Dead Island 2 Review: Escape From Hell-A

gadgets.ndtv.com:

In most video games, you just kill stuff. You shoot, stab, blow up, or slice through a rotating cast of bad guys on your way to a usually yellow and sometimes off-white circular-ish marker on your screen, where you receive your next set of instructions from an NPC. Apparently, that radio/file/key/code/ you were looking for and expected to find here is actually stashed at another compound/tv station/prison/hospital. You can take a breather, repair or buff up your gear at a conveniently placed workbench, maybe store your excess inventory in a cloud-based locker, and engage with the NPC companion/quest-giver if you're interested in some try-hard attempt at wit. If you've had your fill, you can head out to do the killing thing again — the part that's supposed to be fun.

Be it a Call of Duty-style first-person shooter, or a Devil May Cry-like hack-and-slasher, the single-player skeleton of a game that leans heavily on its singular core systems (gunplay, combat, traversal), rather than diversified world-building and narrative drive (story, characters, meaningful exploration), largely remains the same. The meat lies in how fun that repetitive core mechanic of killing actually is. In some games, it is the star of the show. Call of Duty's time-tested, nailed-on gunplay makes even uninspired annual titles worth picking up – almost. And Devil May Cry's lore might be lost on you, but its ridiculous moment-to-moment melee action keeps you sated and surprised. In other lesser titles, the core gameplay loop fails to keep you consistently engaged. Dead Island 2 — out April 21 — sits somewhere in the middle. Its gory, zombie-slaying sandbox never rises above the limits of its repetition, but it stays silly enough to sustain itself almost