Review: Dead Island 2 is a sickeningly gruesome joy

videogameschronicle.com:

Dead Island 2 is unabashed zombie schlock.

It has the vibe of a video nasty that your dad has a worn-out VHS copy of. A prize that you’d sneak out at sleepovers, claiming to be “the most disgusting film ever made. .

At times, images from Dead Island 2 feel like they would be more at home on LiveLeak than on a modern games console, making it the unlikely venue of the forefront in the debate of when video game violence gets a bit too realistic.

You can so easily picture an American news anchor who looks like the blown-up pilot from Airplane talking about how this game is “destroying the youth,” like something in the Jack Thompson era of video game hysteria. God, is it good fun.

All of this serves as a helpful barometer by which to judge whether or not Dead Island 2 will be for you.

For a game so comically long in development – though this version of the game is substantially different from the one announced all those years ago – Dead Island 2 is a lot more like the first game in the series than we had expected.

You’re exploring modern-day environments in the wake of an outbreak, picking up weapons that are lying around along the way, and combining them with household objects in order to make them more effective at mutilation.

The game literally starts with your character being shot out of the sky while on a plane attempting to escape LA, so you know exactly where you’re sitting when it comes to the intended tone. Even the game’s more serious moments have their tongue so firmly against their cheek it’s practically sticking through it.

You can choose between a handful of survivors, each of whom has unique stats and abilities that affect how they play. These characters aren’t as disparate as you’d perhaps think from the introduction,