Dead Island 2 Preview

Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s Graham Smith has penned a preview based on his hands-on experience with Dead Island 2, Yager’s sequel to Techland’s title. He seems to have mostly enjoyed it, which is more than he could say of the original title:

I decide to not and spend my time trundling around houses, looking for weaponry. I collect enough materials that my class’s starting machete automatically becomes electrified, meaning every enemy I strike is temporarily stunned. So far, so similar, but the difference from the original game is that each strike now feels impactful instead of sluggish. Over the course of my time with the game, first as the Speeder class and second as the Berserker, I slash and fry, hammer and crack, blast with shotguns, explode with petrol cans, and perform other horribly deforming attacks. My weapon doesn’t break once, though Yager says that if it had, I could have repaired it using materials on site instead of having to find a workbench first.

Towards the end of both my play session, an event triggered unseen NPCs deciding to blast music for a party which drew zombies together in the same place. This is meant as a lure for co-op players to group together to rack up points and earn extra XP rewards by killing as many undead as they can. As per the original game, the combat scales well, becoming more frenetic and exciting the more undead are thrown at you. Although we didn’t see any, there will also be PvE events during co-op; the example I’m told is of a helicopter carrying treasure you know, a treasure copter which will crash somewhere near groups and create a bubble where they can kill one another to claim the goods inside. It sounds like Rust.

If you decide to still ignore these events and wander off into the open-world, the game can continue to re-match you with co-op partners in whatever area you’re