Xbox One runs at a native 1600x900 resolution with a 30fps target that's mostly stuck to - there are occasional hitches and single frame drops, triggered by UI changes or picking up a weapon, but it's a surprisingly smooth experience that shows evidence of plenty of optimisation and no signs of dynamic resolution scaling during our testing. Let's go through each of the consoles in turn, starting with the base Xbox One edition - the most constrained last-gen console. The biggest complaint then is that the game is a little lacking in ambition on the most powerful consoles, but at least the level design is beautifully dense with detail, with volumetric effects, screen-space reflections and body physics all included regardless of your chosen machine. Watch and enjoy the carnage.īeing a project that began before current-gen consoles were released - in fact, the game was announced a year after the release of the PS4 (!) - it's clear Dead Island 2 is optimised for last-gen machines, with a few upgrades beyond this for PS5, Series X or Series S, but no graphics mode toggles whatsoever. Dead Island 2 - the Digital Foundry video review. Suffice it to say that swords, guns and elemental dangers all have terrifyingly realistic consequences on the unfeeling zombie hordes, making this easily one of the most impressive parts of Dead Island 2's technical makeup. It's grim, disgusting stuff, achieved with real technical prowess. This proprietary tech simulates the physics of body dismemberment to a grisly level of detail, from clothing and skin to muscles, organs and even the skeleton beneath. Set to a sunny LA backdrop, Dead Island 2's focus on extreme gore is its trademark - with heavy violence, dismemberment and body physics, all enabled by the game's 'FLESH Engine' or 'Fully Locational Evisceration System for Humanoids'. Let's get the bloody stuff out of the way first. We'll also take a look at what visual upgrades can you expect by opting for the current-gen versions on PS5, Series X or Series S. In this article, we'll tackle those novel additions - and how the game runs on last-gen consoles, including PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One and Xbox One X.

Dead Island 2 also does more than you'd expect from a typical Unreal Engine 4 release, with some novel technical features added on by developers Dambusters that are definitely worth covering. Dead Island 2 has had a torturous road to release, arriving on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, last-gen consoles and PC some nine years after the game was first revealed - but there's a surprising level of technical polish evident across every console version.

Dead island 2 video game