Dead Island 2 Gets a Gruesome Gameplay Preview

Dead Island 2’s promised gameplay showcase took place on Tuesday with a bit of gameplay, some live-action flair, and pre-order details revealed this week. The first part, the gameplay, is likely what people will be most interested in, and to that end, Dead Island fans looking forward to the sequel got about four minutes of gameplay to hold them over until the next presentation, gameplay that was surprisingly gory at times while still retaining Dead Island 2’s more lighthearted take on a zombie apocalypse.

The gameplay in question can be seen below with different mechanics, features, and gruesome animations shown off throughout. We see that the protagonist gets bit by a zombie at some point presumably early on and is “bitten, infected, somewhere between alive and dead,” the trailer explained. It seems that zombie bite “came with a little pop of Z power,” too, as evidenced by a part in the trailer where the player character goes into what we’ll call “zombie mode” and starts smacking zombie heads clean off their zombie shoulders.

That and other moments throughout the trailer get quite graphic at times. The game is big on plunging weapons through zombies’ heads, it would seem, with some grotesquely squishy and fleshy results. Even with eyeballs popping out and body parts rendered useless, however, there’s still somehow a cheekiness to it all to prevent it from being a straight up gorefest.

Pre-orders for the game have also been updated with new details on things like the contents included in the various special editions of the game, but if you’re just getting the base one, that’ll cost $69.99 on the newer PlayStation and Xbox consoles or $59.99 on the PC via the Epic Games Store. The “HELL-A Edition” which is one of the more premium versions of the game comes with things like some in-game content, the expansion pass, and physical goods such as a map and a SteelBook.

Dead Island 2, barring any other delays, is scheduled to be released on April 28th and will be available on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC platforms.