviews.

Development

After the success of Dead Island and Dead Island: Riptide, the original developers, Techland, parted ways from Deep Silver to focus on Dying Light. So the game was handed over to Yager Studios (who had just finished Spec Ops: The Line). A trailer was unveiled at E3 2014, with plans to release the game in 2015. However, relations between Deep Silver and Yager quickly broke down in the year that followed, and the game was transferred to Sumo Digital in 2016. After three more years, the game was transferred again to Dambuster Studios in 2019. Then it was finally unveiled again at Gamescom 2022 with a release date of February 3rd, 2023, before getting one last delay to April of that year, and after eleven grueling years, the game would finally release to mixed-to-positive reception, not unlike its predecessor.

Plot

Sometime after the events of Dead Island, the city of Los Angeles is struck under a much stronger and deadlier zombie outbreak.

Why It's Hollywood Swinging

1. After nine grueling years of development, the game was finally out to the public and managed to turn out to be a good product. This is rare for a game like this, as other games, like Duke Nukem Forever, suffer for a long development time and turn out mid at best to atrocious at worst.
2. The game differentiates itself from its predecessors, ditching the serious tone from the original and turning into a light-hearted zombie-slaying action game.
3. Great graphics, with an insane amount of lighting and attention to detail. This is very evident when you arrive at the house of a popular gaming YouTuber in Bel-Air, the movie studio of Monarch Studios, and even the Hollywood Red Carpet.
4. The humor, while hit or miss (as it relies on internet buzzwords for laughs), can work at times. The best source of humor comes from a house a Youtuber owns the player can enter and find a whiteboard with an apology video script. What makes it even more hilarious is that it has "CRY HERE FOR SYMPATHY" written in all caps followed by claiming that the video wasn't scripted.
5. Largely improved combat from its predecessors. One thing that made Dead Island 2 different from its predecessors and Dying Light was the inclusion of jerrycans, canisters containing several liquids like water, fuel, or poison. These can either have their contents poured on the streets to be ignited or electrified to deal maximum damage to zombies.
6. The gore system is awesome. The developers called it FLESH (Fully Locational Evisceration System for Humanoids), meaning that with every swing, the zombie's skin would be visibly damaged. And Dambuster did not underdeliver on that. Every attack with your weapon is enough to crush the brains, jaws, and limbs of walkers that you can see exposed body parts hanging from their bodies.
7. Likable characters, the Slayers themselves have a solid amount of diversity followed up by decent voice acting.
8. The soundtrack is good, with its use of songs like "Drown" by Karen O and Danger Mouse and "Stay Alive" by FFM featuring Felix Bushe.
9. A surprising amount of polish of a game with very few bugs.
10. This game repaired Dambuster's reputation, ever since they first launched their flop of Homefront: The Revolution.

Bad Qualities

1. Mediocre story with a godawful ending.
   • Basically, the final boss is too easy and many plot lines like Tisha's whereabouts and Numen movement remained unresolved.
2. Most of the Legendary weapons are locked until post game, meaning that you have to beat the game before finding them.

Reception

"You fucked it up!/You done fucked it up!"This game was given a 6/10 by AngryJoe.

The game received positive reviews from critics and gamers, praising the gameplay and crafting systems, but criticizing the story.

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