Welcome to my first selection box for Rock Paper Shotgun, where I get to pick my favourite games of 2023 that didn't make it into our Advent Calendar draw. In anticipation of your judgment incoming, I'd like to preface this list by saying I didn't play nearly as many games as I should have this year (something echoed by other RPS staffers). My pile of shame is ever-growing, but here are a few games I did play and actually liked.
]]>I was mixed on Dambusters' Dead Island 2 - I thought the combat had flair but not much depth, loved the game's decadently disastrous Los Angeles, but hated how exploration boiled down to nosing around for crafting materials. The game's first story DLC expansion, Haus, amps up the weirdness of the environments by transporting you to a "surreal, psycho-horror dreamscape" in blissful Malibu.
There are flashes of Glass Onion and The Menu here, but I was reminded just as much of the eerier parts of Bioshock, that underwater monument to crackpot billionaires with far too much time on their hands. Here's a video of the opening.
]]>Dambuster Studios have offered up a rough roadmap of what we can expect from the pair of upcoming Dead Island 2 story expansions. The first of the two expansions, titled Haus, asks the question, "How does a billionaire prepare for the zompocalypse?" and answers that with "a techno-death cult with a healthy splash of debauchery and gore!". Sounds about right. This first expansion has quite a vague release window, expected to launch some time between October and December this year.
]]>Can you imagine if Dead Island 2 didn’t arrive with actually-quite-good PC performance? All those years, all those developers, and it turned out rubbish? Perish the thought. But nah, Dambuster Studios have ensured it finally hits shelves in a solid technical state; a welcome return to standards for the big-name gamesmaking biz, which has largely spent 2023 chucking out sub-par PC ports.
]]>Looking for Jamal's Crate Key in Dead Island 2? In Dead Island 2, you'll find plenty of locked boxes that require specific keys to open. As you explore the Halperin Hotel, one box requires Jamal's Crate Key, but it's seemingly nowhere to be found. That's because Jamal's Crate Key will only spawn during a specific side quest.
In this guide, we'll break down where to find Jamal's Crate Key in Dead Island 2, so that you can open Jamal's Stash and get the powerful weapon contained within.
]]>Looking for the Poolside Container Key in Dead Island 2? As you explore the Halperin Hotel in Dead Island 2, you'll find a locked bio container by the pool. It requires the Poolside Container Key, but you can't actually find this until much later in the game.
In this guide, we'll break down where to find the Poolside Container Key in Dead Island 2, so that you can crack open this suspicious box and get your hands on the loot inside.
]]>Looking for the Laundry Room Locker Key in Dead Island 2? As you explore the Halperin Hotel in Dead Island 2, you'll find many locked safes and containers that you can't access without specific keys. While many are hidden around the hotel itself, the Laundry Room Locker Key is particularly elusive. That's because it's found by killing a special zombie, which can only spawn upon returning to the Halperin Hotel later in the game.
In this guide, we'll break down where to find the Laundry Room Locker Key in Dead Island 2, so that you can get your hands on the powerful weapon locked inside.
]]>Looking for Curtis' Garage Key in Dead Island 2? There are a few keys that you'll need to fully explore Curtis Sinclair's mansion in Dead Island 2, but Curtis' Garage Key is rather hard to find. If you've been busy scouring every room in the mansion for Curtis' Garage Key and have found yourself empty-handed, and a bit frustrated, then you're in the right place.
In this guide, we'll show you where to find Curtis' Garage Key in Dead Island 2, so that you can enter his garage and use the Workbench within.
]]>Looking for Coach's Car Keys in Dead Island 2? On the streets of Bel-Air in Dead Island 2, you'll find a locked car that requires Coach's Car Keys to unlock. However, Coach's Car Keys are not marked on the map, making them particularly difficult to track down without some help.
In this guide, we'll show you where to find Coach's Car Keys in Dead Island 2, so that you can unlock Coach's car and get your hands on a powerful weapon.
