I’m fairly confident that’s how most are going to feel. And, to be honest, most of the time I was focused on what was happening in-game to even register the drops. Rarely do the drops get in the way of the gameplay. Dead Island 2 feels like it’s been optimized to run on lesser hardware and handles the erratic framerate well. It’s mostly 40 to 45, and sometimes higher when indoors, but in the open world, expect drops as low as 33 frames while the game rights itself.Īlthough the drops are frequent, they don’t ruin the experience.

One thing I do need to stress, the framerate will be all over the place at times. The game will be running at 800p (or 720p docked), so the extra power isn’t really needed. Plus when you’re playing on the Steam Deck’s smaller screen, those extra details gained from the higher settings are mostly lost. Dead Island 2, even on low, looks better than the majority of the Steam Deck games out there. The choices I found here are you can either go with a solid 30 frames per second with some of the settings on medium, or you can drop everything down to low and play at mostly 40 to 45 frames per second. There is, however, a saving grace: Dead Island 2 was designed with last-gen consoles in mind (PS4 and Xbox One in this case), which means it’s able to run on lower-specced hardware, hence why this version runs so well on the Deck. It’s simply too advanced for the hardware the Steam Deck offers. That’s down to Dead Island featuring detailed textures, stunning lighting, and a host of killer visuals. Performance isn’t ever going to be a smooth 60 frames per second. I was never able to get the Epic versions of The Last of Us or Calisto Protocol working, but Dead Island 2 works with minimal tinkering. Games from the Epic Store have a habit of being hit and miss on Steam Deck. So, how is Dead Island 2 performance on Steam Deck? Surprisingly, it’s really solid. For you, it’ll be much faster if you follow my guide linked above. I was able to get Dead Island 2 up and running in around 20 minutes, and that’s only because I was trying out different Proton versions to see which works best.

This process isn’t as streamlined as buying a Steam game and it just works, but don’t let that put you off. That means the Steam Deck’s only option is to install Dead Island 2 through the Epic Store. Dead Island 2 isn’t currently available on Steam.

Dead island 2 ps4 without time limit?