Dead Island 2, released last year, is already in its second DLC. After Haus in November, SoLA was released last month. We tested whether this expansion is worth a trip back to HELL-A.
SoLA offers nine new main missions and the story is quite simple. We are introduced to Grace who is trapped on the premises and under the influence of a mysterious ‘beat’ that has turned all the festival goers into zombies. Your job as a player is to investigate and try to stop this.
The expansion can be started somewhere halfway through the base game, but we don’t really recommend this. It is best to play through the full story first because SoLA offers the most difficult content in the game for the time being. Even with a well-leveled character, we got to see the ‘Death’ screen more than we wanted.
When entering the festival grounds, we were immediately impressed by the visual presentation. Of course, there are no narrow streets or dark sewers here, but an open meadow with a wide range of various stages and stands. They all have nice details and will appeal to many festival enthusiasts.
In terms of gameplay, very little changes. You punch, kick or shoot your way through countless zombies, but this expansion does contain two new enemies that make it feel a bit refreshing. The Whippers, who can do quite a bit of damage with their own intestines, and the Clotter, who can just disappear and then pop up somewhere else to bombard the player with projectiles from a distance. They are quickly placed together with other difficult enemies, which can increase the difficulty considerably.
Two new weapons have also been added to the game. The ‘Ripper’ is a baseball bat with a saw on the end that starts to spin faster the more you hit it, causing extra damage. It is a very nice addition, but we thought it was a shame that you simply have to buy it from a vending machine without the game informing you about this. There is also a weapon that can fire saw blades from a distance. We found it very fun to use, but you only get it when you complete the last mission of this DLC, so we could hardly play with it.
With a playing time of two to four hours, this expansion is not too long, but even in this short time we thought it became a bit repetitive. Most missions involve charging speakers by killing nearby zombies. Fortunately, the missions take place on different stages, which keeps the environment interesting, but we would have liked to see more variation here.
The boss fight at the end is unfortunately a disappointment. Without revealing much, it is a very frustrating fight where you constantly have to kill zombies and also have to take into account the boss himself. The fight takes far too long and when you die you have to start all over again.
Tags: #4Gamers REVIEW unmemorable festival visit Dead Island SoLA
