Last year, Deep Silver published the long-awaited Dead Island 2 to a decent amount of praise, but it wasn’t exactly earth-shattering. However, if you’ve not had a chance to play it yet, you can now download it through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
According to a recent post on the Dead Island website, you’ll get access to the base game on Xbox, which includes co-op functionality. This means that the Deluxe and Gold editions of the sequel aren’t on Game Pass, but at least you can play the main game.
The website also says there are “PROS rewards” and “Twitch drops” as well, adding that “if you’re feeling brave, take on the challenge of dismembering 1000 limbs to claim the legendary Malibu Nightstick bat.”
Dead Island 2 was originally in development by Techland, who did the first game before going on to do Dying Light. The project was then handed to Spec Ops: The Line studio Yager Development with a proposed 2015 release.
Eventually, Dambuster Studios – which was set up by Deep Silver – took over in 2019 where the game finally emerged in April 2023, almost 12 years after the first installment.
It didn’t really leave a huge impact on the gaming world, especially in an era in which the zombie genre feels like old hat at this point. Still, it has a Metacritic score of 73, which is pretty decent.
Honestly, if you have Game Pass Ultimate, it’s probably worth checking Dead Island 2 out. If nothing else, just for all that sheer gore and zombie dismemberment goodness.
