Dead Island 2

Introduction

Dead Island 2 sends you across a zombie-ravaged, sunlit Los Angeles in the "HELL-A" outbreak, slicing, bludgeoning and electrocuting undead with a physics-driven gore system the series built its reputation on. Developed by Dambuster Studios and published by Deep Silver, it originally released 21 April 2023 on PlayStation, Xbox and PC — the PC version exclusive to the Epic Games Store for a year — before arriving on Steam in April 2024. It sits at a lifetime Mostly Positive 77.4% across 28,854 reviews, with recent sentiment holding at a similar 76.5%. This review reads a substantial share of both samples and finds a genuinely fun action game whose Steam-specific reception is dominated by one issue almost entirely separate from the moment-to-moment gameplay.

Combat that earns its reputation

Where this review's sample agrees almost without exception is on the core loop. Reviewers repeatedly single out the gore system and combat feel as genuinely excellent — visceral, physics- driven dismemberment paired with a build system that rewards experimenting with weapon mods and character skills. Visual presentation earns similarly strong, consistent praise, with the game's sun-drenched Los Angeles setting drawing specific compliments even from reviewers otherwise disappointed elsewhere. This is the throughline across nearly the entire sample: whatever else a given review says, the act of fighting zombies in Dead Island 2 lands well for most players who try it.

An Epic problem, specifically on the platform meant to avoid it

The single dominant topic in this review's Steam-specific sample is not the game itself but its Steam release's dependency on Epic Online Services. Reviewers report the game force-installing Epic's backend service on launch and, per multiple detailed accounts, refusing to function properly — including offline single-player — without a live connection to it, regardless of whether a player opts into cross-play or Epic account linking. The scale and specificity of this reaction is unusual: the most-upvoted review on the entire Steam page is a technical walkthrough for disabling the service by deleting specific game folders and editing configuration files, and it sits alongside dozens of similarly detailed reviews reporting the same experience independently. One reviewer frames the irony plainly: the whole point of a Steam release arriving a year after Epic exclusivity was to let players buy the game "where it belongs," away from Epic's launcher — and found the dependency persisted anyway. This review reports what a large, consistent share of the corpus documents rather than independently auditing Epic's backend, but the volume and technical detail involved make it a serious, credible pattern rather than a fringe complaint.

A story that ends before it develops

Set apart from the Epic Games issue, this review's sample raises a second, more conventional criticism: narrative depth. Several reviewers describe the story as thin scaffolding for the combat rather than a reason to keep playing, and multiple specifically call out the ending as arriving abruptly, "just when the story get interesting." A recurring comparison to Dying Light captures the tenor of the more measured criticism — "not bad," in one reviewer's words, but leaving them wishing they were playing the genre's stronger narrative entry instead. None of this reads as a dealbreaker for most of the sample, but it's a consistent enough thread to note plainly for anyone buying primarily for story.

Final Verdict

Dead Island 2 delivers exactly what its combat and gore system promise, and that's enough for a large majority of this review's sample to recommend it despite real reservations elsewhere. Its story is thin and ends abruptly, and repetition sets in for some players over a full playthrough — but neither of those is what dominates its Steam-specific reputation. That distinction belongs to Epic Online Services being forced onto a release that exists specifically to let players avoid Epic's ecosystem, a well-documented, technically detailed complaint spanning thousands of reviews. Buy it for genuinely satisfying zombie combat, and check the current state of that dependency, ideally via recent reviews, before committing if it matters to you.