Dead Island 2 is one of those PC games that only support AMD FSR 2 instead of NVIDIA DLSS 2 (or Intel XeSS, for that matter). However, modder PotatoOfDoom fixed that with a simple mod available for download via Nexus Mods. To install it, just extract everything in the archive on the same folder of the DeadIsland-Win64-Shipping.exe file. PotatoOfDoom had already accomplished the same result with SEGA’s Judgment game, which later received native DLSS support. Let’s hope it happens here, too.
Despite the lack of native DLSS 2 support, Dead Island 2 runs well as is. Francesco noted as much in his review of the game.
Performance is also solid for the most part. While stuttering issues seem unavoidable on PC, Dead Island 2 keeps them to a minimum, mostly thanks to shaders caching before the game begins and the limited size of the game’s maps. Stutters, however, do still happen during traversal and sometimes during cutscenes, which is definitely annoying. Without NVIDIA DLSS support, pushing the resolution up while keeping decent performance was more of a challenge for my system, and the limited amount of VRAM of my GPU (i7-10700 CPU, 16GB RAM, RTX 3070 GPU), though AMD FSR helped a bit. At 4K resolution, medium settings, my system had no trouble running the game at an average of 75 frames per second with FSR at the Balanced preset. At 1440p, my machine fared much better, running the game at an average of 100 FPS with High settings and no need for FSR. The game also supports AMD FidelityFX Variable Rate Shading, which should further help performance but did not do much in my case at both 1440p and 4K resolutions.
Deep Silver said Dead Island 2 was its biggest launch ever in terms of both sales units and total revenue, which bodes well for the future of the long-dormant franchise. Two expansions are scheduled to launch in Q4 2023 and Q2 2024, respectively.
Are you excited for more Dead Island? Let us know below.