]]>Looking for Curtis' Safe Key in Dead Island 2? During the "Death of the Party" side quest in Dead Island 2, you'll likely spend a while hunting around for Curtis' Safe Key. Curtis' Safe is right there, after all, so surely the key is hidden somewhere around here? The answer is "kind of", but you won't be able to find it until much later in the game.
In this guide, we'll break down where to find Curtis' Safe Key in Dead Island 2, so that you can unlock Curtis' Safe and get your hands on a powerful new weapon.
]]>Looking for Brock's Safe Key in Dead Island 2? When you arrive at the Goat Pen influencer mansion in Dead Island 2, you'll find a safe marked on your map. However, you'll also discover that the safe, known as the Safe of Broseidon, is locked and requires Brock's Safe Key to get inside.
In this guide, we'll break down where to find Brock's Safe Key in Dead Island 2, so that you can unlock the Safe of Broseidon and get your hands on a superior-tier weapon.
]]>Looking for the Goat Pen Master Keys in Dead Island 2? The Goat Pen is an influencer house in Bel-Air in Dead Island 2, but you'll notice while exploring that a few doors require the Goat Pen Master Keys. If you want to fully explore this influencer mansion and get your hands on some seriously sweet loot, then you're in the right place.
In this guide, we'll break down where to find the Goat Pen Master Keys in Dead Island 2, so that you can see everything this mansion has to offer.
]]>Looking for the Landscaper's Key in Dead Island 2? Outside of Emma Jaunt's Bel-Air mansion in Dead Island 2, you'll find a locked box that requires a Landscaper's Key to unlock. However, the Landscaper's Key seems to be nowhere in sight. The key is actually hidden in another Bel-Air mansion, but you'll need to progress much further into the story before you can find it.
In this guide, we'll break down where to find the Landscaper's Key in Dead Island 2, so that you can unlock the crate found near Emma Jaunt's mansion.
]]>Want to know how to fast travel in Dead Island 2? Dead Island 2 doesn't feature a big, seamless open world. Instead, it's a series of 10 zones to explore, tied together through loading screens. As some quests make you dart between zones like a proper Hell-A tourist, backtracking can become particularly painful if you don't use fast travel.
Dead Island 2 fast travel is an oddity, though, as you can't just whip open the map and select your preferred zone. In this guide, we'll explain how to fast travel in Dead Island 2, so you can zip around the map and tick off quests at incredible speed.
]]>What time does Dead Island 2 release? After a huge 12 year wait, Dead Island 2 is finally here. Jetting over from the island of Banoi to a post-apocalyptic LA (or Hell-A, as it's dubbed in-game), Dead Island 2 brings back the co-op zombie smacking that many fell in love with over a decade ago.
If you're desperate to dive straight into Hell-A, then you're in the right place. In this guide, we'll break down the exact Dead Island 2 release time across a range of timezones, so that you can hop right in at launch. We'll also cover the price and various editions that you can pick up, along with info on the download size so that you can clear some space on your storage device.
]]>I’m too prejudiced against first-person melee games to enjoy Dead Island 2 as much our reviewer Rick Lane did, but even a mind as narrowed as mine can appreciate its slick performance on PC. I wanted to see how well that smoothness and stability would carry over to the Steam Deck, and although the long-delayed zombie mulcher needs some cuts to quality settings, finding the right balance will have Dead Island 2 running almost as comfortably as the very best Steam Deck games.
]]>Want to play Dead Island 2 multiplayer? Smacking zombies with your pals is always a good time, so you'll be glad to know that you can play multiplayer in Dead Island 2. Whether you want to form a kickass co-op crew of zombie slayers or need some help clearing some of the game's toughest missions, then you're in the right place.
In this guide, we'll break down how to play Dead Island 2 multiplayer, so that you can form your own slayer squad in co-op with your friends.
