The reviews treat Dead Island 2 as a small miracle — a game that spent a decade getting handed between studios and somehow came out a confident, gory, B-movie zombie game. The praise lands on the FLESH gore system, which everyone calls out by name, and the willingness to lean into camp instead of pretending to be serious. The reservations are about the rigid level structure and a story nobody really expected anything from.
People recommend it the way you'd recommend a slasher movie — great with a friend, don't pay full price, lean into how dumb it is. The gore and weapon-mod systems get near-universal credit. The complaints come from people expecting open-world or deeper progression, which the game never set out to provide.
It's exactly what it looks like and exactly what it promises. Buy it on sale, play it co-op, expect zero narrative resonance. The two-point gap is rounding error.
Data last updated: May 29, 2026