There’s been no mention of a comparative size of the Dead Island 2 map as yet. There’s also another area that Jager and publisher Deep Silver isn’t quite ready to talk about. In the full game, you’ll be able to play across San Francisco, Venice Beach, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Los Angeles Golf Course and the LA River. The section we got to play was a small section of suburban Los Angeles, full of residential homes now occupied by a growing community of the undead. Set in California, the game is full of light, with palm trees wafting in the breeze as you take on a sea of zombies. Thanks to Yager’s input, Dead Island 2 looks to be a whole different beast. Previous Dead Island games were created by Techland, who turned out games that looked great in the trailers, but were released riddled with glitches and offering disappointing gameplay. The latest instalment in the Dead Island series is being developed by Yager, a Berlin-based studio responsible for Spec Ops: The Line. That’s what I came away thinking after having some lengthy hands-on time with Dead Island 2 at GamesCom 2014. And they are packed into Dead Island.Beautifully bloodthirsty. Still, presentation doesn't make a game, experiences do. Sometimes textures take their time loading in, I'd describe every cutscene as "stiff," and the visual flaws like hands going through doors and weird mini-game meters made me laugh. First-person melee combat doesn't feel natural right away. As much as I lauded it, Dead Island is rough around the edges and that's sure to turn a lot of people off. Plus, you can always switch your game to single-player if you just want to be left alone. It might sound depressing, but there are tons of character slots, so having a character for different sessions shouldn't be too tough. I can't be level 31 and about to win the game and have a level 1 player join me. Players can only join the games of people who are equal or lesser levels. Of course, experience levels play into this. If I see you sign on, I can invite you in. When you're playing, a pop-up message will notify you if a player is close to you and joinable. Special zombies make you switch up strategies. When I leveled up, I chose in which skill tree to invest my new point in - so even if you joined my game as the same knives expert I play as, we wouldn't necessarily have the same abilities. I chose the weapons, the enemies to attack, and the side quests to take. Weapons degrade as you use them, so finding a "legendary" weapon was exciting, but not as exciting as finding a workbench to keep weapons in tip-top shape. Med kits were few and far between in my experience, so scavenging for energy drinks and fruit - which have to be used at that moment and can't be stored - became part of the experience. You have a limited stamina bar, so you can't run or swing your weapon forever. I didn't think "Oh, I'll just let him get me and restart back there." You rarely feel safe in Dead Island, and that's how a zombie game should be. When I sprinted away from a zombie and heard its growls directly behind me, my heart pounded in my chest. Any damage you inflicted before heading to the great beyond remains. If you croak, you wait five seconds and respawn with less money. Dead Island doesn't really punish you for dying. Objectively speaking - like, right now from my keyboard and not playing the actual game - that's a stupid thing to say. No longer was I playing a game - I was focusing on survival as if I were the one running from Point A to Point B. In the beginning, I'd slaughter every zombie I saw, but by the time I got to the city and found tight alleyways overrun with monsters, I began to just run from objective to objective. I listened for the screams of the infected or the roar of a damage sponge known as a "Thug." From that perspective, I was on the island not my character. I crept into and through each environment I came to, from beaches to sewers to jail cells. Dead Island's strength is in the world it creates. But Dead Island doesn't succeed because of its gore (though I liked the dismemberment). When you sit down to play, you'll choose one of four characters and for the next 20 to 30-some hours roam massive maps, take on interesting side quests, and chop the heads off hundreds of ghouls. The story didn't set my hair on fire, but everything else makes up for it. Play On a small island off the coast of Papua New Guinea, the dead walk.
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