]]>To pre-empt your first question, no, Dead Island 2 was not worth waiting eleven years for. In its defence, however, few things are. If George Romero had taken over a decade to make Night Of The Living Dead, the fact it takes place largely in a basement would look less like canny guerrilla filmmaking and more like staggering incompetence. It only took NASA eight years to put men on the moon from the point they started trying, which puts the value of many inhibited projects (like my folder of unfinished novels) into depressingly sharp relief.
Dead Island 2 does not put zombies on the moon, though given how daft the main game is, don't rule out a Dead Island 2: Moon's Haunted expansion shambling your way in late 2023. Yet that doesn't mean it's a bad game. In fact, it's quite an enjoyable one. Together, Deep Silver and Dambuster Studios have raised a moderately entertaining sequel to Techland's ye olde zombie survival sim, one that injects some life into its desiccated subject matter by being incredibly shiny, wilfully silly, spectacularly gory, and generally a touch more imaginative than I expected.
]]>Looking for the Dead Island 2 release date? After nine, count 'em, NINE years since the initial reveal, Dead Island 2 is finally almost here. Shifting from the island of Banoi to the streets of LA, Dead Island 2 puts you back in control of a kickass zombie slayer who must hack and slash their way through the undead hordes. If you're counting down the days until you can split zombie skulls in Hell-A, then you're in the right place.
In this guide, you'll find the Dead Island 2 release date, along with information about when you can preload and the download size.
]]>Developer Dambuster Studios have shared the system requirements for their zombie masher Dead Island 2 ahead of its release on April 21st. Most of the game’s requirements seem pretty standard for a modern open-world game, although you’ll need some pretty powerful CPUs and GPUs to run the sequel at recommended settings and above. Ripping into hordes in graphic details might cost you.
]]>Walking around the deserted streets of Los Angeles - and you can take your leisure, in Dead Island 2, because most zombies are quite shambly - I encountered many a rich-person decor. Last week, I was given a preview build of the upcoming first-person zombie-smasher and played about the first five hours of it in single-player, taking in sights like a community of gated millionaire mansions, a slightly less palacious but still ridiculous neighbourhood, and an upmarket hotel styled after the famous Beverly Hills Hotel. They're all full of weird stuff.
There's a panic room where a guy turned into a zombie mid-demo tape recording. Actress Emma, who you're battening down the hatches with, has a truly awful full-length Burt Reynoldsian portrait of herself. A shared house called the GOAT PEN, where a team of influencers all live together, has a set for a video series called LIT OR SH!T, and a whiteboard with the script for an apology video. I ask the game director David Stenton if it's low hanging fruit, or if there's no such thing with Hollywood rich people. "Of course, it's low hanging fruit!" he says, laughing. "And also, there's no such thing."
]]>I was going to do this as a sidebar in my larger article previewing Dead Island 2, but then I realised it would be a sidebar of about 800 words, which is not a sidebar Alice, for God's sake, pull yourself together. Dead Island 2 is set in LA, known as HellA as a little play on words, because it's full of zombies now. Your job is to smash a lot of them to pieces with a hammer, like so many sausages and balloons full of blood held together by sellotape. In the course of this, you find yourself merrily looting your way through the homes of the rich and famous, stuffing as many screws and bits of scrap metal into your pants as the elastic can handle (I assume; none of the player character options has a backpack). Notable among things I couldn't find when I went looking for them: the bastard keys.
]]>Dead Island 2 seems destined to be a competent but unoriginal take on the zombie smashing genre. I am undecided if I find the prospect an entertaining diversion or a mind-numbing waste of time, but a new, extended 14-minute demonstration might help you make up your mind.
]]>Dead Island 2 has been a long time coming, suffering from multiple delays and being passed around a gazillion different dev teams. But today, the game’s official Twitter announced the zombie slasher had gone gold and would be arriving a week early on April 21st, breaking the decade-long tradition of delay-related news.
