Dead Island 2 review: No one’s an island

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Given how long it’s taken for Dead Island 2 to release, and how torturous the road to get to its launch has reportedly been, I almost don’t want to criticize it. It feels like watching someone limp over the finish line of a marathon on two freshly broken legs and mocking their form. But this is still a game with an MSRP of $70, so it doesn’t get off easy no matter how difficult the journey was. I just felt the need to acknowledge it upfront.

What has Dead Island 2 become after all that time? Put simply, it’s an acceptable, enjoyable gorefest with enough splattery, cartoonish violence that it outweighs the uncreative gameplay. Dead Island 2 came out functional (which is admittedly more than can be said for some of its neighboring game releases) and its lighthearted sense of humor is the icing on the cake. It’s not a great game, but it’s a good game, and I think that was all anyone was expecting.

Dead Island 2 takes place in Los Angeles, in the middle of a zombie plague that has turned most of the city into gibbering undead. One of the last evacuation planes crashes with six people — the player characters, or Slayers — aboard. The player chooses one of them and must cut a bloody swathe through LA with whatever guns, knives and sharp sticks they can lay their hands on. They link up with and help other survivors and (unintentionally) discover the truth of the outbreak along the way.

Dead Island 2’s story is certainly a story. The Slayer falls in with a group of other survivors, a motley crew of celebrities, hangers-on and survivalists. It falls on their shoulders to find a way for their group to escape LA or at least outlast