The game opens with you (and up to three co-op pals) picking one of half-a-dozen cartoonish characters who are stranded in an undead-ravaged slice of Los Angeles, gratingly referred to throughout as Hell-A.

Although if The Last of Us represents that paradigm’s dramatic high water mark then Dead Island 2 is more like an end-of-the-pier revue: a little dated unrepentantly puerile and played largely – and sometimes even successfully – for laughs. The franchise’s premise of immune individuals battling to survive a disease-induced zombie apocalypse is now bang on trend.

It couldn’t have been reanimated at a better time, though. In the intervening years, this sequel to 2011’s gonzo first-person zombie slasher has passed through four different development studios, missed an entire hardware generation, and even outlived the industry event at which it debuted. A decade is a long time in videogames so you could be more than forgiven for having forgotten about Dead Island 2 since it debuted at E3 way back in 2014.

Dead island 2 is forgotten