So I feel like we didn’t see enough of Dead Island 2 to do a full writeup — a small, hands-off combat prototype was shown — but I did obtain one small piece of information that I feel is utterly vital: Dead Island 2 will have something similar to the ‘Analog’ combat option seen in the first two games. (That’s good news)
For those of you who are new to the Dead Island franchise, let me fill you in: Analog is what makes playing Dead Island worthwhile. The default option has you mashing the right trigger to swing your weapon, but with Analog, you hold down the left trigger to enter a stance and then use the right stick to control your melee swings. Once you get used to it, you can spend the whole game smashing in the heads you want and cutting off the limbs you want instead of relying on the random number deity to provide the fun.
As you can imagine, when it came time for our Dead Island theater demo, I had but one question on my cranium: where’s the Analog combat? According to Carsten Linder, Senior Producer at Deep Silver, the combat has been reworked and players will have the ability to control their swings. He didn’t have much to say beyond that, but this is an encouraging start! Hopefully we hear something about named loot soon.
Dead Island 2 is currently set for Spring 2015, adding yet another contender to the already towering list of games coming out next year.
