Improve your slide attack damage, press R3 to boost your jump kick, things like that. While certain enemies are resistant to certain types of attacks - a zombie in protective firefighter gear doesn’t care much for fire-based attacks, for example - skill cards change how you heal, hit, and kick in broad strokes. I like playing defence, so I keep early Abilities cards like Dodge, which stuns enemies when you avoid their attack, and Slayer cards like The Limb Reaper, which lets me maim a zombie for health, around for the entire game. There are a huge amount of cards to discover and then choose from, all impacting certain aspects of your Slayer’s defensive, offensive, or Autophage qualities, those last being potent abilities that turn you into more of a zombie, at the expense of your health.īut I often ignore my full breadth of options. That might not sound like much room for tailor-making your Slayer, but I find it easy to work with. The top of the pyramid, where the standard Abilities card type resides, has five total slots, then protective Survivor cards get four, and it decreases from there. I keep her running with skill cards I pick up around the city and from downed enemies, and add them to my editable deck, which is arranged in a four-card-tall half pyramid. I guide her in first-person around the game’s balmy but bleeding version of modern Los Angeles, occasionally seeing her long shadow, or her stained weapon, or her hands, which she stares at intently upon discovering zombie bites don’t immediately turn her to a maggoty killing machine. I experience it all as Dani, one of six playable Slayers you select early in the game with innate skills (I choose Dani because she regains health for killing zombies in succession).

Dead Island 2 is an entertaining gorefest, and it only ever slips when it tries to be more than that. Dan Evans-Lawes, technical director at publisher Deep Silver, said the game had “basically a complete restart” once it landed, finally, in developer Dambuster Studios’ hands.

The game you’ll get later this week, on April 21, is not that 2014 game, nor is it the astonishing product of nine years of arduous programming.

Dead island 2 review