Dead Island 2 Ditches The Open World, But Ramps Up The Gore

gamespot.com:

It wasn't until two hours or so into my seven hours with Dead Island 2 when I finally understood that the linear nature of the game wasn't just part of the tutorial, and that Dambuster Studios' game wasn't going to eventually swing its proverbial doors open and reveal to me the sandbox I was looking for. Action-RPGs, especially zombie-centric ones, have so often utilized an open-world setting over the past 15 years that it was, for a good while, jarring to see that Dead Island 2 isn't actually the latest in a long line of them. That took some mental remapping of what this game is going to be, and while I do find the smaller scope disappointing, it's not without its benefits too.

In my hands-on time with the game, I visited several areas, including the disgustingly wealthy Bel-Air, a dilapidated but probably once five-star hotel, and a formerly proud movie studio. Sometimes the way these areas would snake around surrounded by unclimbable walls felt very restrictive, closer to a game as tightly set as BioShock rather than even the original Dead Island's large hubs. While this is a much more linear game than its predecessors, there are many optional nooks in each area. I encountered many locked rooms, safes, and loot caches that would each require further investigating or even backtracking, some of which wasn't possible in my limited demo. These side attractions, be they puzzles or just temporarily inaccessible, gave me the sense that, though the world was narrower, it was also sometimes deeper.

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