]]>Want to know the Dead Island 2 release date? It has been almost a decade since the original Dead Island 2 reveal, and it suffered countless delays during that time. The troubled development, during which it swapped developers multiple times, left many of us wondering what to expect from Dead Island 2 and if it would ever release.
Fortunately, the long-anticipated sequel recently resurfaced at Gamescom 2022, and we now know that the wait is almost over. If the journey to launch has left you feeling a bit confused, then you're in the right place, as we're here to break down everything we know about Dead Island 2.
In this guide, we'll explain everything we know about Dead Island 2, including the release date, platforms, a look at various trailers, and details about the gameplay, combat, and story. We'll also provide our hands-on thoughts from two previews, which were done eight years apart.
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Crikey, there are a lot of games coming out this year, aren't there? When I first asked the team to put together their most anticipated games for 2023, I was thinking we'd have a reasonably sensible number of things we were all looking forward to, you know, somewhere in the region of the 43 games we highlighted at the start of 2022. Very quickly, though, it became apparent that, actually, there are simply loads of games the RPS Treehouse is personally excited about this year, and cor, it would be rude not to include every last one of them. I'll be upfront: there are a fair number of TBA games on here that probably aren't going to come out in 2023, but as ever, we remain hopeful and optimistic all the same. So let's dive in.
]]>Early in tonight's Dead Island 2's showcase, a character in a live action segment makes a self-referential joke that live action trailers set unreasonable expectations for video games. Let me tell you now: that is not true. I'd wager the writing and acting will be more believable in the game than in this live action short.
At the showcase's centre of those wasted 15 minutes was, at least, a new viscera-slick trailer of the actual Dead Island 2. So you can watch that below.
]]>Deep Silver and Dambuster Studios have scheduled a showcase for upcoming zombie-thwacking action RPG Dead Island 2. You can tune in on YouTube on December 6th at 8pm GMT/9pm CET/1pm PT, for some “action, gore and zombies”, they say. Ahead of that though, we’ve been introduced to another member of the game’s expanding cast of the still-living. New undead slayer Amy has been given her own teaser trailer, which you can watch here.
]]>Following a nearly decade-long tradition, Dead Island 2 has been delayed. The co-op zombie smasher has slipped from its intended February 3rd 2023 release date and will now target release on April 28th 2023.
]]>It wouldn't be Gamescom without a Geoff Keighley liveshow to kick it all off, would it? Tuesday's Opening Night Live showcase featured a huge amount of trailers to gawk at, a baggage carousel of content that moved at a blistering clip. Despite its two hour runtime a lot of interesting (and in most cases, new) titles weren't given a huge amount space to breathe, their moment in the spotlight frequently cut short by another trailer waiting impatiently in the wings.
]]>Eight years ago Graham (who used to be to blame for all of this) got hands-on with Dead Island 2, back when the game was being developed by Yager, the folks behind Spec Ops: The Line. Since then, development changed hands like a baton at the Olympic relay; Yager left a year later, to be replaced by Sumo Digital, only for Sumo Digital to leave and be replaced by Dambuster Studios. Usain Bolt hasn't expressed interest yet, but there's time.
So going into a 20-minute hands-on with the game in the year 2022, I was a bit apprehensive. What sort of Frankenstinian horror awaited me behind closed doors? But, far from a shambling mess, what I played was a zombie 'em up that seemed close to what Graham saw in 2014, only polished up to a surprising, bloody gloss.
]]>Dead Island 2 will launch on February 3rd 2023, today’s Gamescom Opening Night Live event has revealed, confirming the details from last week's big Amazon leak. By that point, it’ll have been almost nine years since the zombie-bashing game was first announced at E3 2014. Gaze in astonishment at the existence of a new trailer below.
]]>Just like the zombies that’ll presumably shamble around in it, Dead Island 2 keeps clinging on to life. Newly posted product listings for the console versions on Amazon US have shed some dying light – sorry – on the eternally-in-development horror game, first announced eight years ago at E3 2014. Here’s that infamous trailer once again, just for old times sake.
