Dead Island 2 – SoLA, the second big story expansion for the zombie bashing sequel, is out now, taking players to a Californian music festival to battle yet more hordes of the undead.
The SoLA music festival was unfortunately built on “ancient ground”, which means there’s potentially an even more supernatural twist to the already outlandish zombie virus that has ravaged LA. Now you’ll be fighting zombies in the glammed up setting of a music festival, with a psychadelic beat pumping out from the plethora of loud speakers around the site – the Beat of the Autophage is apparently responsible for festival goers’ trnsformations.
There’s some fresh malevolence here for you to hunt down and put an end to. New enemies such as The Whipper and Clotter will mix up the familiar close quarters first person combat of the game, and you’ll have a new Ripper – a baseball bat with a circular saw on it – and Sawblade Launcher to help rip and tear.
SoLA is the second DLC for Dead Island 2 in the two-part expansion pass, following on from Haus in November, which delved into a “surreal, psycho-horror dreamscape” of a billionaire’s techno-death cult. This could be the end of the content updates for Dead Island 2, which was a solid success after years and years of development at multiple studios. Will Dambuster now get to work on Dead Island 3? That feels quite likely.
Alongside the expansion is Update #5 for Dead Island 2, with some quality of life improvements, bugs zapped and some skill tweaks. Here’s the patch notes:
General
- Fixed Out of Memory crashes on Gen 8 consoles [PS4, Xbox One]
- Implemented a variety of fixes for crashes and to further improve stability
- Fixed an issue where the ‘Legendary’ challenge may not mark as complete upon fulfilling requirements
- Fixed an issue where the ‘Ooh Shiny’ Achievement may not unlock upon fulfilling requirements
- The ‘Heavy Hitter’ skill card will now correctly increase the players heavy attack damage
- The ‘Big Shot’ weapon will now properly activate on hit/kill perks and skill cards
- Uncommon elemental mods damage has been slightly increased
- Fixed an issue with ‘Rallying Cry’ showing the wrong buff icon to clients
- Balanced the damage output of the ‘Ground Pound’ & ‘Quake’ combo
- Balanced the damage output of the ‘Dash Strike’ & ‘Hammer Fist’ combo
Haus
Fixed a hard lock caused by saving and quitting twice during the ‘Dinner Date’ quest
Dead Island 2 Review
In our Dead Island 2 review, I said, “Dead Island 2 does a great job of reanimating this dormant zombie-battling series, with the gore-filled combat and excessive weaponry that goes well with the oversaturated LA setting. It’s an enjoyable romp, but at the same time, ironically feels like it’s playing it safe.”
