Whether it’s the subdued neon lighting in a powered-down arcade softly illuminating the blade of the katana you’re holding close to your body, or the fire licking out of an axe and crisping up the skin of a zombie whose head you’ve just had a pop at, Dead Island 2 is a ravishing feast for the eyes.Ī lot of this comes down to the way that the undead respond to you and your breakable weapons: putting your fist through their eyes, skewering them with a spear, slicing off one of their limbs… everything unfolds in front of you like you imagine it should.

Well, it might be, but it’s fair to say because damn this game looks good. I can tell you now that this isn’t some well-rehearsed PR drivel. I think when people get their hands on our game, they’ll see that everything has these fun little details and interesting things to see. We didn’t want to do just that – we wanted to really populate our spaces there’s things to see everywhere, there are details in everything. So many games, developers just fill them out. “We want you to get really up close and visceral in our game. “We really want this to be a sort of personal journey, right?” says art director Adam Olson as I recount studying this undead woman – watching the way the skin moved independently of her flesh, watching how she twitched, and shuffled, and wobbled as she struggled against the sand. And her guidance was appreciated, because what a stunning game it is. She told me to soak in the ambiance – the sights, the sounds, and *deep breath* yes, even the sweet rotting smells – of this doomed Los Angeles as we sat down to get about an hour’s worth of time with Dead Island 2. It’s HELL-A, per an enthusiastic Dambuster rep, who is basically our tour guide for this unlikely excursion to a doomed west coast vacation. She could be drunk, in another time and place, and just off for a walk down Venice beach.īut this isn’t LA. There’s an undead woman – flesh hanging off her cheek in a clump – limping towards you. Alongside the wash of the sea, you can hear subdued, guttural groaning, the shuffling of Crocs through sand. You can see the ebbing of the shoreline, how the light scatters differently on the surface of the waves versus the sand. It’s midnight, and the light of a full moon glints on the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

Dead island 2 review embargo