The fans have been waiting for Dead Island 2 for nine years, now it’s finished – and surprisingly good, as our test shows. Even if the bottom line is that it doesn’t offer anything new, Dambuster has delivered an all-round entertaining zombie brawler that scores particularly well with rough fights. You can also see the violent depiction of violence in the German version, here just as many body parts, scraps of skin and bone splinters fly through the area as in the international version. There is only one restriction: In order for the game to receive an 18+ rating, a certain feature had to be removed.
In the USK version, it is no longer possible to continue beating zombie bodies once they have been defeated, which means: If the opponent’s life bar is empty, no further mutilations are possible. In the fights themselves, on the other hand, nothing was cut and since the bodies of defeated opponents disappear quickly anyway, the cuts in the USK version are actually hardly noticeable. However, there is a small limitation in the co-op: If you want to use the matchmaking and team up with random zombie hunters, this is limited to owners of the USK version. However, it is possible to play with friends who have an uncut version – in this case the cuts are temporarily active for all group members.
Even if we didn’t find the cuts in the German version disturbing, there are of course some players who don’t want to accept a cut version. In this case, people like to import, since the PEGI version (eg from Austria) is uncut. But who Dead Island 2 (buy now ) If you want to play on an Xbox console, you can save yourself the detour to the import dealer – because you can easily buy the unabridged version (digital only) on an Xbox in Germany.
Buy Dead Island 2 uncut on Xbox – Here’s how
Before you buy, you just have to go to the options menu (Settings -> System -> Language & Location) and change your location to Austria (alternatively UK or USA). Then the Xbox restarts and the shop is set to the respective country. You can then buy and download the uncut game as normal. You can then change the location of your console back to Germany. If there are problems with the purchase with Paypal, a credit card is recommended.
Danger: You have to change this setting before you buy! If you have already purchased the USK version, it cannot be converted into an uncut version afterwards. Also note that by doing this you may be violating the User Agreement, so purchasing from any other location is at your own risk.
If you want to see for yourself how intense Dead Island 2 is, here is a large selection of 4K screenshots from our test version (all images are from the PS5 version).
Do you have any further questions about purchasing the uncut version? Here are a few answers:
- Does this also work with the PS5 version? No.
- Is the international version still in German? All versions only provide English voice acting. However, the German texts and subtitles can be selected in all versions.
- What about the PC version? So far we have no information on whether you can activate keys for the uncut version in the German Epic Store or whether you will still receive the cut version. (As a reminder: the PC version is not sold via Steam.) It cannot be ruled out that the PC version can be subsequently converted into an uncut version (e.g. by adapting the gameusersettings.ini). However, we do not have any concrete information on this.
If you’re still struggling with the purchase or you’re wondering whether Dead Island 2 is even worth your money, just take a look at our extensive review of Dead Island 2 for PC and all consoles. And if you’d rather see the action RPG in motion, there’s our review also as a long video.
