Dead Island - Say Goodbye To Dead Rising 2

For me the new first-person zombie-splatter by the Polish game-developer Techland cleary is the unofficial sequel to Dead Rising 2. 

There are a lot of similarities regarding gameplay, mechanics and story. Obviously both games are video game realizations of the movie "Dawn of the Dead". Therefore you find yourself in a world crowded with brain eating zombies, with the goal to survive by all means.

So what exactly are those similarities?

In Dead Rising 2 you where able to pick up virtually every item lying around and use it as a lethal weapon against your opponents. Even teddies, guitars and giant lipsticks.
In Dead Island you can also grab frying-pans, hut-stands and shovels, besides the usual arsenal which consists of machetes, bats, axes and later guns. Usable items in Dead Island are not as funky as in Dead Rising, but a lawnmower would make no sense in a jungle!

Another fun aspect of Dead Rising 2 was that you could craft your own weapons at a workbench. Same is true for Dead Island! The workbench in Dead Island furthermore allows to upgrade existing weapons, improving their stats. This means increased damage and more durability. Yes you heard right, weapons in Dead Island also have durability. But unlike in Dead Rising you can repair broken items at the workbench! 

You earned experience and leveled up killing zombies in the Dead Rising series. This improved your stats and you could chose from different abilities. In Dead Island you level up killing zombies and according to the character you have chosen at the beginning you pick from individual abilities. Those either improve stats like attack or rage gain or grant new moves. (Rage is new to Dead Island: once activated you are granted superpowers for a short time.)

Even when it comes to brutality, both games are on the same level. If you think chopping limbs of in Dead Rising was fun, you will definitely love Dead Island. The more you progress in game, the more powerful weapons you get, with all the messy effects! 

More pros on Dead Island:

• Better graphics with high detailed environment, zombies and gore !
• Autosave function! oh how we hated saving our game in toilets...
• More authentic NPCs
• Deeper story
• Interesting side-quests

Dead Island is my recommendation for everyone who loved Dead Rising 2 for its splatter action, but always wished the game to have more depth. 

- Hawke