The combat system encourages constant movement, with dodges, kicks, and jumps all integral parts. Twenty or so dead zeds later, I find that – while it does still have a bit of that ‘waving a stick around’ feel a lot of first-person melee falls foul of – Dead Island 2 has got a few good ideas powering its battles. Thankfully my search for the Blood Drive brings me to Santa Monica Pier, and the line for the ferris wheel is full of undead ready to be crash-test dummies. That gore is all well and good, but the combat that leads to that bloodshed needs to be just as accomplished. On more than a couple of occasions I have to pause just to laugh off a new, ridiculous mess I’ve made. It was definitely worth the development time and effort at least in the short term, the copious amounts of wet, chunky gore proves incredibly entertaining. You can even tear the undead apart with your bare hands courtesy of Fury mode, an Ultimate-like ability powered by the zombie infection that slowly floods your veins over the course of the story.įuelling all this splatter is a bespoke system Dambuster calls ‘FLESH’ (Fully Locational Evisceration System for Humanoids), which procedurally shreds zombies with each strike. Flames char skin and melt muscle, leaving just blackened skeletons behind. Flesh slices open, guts spill out, and limbs fly off bodies. While guns are an occasionally valid option, brutally gory melee combat is Damnbuster’s big focus for Dead Island 2. But for now, the only thing to care about is butchering zombies in increasingly horrific ways. At this mid-point in the campaign, I’m on a beach searching for a laptop containing a ‘Blood Drive’ for plot reasons that I’m sure will make more sense once I’ve played the preceding hours. The final version will support three-player co-op, for now I’m stuck solo in what Dambuster affectionately calls ‘Hell A’ a bright and bizarre Los Angeles that’s been devastated by a recent zombie outbreak. The short demonstration puts me in control of Amy, one of six different playable characters. In fact, much of what I’ve played looks reasonably similar to the gameplay we saw of the original version, but with a few modern upgrades. Despite all this, that sun-soaked, humorous, pulpy vision from the original trailer remains. Rather than continuing its predecessors’ work, Dambuster has built a new version of Dead Island 2 entirely from scratch. While that vision was first put together by Yager Development, and then passed onto Sackboy: A Big Adventure creator Sumo Digital, Dead Island 2 is now in the hands of Dambuster Studios, the folks behind Homefront: The Revolution. Yager said it originally planned to have the game completed for spring 2015, but a 2016 delay would ensure “a better game to play as a result.” By July, Deep Silver announced it had pulled Yager from the project.Īt the end of last month, Yager announced the sub-division of the company which was working on the title had filed for insolvency.ĭeep Silver has yet to announce a replacement studio.Despite a long absence, Dead Island 2 is still what it originally set out to be: an open-world, co-op, California-set sequel to Techland’s well-received (if incredibly shonky) original. Rumors stating the game had been delayed into fall 2015 sprang up in April of this year, and a few days later, Deep Silver confirmed the new, stating the game would be released in 2016 instead. It was also announced as being developed by Yager. "I hope that we will see some more Dead Island in the future and I hope that Yager is not affected that much as it may seem right now."ĭead Island 2 was rumored to be in the works at Yager back in 2012, a rumor which Deep Silver denied at the time.Ī couple of years later at E3 2014, the game was officially revealed for a spring 2015 release on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. You're never happy that some other developer failed. "When something like that happens in the game dev industry it's always sad news. "It could have been us, basically," he said. Smektala said he was disappointed to hear the "sad news" of Yager being pulled from Dead Island 2 by Deep Silver, because "you're never happy" when you hear of such situations occuring within the game industry. "As long as someone would be able to find something that would make them different, that would draw a clear line, and I think that's doable." "I think there is a place for both to strive in the market. "I personally would love to go back to Dead Island because I really love that game," he said. Speaking with Videogamer at gamescom, Smektala said Dead Island is the studio's "child" so it still has a "strong connection" to the IP. Should Deep Silver want Techland to take over development of the troubled Dead Island 2 project, all it has to do is ask, according to the studio's Tymon Smektala.
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