I was excited about each location whenever I visited a new one.

But ultimately, it’s not a story that will stay long with me, even if the team is setting up more adventures with this cast. It’s also paced nicely, rarely overstaying its welcome and letting me return to the action right when I start to miss it. It’s not an engrossing story, and quickly takes a back seat to exploring the world and killing zombies, but it’s serviceable, sprinkled in with the kind of characters you’d expect to run into in a post-apocalyptic LA like a Hollywood A-lister or washed-up rockstar. The story of Dead Island 2 takes Amy through many of the locations you’d hope to visit in Los Angeles, from Beverly Hills to movie studio lots to the Santa Monica Pier and, of course, Hollywood Boulevard. This system and the weapons are where players find the most contrast between playthroughs. The cards are easy to understand and fun to collect, encouraging me to try out different ones often. I was focused less on hitting hard and more on hitting a lot, but I could see how other cards would result in different approaches to combat. This card, coupled with the ones that let me utilize moves learned from surrounding zombies, allowed my Amy to play to her strength: agility. While some cards offer abilities usable against the undead, others are best described as perks that activate in combat, like my favorite that restored a bit of health every time I performed a perfect dodge or block. With 15 equipable slots, I decked out Amy to play a lot like the zombies I was fighting, utilizing their ground pounds, screams, strikes, and more against them. Unlockable skill cards offer more of that variance I wanted. Amy would occasionally comment about how she needed to get out of Los Angeles to make it to her next running competition, but other than that, her barks and lines felt generic enough that I wasn’t concerned I was missing part of the larger Dead Island 2 narrative by not playing through the game as each survivor. While each of the six slayers has a different personality and backstory alongside two exclusive innate abilities, I finished Dead Island 2 feeling like who I played matters little narratively. She’s a Paralympian and an agile, speed-based character. After a quick cutscene setting up this idealized take on Los Angeles and how it’s become a dead island of sorts, I selected Amy, one of six slayers you can play as in the game’s story. Dead Island 2 doesn’t take long to get into the action.

Dead island 2 for pc