Ten Things Dead Island 2 Desperately Needs

Considering the sales of the title seem good so far it’s not ridiculous to think about a hypothetical sequel, and the folks at Bloody Disgusting must have thought that too while writing their list of ten things a sequel to Dead Island desperately needs. Here are some of the things they consider essential for a second iteration of the zombie-survival FPS/RPG hybrid:

Give Us The Death Penalty!

This is going to be the thing I see most of you disagreeing with me on, and I already see your point. I died a lot in Dead Island, so the thought of losing more than a little cash doesn’t necessarily appeal to me either. But really, ask yourself: were you ever afraid to die, knowing you’d just spawn nearby with a little less money? I sure wasn’t, and that broke the harsh reality that is the island of Banoi. I’m not saying we should lose progress for dying but there should definitely be more of a penalty for biting the dust.

Reviving fallen comrades also needs to be fixed because most of the time it wasn’t worth using a health pack to help an incapacitated friend when they were going to lose less money when they died than what the health pack would cost to replace. I shouldn’t be thinking like that, I should want to help my friends, but in Dead Island it’s not an issue. If you take a look at Gears of War for example, you always have to help your friends because if they’re downed they can’t help you mow down the hordes of enemies coming at you.

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Skills? What Skills?

‘¨Dead Island did a good job of giving us skills that were mostly realistic. Obviously, having your weapon magically reappear in your hand after you’ve thrown it doesn’t make much sense but expanding your inventory or becoming more adept with certain weapons are realistic skills. Unfortunately, the skill trees are a little too shallow, with few interesting skills. After playing through a few of the characters I usually had the skills I wanted maxed out halfway through the game. I would’ve liked to see a melee tree that was specific to each character, like the blades chick had special melee moves that complimented her fighting style, or the gun chick could have The Darkness-style gun executions. Things like that.

Oh, and the Lock Pick skill is completely useless. Just sayin’.