See Complete Zombie Destruction in Dead Island 2 Gameplay First Look
Eight years after its announcement on E3 2014, and a series of delays — the last of which came not two months ago — publisher Deep Silver and developer Dambuster Studios have finally offered a gameplay trailer for their zombie smasher game, Dead Island 2, which is now scheduled for an April 2023 release across current-gen platforms and PC. Interestingly, this information wasn’t dropped at The Game Awards, but it came via a special online showcase.
According to Destructoid, the Dead Island 2 trailer introduces several novelties to the game, some of which are quite surprising. The footage introduces Hell-A (post-zombie-apocalypse version of Los Angeles) traversed by the game’s protagonist, which slices and dices through masses of zombie hordes hellbent on tasting his inner beauty. The typical locations include beaches, houses, streets, and public buildings, all brim-filled with undead hordes of flesh eaters for our protagonist to smash, cut, dice, slice, burn, or explode.
The second part of the trailer is narrated by Amy, a newly introduced protagonist of Dead Island 2, and mainly focuses on the game’s combat mechanics and weaponry — some of which are customizable. Players will be granted a myriad of ways with which they can make undead permanently dead, including their bare hands, guns, katanas, swords, bats, hammers, bear claws, bombs, etc. You can also use the environment to your advantage and lure the zombies into a pool of water and cook them by dropping a live wire into the pool.
Perhaps the biggest aspect of the upcoming game is the DIY weapons and Z-powers, which the player presumably acquires after being bitten by a zombie. Unfortunately, the trailer doesn’t offer much information about this, but it does show how much of a mean zombie mincer the player becomes upon activating said powers. Another great feature is the support for the Alexa Game Control System, which would allow gamers to sync up their Dead Island 2 with Alexa and issue voice commands and orders that allow faster execution.
Admittedly, many consider this another gimmick — nothing more but a marketing tool — and we tend to agree with such non-sensical implementations. Why would you tell your smart home system to pass you a sharper weapon? But then again, this option could provide further accessibility options for those segments of the gaming community that need them. The gaming industry has seen a massive push towards the inclusion of the physically and motorically impaired through various accessibility options, and God of War Ragnarok is currently winning on that front.
Finally, Deep Silver also announced a Hell-A Special Edition of Dead Island 2, which will include a hard copy of the game in steelbook packaging, as well as additional in-game goods, physical goods, and a figurine of the newly added protagonist. Hopefully, the gamers would receive them in good condition, unlike The Last of Us, whose Special Edition boxes have been irreversibly damaged. Dead Island 2 is currently scheduled to launch on April 28, 2023, for PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
