Even as the Slayer levels up, the difficulty remains in a sweet spot that prevents the player from ever becoming too powerful. Still, despite the enormous range of customizable weapons and skills on offer, Dead Island 2 remains challenging. Without giving too much away, things get pretty funky after a point, and you can make your Slayer quite the force to be reckoned with, finely tuned to your own bespoke playstyle. These range from defensive tactics such as dodges and slides, to bonuses such as damage boosts for downing zombies, or awarding health for severing undead limbs. In addition to the weaponry, Dead Island 2 has a mix-and-match build system, that affords your chosen Slayer various skills and perks, sometimes for free, sometimes at the detriment of other abilities. Choosing one member of the pity party, our “Slayer” is thrust into the thick of the carnage, and must utilize adaptation, improvisation, and smart-mouthed quippin’ (boy howdy, the quippin’) to find their way out of the city and to higher ground, away from millions of arm-munching, TikTok-filming posers. Beginning in media res, the outbreak is already underway, covering the City of Angels in blood and bodies while the local authorities attempt to put a band-aid on an oozing, pustulous wound. Our story concerns a party of six survivors - each one the worst person you’ve ever met - who crawl from the wreckage of a failed evacuation flight, crash-landing in the heart of Los Angeles, or “Hell-A” as it is now known. No, rather than attempting a full conceptive rebirth, Dead Island 2 is more a “Take Two” on what came before, with stronger efforts made to deliver the player experience perhaps expected of that release. This is a title where I once kicked an inflatable beach ball, which resulted in my character screaming, keeling over, and dying on the spot. That isn’t to say that this is a case of “If it ain’t broke…”, because Dead Island was fucking broke. The long-time-coming sequel essentially builds upon the general design and gameplay structure of its now-decade-old predecessor. It must be noted that, with Dead Island 2, Dambuster Studios is not attempting to reinvent the wheel. But can the talent of British developer Dambuster Studios resurrect this long-since-decayed release, or would it have been better left dead and buried? Having been mired in development hell for almost a decade, and been the subject of cancellation rumors, internet jokes, and even a reference point for other games and studios, it seems a miracle that we finally have anything in our hands. And on April 21, 2023, Dead Island 2 will finally release, two console generations on from its initial announcement, and after passing through no less than three development studios. That trailer debuted almost 10 years ago. Ultimately becoming one of the infected himself, the jogger is eventually wiped out by a speeding minivan, before an onscreen graphic finally reveals the trailer as a preview for Dead Island 2. The trailer featured a meat-headed jogger taking a casual dash down Venice Beach, blissfully unaware of the absolutely bombastic chaos that was exploding all around him, as hordes of flesh-eating creatures lay waste to the beautiful people of California. During the 2014 Sony E3 press conference, viewers were treated to a surprise cinematic trailer, one that has since gone down in history.
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