The SoLA dlc has probably the best biome of the entire Dead Island 2 package. The Coachella vibes are great and the map is really unlike anything I have ever played in a game like this. It feels fresh and looks phenomenal visually.

From a gameplay POV, this DLC adds two new enemy types and is hellbent on throwing them at you at every possible instant. In general, the SoLA just throws all the enemy types at you and it's absolutely exhausting. I get it, you want to challenge your players. But god damn. The amount of times an enemy would trigger my character's tumbling down animation is insane. This was an issue in the main game as well but it happened to me so frequently in SoLA that I felt like a good chuck of my playthrough was spent watching the tumbling down animation play out only to then die by from environmental damage. It blows. Like Haus, this DLC also does nothing to the level cap, which is a bummer since there's loot everywhere and all of it is useless because anyone who played the DI2 story has been max leveled for a long time now.

The last boss of the DLC is great and one of the most creative bosses of Dead Island 2. I liked that. But yeah, this DLC ended up accentuating issues I already had with Dead Island 2 and soured me a bit on it. It's not bad. It's an impressive package. Just not one I enjoyed all that much.

Got through the entirety of Dead Island 2 over the course of a few months with a friend of mine. Pretty good!

I remember feeling so ripped off by the first Dead Island game way back in 2011, so going into this one, my expectations weren't very high. Especially factoring in the whole development hell this game went through.

For game that went through as many development restarts as it did, Dead Island 2 turned out about as good as it possibly could. It's strength and weakness lies in it's simplicity. It's a no-brainer (haha) to pick up and play. Within minutes, I was chucking limbs off of zombies and soaking in the great looking environments. The skill card system is alright and I felt like it added some fun customization options to the combat but it also wasn't very deep. Eventually, the game boils down to just doing big damage numbers to enemies and farming your ultimate attack.

It's maybe 25% too long? I platinumed this in about 25 hours and by the end, it felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again. Dead Island really doesn't change enough from the first few minutes of the game to the last few minutes of the game to make it stand out as something truly great. But the hack and slash mechanics are just fun enough to make this easy to recommend, especially in coop.

Good game. Even better coop. Just don't expect it to do anything too crazy. What you see is what you get with this one.

I was in a nostalgic mood and felt like re-visiting this one via the remaster.

It's funny how this game has all of the same problems as I remember, yet I still like it. The atmosphere is cozy, Kat is a fun protagonist and the gravity powers are still unique. No game out there plays quite like Gravity Rush. For better and for worse.

The combat stinks. Going up in the air to either launch a special attack or divekick towards pink balls gets old real fast. I would have MUCH rather Gravity Rush omit combat altogether to having this system in place. The story is also just fine I guess. The comic book cutscenes have a lot of personality to them and do help in setting a whimsical tone to the game. The music also helps a ton in this regard. It's a fun world to be in.

The thing I enjoyed doing the most were the gravity obstacle courses throughout the game. They often required I use the gravity powers in creative ways and were a lot of fun.

I platinumed this over the weekend and had a good time. Here's hoping the Gravity Rush 2 PS5 remaster is real. I'd love to revisit that one as well.