Dead Island 2 Preview – On the boulevard of beating up zombies

thesixthaxis.com:

The first Dead Island remains one of the all-time good-bad games. Despite the emotional promises of the original announcement trailer, it was a schlocky B-movie of a co-op zombie battler that didn’t have the polish and refinement that bigger budget games of the day had, but was undeniably fun when played with your buddies. Dead Island 2 absolutely has greater aspirations in terms of quality, but without sacrificing the oversaturated fun of smashing through zombie hordes with a wild array of weapons.

Dead Island 2 absolutely plays up to the Los Angeles setting, whether it’s starting off in the mansions of the rich and famous in Bel Air, hopping on over to the Beverly Hills neighbourhood, smashing through a wedding gone wrong at a hotel, or taking a self-run tour through a film studio lot and the sets for a Friends-like sitcom, monster movie and more. It’s all larger than real life, poking a little bit of fun, though we’ll see if it goes as far as GTA V’s lampooning of LA and Californian culture.

It definitely leans into the self-serving nature of its cast of characters, though. The opening cutscene shows all of the playable characters doing everything they can to cheat their way onto one of the last flights out of a zombie-infested LA, from stealing ticket QR codes, to sneaking into the wheel well of the plane. Of course, you know it’s not going to go smoothly for them – it’d be a pretty short game if they all make it out safely, wouldn’t it?

Long story short, as you pick from the six misfits, you don’t get out of LA, you end up bitten and, one feverish stumble across the city later, you discover that you’re immune to the zombie virus. You also manage to team up with a little group of other survivors – a Hollywood star, her