GORE! Sorry. We wanted to prepare you for what you’re about to click on. Dead Island 2’s goal is to be the goriest game out there, and the Dead Island 2 Welcome To HELL-A Trailer doesn’t hold back. In fact, it can’t hold back because everything is so slippery with blood and viscera.
The trailer debuted as part of a larger showcase event that publishers Plaion hosted today. The showcase is more than just a look at the game. It’s a meta live-action short movie, where three survivors have discovered a classic Hollywood home to hole up in. As they wander the house, they recognize the former owner. A famous director, “behind the worst video game movie adaptations”. Though the character is not named Uwe Boll, he should be proud that his legacy remains intact. During the showcase, the three survivors come across a trailer for Dead Island 2, which gives a short, sharp look at “HELL.A.” Here’s what they watched.
L.A. has fallen to a zombie apocalypse. Smoke billows across that skyline; the famous landmarks and boulevards are filled with the undead. But it’ll take more than that to bring the City of Angels down to earth. A few locked doors and electrified fences have saved a healthy population of survivors, and they are trying to keep their, ahem, “L.A. lifestyles” going. You can play as one of four survivors in the rot and decay.
And what decay it is. The procedural dismemberment takes a step beyond typical body horror and into anatomical atrocities, where fat, muscle, organs, bone, and skin all react together in a gruesome symphony of gore. The zombies are in various stages of decomposition. You can come across relatively solid ex-humans with enough flesh on their bones to slice and dice. Others are barely held together bags of bones, their collarbones flapping out of ragged chests as they lurch at you. One punch is enough to split the skull of a zombie in one attack. Another zombie attack is thwarted when its arms simply fall into the player’s hands.
Befitting the ultimate gated community that L.A. has now become, the city is awash with tools and weapons, giving you unique opportunities to act as the ultimate undertaker to the undead. A common wrench can kneecap a rotter, dropping the dead thing to the ground and letting you follow up with a head-splitting swing. Dropping a car battery into a pool will electrocute everyone. Katanas, machetes, swords, hammers (various sizes), bear claws, and guns can be found in the ruins and customized to apply various effects when used. You can have a literal fire-axe, one that combines an axe with welding equipment and burns every chunk of flesh it meets. Our favorite, though, is when a spiked high-heel shoe is used as a melee weapon. Classy and brutal.
And, of course, with zombies and viruses, there are the inevitable mutations. You’ll see, smart ones, powerful ones, puking ones, noisy ones, and clowns! Even the player themselves is part zombie: the infection has made them immune to turning fully, but you’ll have moments of zombie strength that give you the power to rip and tear with your hands, turning the whole game on its head. You will become the thing the undead fears the most.
Dead Island 2’s release date recently slipped on some spilled innards. It’ll be out April 28, 2023. You can pre-purchase it now on the Epic Games Store.