The demo was set in Los Angeles in a suburban area on the edge of Hollywood, with plenty of houses, a gas station and a heavily protected bar called Hollywood Hills that I'd get to later. The aim of the demo was to collect supplies, kill as many zombies as imaginatively as possible, then finally defend the bar from an all-out attack. There were four people per demo pod but only two characters sadly - a speedy Sprinter and a big Bruiser (who I played). This did lead to the surreal sight of seeing more than one version of the same character, which is actually one of my question marks over the final game. Yager's Isaac Ashdown in our interview revealed that while eight players can play at any one time (excellent!) there are only four playable characters (baffling!). My suggestion: hire another artist or two, please. Hell, model your new staff and stick 'em in the game, that's two extra characters right there.
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| And their breath is even worse |
Now first off let me say that it does really look lovely. This is a current-gen-only game so there's a lot of detail on everything. Techland's competing Dying Light, which is similarly PC/PS4/XB1-only, also looks great but Dead Island 2 excels in one key area: colour. Yager's sequel is very colourful and gorgeous, which is a big relief frankly since so many games (including Dying Light) go for the washed-out, gritty, "realistic" look with their graphics. Dead Island 2 is emphasizing the fun, and it shows.
I am going to say though that Dying Light, which I've also played a demo of, was a lot more polished. Dead Island 2 is a long way off so I don't believe the game will stay like this, but the demo was incredibly choppy and suffered from serious slowdown at pretty much every point. It was like someone was running Ultra graphics settings on a PC that couldn't handle it. Furthermore there were plenty of bugs, like zombies appearing and disappearing right in front of me or bodies flying off into the distance with a simple hammer-smack, and my character seemed to be permanently panting in exhaustion which was very annoying. Again, like I said I'm sure the final game will be fine, but for a demo designed to generate good word of mouth (for the sequel to a game infamous for being notoriously buggy) to be incredibly buggy is quite a tactical error.
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| Now imagine me running in to this crowd swinging a giant flaming hammer |
Let me talk about something more positive then: the map is really big. After the start I veered off from my three companions to kill zombies on my own and I never saw them again until we were all called to defend the bar, and even then only two of them showed up. Apparently the demo playing area was less than 10% of the Los Angeles map, so in the final game it'll totally be possible to have eight players online and every one doing separate missions in LA and never meeting each other. That's insane, and the future of gaming in my opinion: online co-operative single-player. You can play on your own but there are always others in the world who can help you out at all times. Mini-MMOs, basically.
And there was plenty to find too, and I never even met one of the Suicider special infected who were scattered around. There's lots to salvage and a few special weapons apparently that I failed to discover, but I did manage to loot an explosive barrel and craft a flaming jackhammer that sent zombies flying and burning at the same time! Crafting can be done anywhere now, and while it was all automatic to speed up the demo the results spoke for themselves. The environments were fairly destructible too, with smashable doors and windows and wooden fences you can break by charging at them. The zombies were plentiful too, and killing them was easier than in Dead Island but still tougher than zombie fodder games like Left 4 Dead.
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| Defend the beer at all costs! All is lost without it! |
Then we got to the finale, the showdown at the Hollywood Hills Movie Night bar. After getting a call on our radios and a timer we (well, most of us) headed to the new waypoint on our maps. I got there first since I was closest (and it was a good few minutes before anyone else showed up, giving another indication about how big this map was) and held off the hordes... which leaves me to my next complaint of the demo. It was far, far too easy. The path to the bar had an armoured gate, several barriers, and plenty of defence at the bar, and even when I was on my own against a horde they never made it past the first gate. Even when two strong Thug special zombies showed up me and one other person defeated them easily. We were never in danger of dying or being incapacitated, and all I was doing was wading into zombies and Thugs and bashing them a lot without any thought for my own safety. Hopefully the challenge will be upped in the final game.
Of course I expect we're a good year away from the release of Dead Island 2 so there's plenty of time to get these complaints addressed, in fact the main reason I'm telling you about them is so Yager can hopefully read this and then do just that. Flaws aside the time I had with Dead Island 2 was lots of mad fun and the game itself should be a worthy opponent for Techland's Dying Light. Oh, and I was beaten on Zombie Kill Count by just four zombies by a guy dressed like a Pokémon Trainer. Dammit.
Dead Island 2 is TBA 2015 and will be available on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
Most Anticipated Feature/Element: Finding out what new Special Zombies Yager have in store for us.
