Surviving as a college graduate: How skills and abilities work in Neighborhood Watch

The VCLA Bobcat heroes of Dead Island 2’s new Neighborhood Watch mode face a fierce fight for survival. Luckily, they don’t just have their guns and crazy, supped up melee weapons to rely on, but also their own awesome Talents.

These don’t work quite like the skills in the main campaign. Your Bobcats are just regular survivors, while Neighborhood Watch works at a different kind of pace. “We wanted people to be able to jump into the game really quickly, and not spend a bunch of time reading text and trying to finalise their loadouts” says Fishlabs’ Design Director, PChan.

Each Bobcat starts with a set of Ability Talents, Utility Talents and Signature Attacks, and each type has its own Talent sets players can progress through as they battle through each week.

The Ability Talents work like the curveballs in the main game, giving you a grenade-like attack you can hurl into a mob of zombies, or a buff you can lob to help teammates in a jam. They’re also specific to each class, giving Dez the chemist explosive chemical weapons, or Rav the pre-med student medkits. Ability Talents run on a cooldown timer; you can’t spam them endlessly, but they won’t run out.

Each class also has passive Utility Talents, giving you perks and bonuses that stay active through the session. For instance, Rav has a passive that increases shove velocity and damage, giving him more power to push zombies back or bowl them over. Other passives reduce your cooldowns or accelerate how quickly you can generate ‘Bond’: the new power meter the Bobcats charge by working and fighting as a team.

You’ll want all the bond you can get, because it powers your Signature Attacks. As PChan tells it, “there are five or six signature attacks per class. They’re activated by Bond and they always do something spectacular.”

For example, Bozzy, the hunter class, has a Mantis crossbow signature weapon that’s a machine for one-shot kills. Trigger his signature attack and you’ll have a five-second window to shoot as many bolts as you can, with each kill adding another half a second of slaying time. Keep ranking up, and Bozzy also gets a spread-shot, firing off five bolts at once.

There are similar upgrades in store for Dez’s Zombie-freezing grenades. Rank up to unlock Signature Attacks, and you’ll be able to lob several of these babies simultaneously – enough to stop a mob of mindless flesh-munchers in their tracks. Rav, meanwhile, gets a brutal charge attack, perfect for knocking Shamblers off their feet or smashing through the horde. