- Publisher: Deep Silver
- Release Date: Apr 21, 2023
- Also On: PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One
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- Critic score
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- Unscored
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Apr 18, 2023Dead Island 2 offers plenty of over-the-top zombie-killing fun, especially in co-op, but it's dragged down by serious technical problems.
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Apr 18, 2023Dead Island 2 does a great job of reanimating this dormant zombie-battling series, with the gore-filled combat and excessive weaponry that goes well with the oversaturated LA setting. It’s an enjoyable romp, but at the same time, ironically feels like it's playing it safe.
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Apr 18, 2023Dead Island 2 may not always make full use of its promising setting, but it may be the most fun I've had killing zombies in quite some time. The combat is deliriously fulfilling and will likely be further heightened in co-op when players can ping-pong zombies off of each other with their drop kicks or whatever other hijinks the community can come up with. It's an artful display of zombie violence and mayhem, which is an achievement in of itself given how saturated this genre is this many years after the first Dead Island.
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Apr 18, 2023For a game in development for more than a decade, it's a minor miracle for Dead Island 2 to come out at all. The fact that it's arrived in such a state that players can have fun with it for the duration of its story and beyond--even as that story itself is an afterthought--is a testament to the team that got it to a once-unlikely finish line. Along with the lackluster story, poor gunplay and some balancing issues hurt Dead Island 2, but its deep melee combat systems and rich setting make it a better game than the original, which is maybe the most important thing I can say about it after everything it's been through.
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Apr 18, 2023The fact that Dead Island 2 is finally here and enjoyable to play is nothing short of a miracle given the game's 10+ year development cycle. We feared this one may end up being a real mess, but Dambuster has largely delivered on what you'd expect from a sequel to Dead Island - just not much more than that. We'd have loved to see the team expand on things a little more to fully capitalise on the game's absurdity, but a safe sequel will do just fine in this case. Dead Island 2 won't blow you way, but it's shiny and dumb and fun, and definitely worth a play if you're looking for a light hearted zombie romp on Xbox.
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Apr 18, 2023Dead Island 2 is an entertaining adventure, especially if you have someone to play co-op with. It's meaty, it's long, and at times it's really neat. A sort of odd and digital Los Angeles vacation, if you will. But it's also so faithful to the original that it's almost completely void of surprises and feels structurally old.
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Apr 24, 2023Basically, a lot of it feels like a game from 10 years ago, when all of the many, many other games in the genre didn't yet exist in their modern form (...) Dead Island 2 exists, it looks nice and the zombies pop in a satisfying way. Maybe that's all the boxes this game ever needed to tick.
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Apr 18, 2023Sure, if you want to hook up with a friend and bash some skulls in, you can do that here and even have a great time marveling at the impressive gore system. But stick around for more than a few hours and you might find yourself wondering if spending thirty minutes digging through trash to make your baseball bat do five more damage was a mistake.
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Apr 18, 2023After a decade of troubled development, Dead Island 2 fails to offer anything new or substantive. Its middling melee combat, nonsensical story, and awkward dialogue choices all make playing it a slog, and even at its very best, it fails to rise above being merely inoffensive. It may be pretty, but that's not enough to save it from being a dull experience from start to finish.
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Apr 18, 2023What’s on offer in Dead Island 2 isn’t broken or flagrantly bad... but it is tired, antiquated and bland.
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| This publication has not posted a final review score yet. | |
| These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation. | |
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Apr 19, 2023In spite of its arduous development, which gave rise to certain concerns, Dead Island 2 is a real success. The technical aspect is spot on: the quality of its landscapes and the very elaborate atmosphere of its ten explorable zones often make for quite a pleasant surprise. The whole thing is wrapped up in an effective narrative that keeps you on the edge of your seat and its well-written secondary characters are the icing on the cake. The title unveils more and more layers throughout its adventure and is filled with good ideas, thus captivating us for the twenty hours it takes to complete it. Of course, the game remains quite standard in its approach and does not revolutionise the genre. Yet, how pleasant can it be to slaughter and butcher hordes of undead foes under the blazing Los Angeles sun. The gameplay is rich and varied, offering many different weapons to play with, while giving free rein to our creativity. Fans of zombie games, go for it! You will not regret it.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 75 out of 102
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Mixed: 13 out of 102
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Negative: 14 out of 102
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Apr 23, 2023Better than the first Dead Island. If you like zombie games you will love this game.
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Apr 22, 2023
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May 24, 2023