]]>June is here and the smell of E3 is in the air. Social media managers are making vague, cheeky posts about their games that don't yet have release dates. Fans are wondering if the 23rd entry in their favorite series will be announced. In among all that excitement is always bound to be a reality check or so. Deep Silver have helpfully popped up to name four things that you don't need to get your hopes up for during any of the upcoming summer showcases. Saint's Row, TimeSplitters, Metro, and Dead Island are going to be keeping their collective heads down, they say.
]]>Six years after announcement, and we're still no closer to knowing when Dead Island 2 will shamble our way. Somewhat unexpectedly, though, that hasn't stopped a select few from getting their hands on a playable build of the thing. Sort of. This week, a 2015 build of Dead Island 2 emerged online, with videos and screenshots revealed Yager's long-buried vision of a multiplayer blood-in-the-sun sequel.
]]>Dead Island 2 is one of my favorite trailers of all time for a game I'd all but given up on seeing. Back in 2014, the studio Yager was developing the then announced title for Deep Silver, and in 2016 the production was moved to Sumo Digital. As a reminder, it is now 2018, so Dead Island 2 and its Santa Monica-ish muder-setting seem like they have been abandoned. That is, until, Deep Silver dropped a free-to-play tower defense game called Dead Island: Survivors. The Internet has some questions about whether this mobile tie-in was taking the place of the long gestating title, and Deep Silver responded.
]]>We all have different ways of dealing with loss. Some of us lash out and hurt others while some of us turn inwards and dwell on that pain. The Mammoth: A Cave Painting [official site] is a free game about loss and how we choose to overcome it.
]]>Polish studio Techland may have created open-world zombie-smashing FPS-RPG Dead Island, but publishers Deep Silver got the rights. That's how come Deep Silver went on to have folk make daft things like the MOBA-y Dead Island: Epidemic and baffling drek Escape Island while Techland went on to make another open-world zombie-smashing FPS-RPG in Dying Light.
Straight-up sequel Dead Island 2 [official site] was in the works at Spec Ops: The Line devs Yager, and this one actually looked promising. But its future is now looking as safe as a lecherous, wisecracking wino in a zombie flick, as Deep Silver have announced Yager are off the game.
]]>The original Dead Island was buggy, often sexist, sometimes racist, and frequently a chore to play. Then its expandalone Riptide added "offensively marketed" to that list.
Dead Island 2 has a new developer - Spec Ops: The Line's Yager - and therefore a chance at a fresh start. A chance to take all that ambition and promise and focus on what players actually liked about the original: co-op japes, a sunny open-world, and the ability to weld a battery onto a knife and use it to stabbily electrocute hundreds of undead. I played Dead Island 2 for 24 minutes at Gamescom and the whole approach seems prompted by saying, 'Hey, let's do the obvious things, and not do the awful things?'
]]>Hoboy are we ever a long, long way from the reverse-time harrowfest that was our first glimpse of Dead Island. Nevermind the tonal shift, this is a franchise now, with sequels and spin-offs. Dead Island 2 got its first showing during E3 with a cinematic trailer that didn't quite have the same impact as the original. Now Yager (yeah, those guys) have shown off what their California-based undead-destructinator is like to play.
Spoiler warning: graphic mutilation of reanimated corpses.
]]>In comparison to the original Dead Island trailer, Dead Island 2's announcement video is more honest than Abe and Cherry Tree Washington combined. You remember that trailer, right? The one that broke a thousand hearts when it debuted and then broke them again when the game was more like a first-person Dead Rising than a mourning simulator? Dead Island 2 is just holding its hands in the air and admitting to the world that it's at the dafter end of the zombie spectrum. No introspection here - it's a game about beautiful beach bodies rotting in the sun while the world points, laughs and decapitates the poor sods.
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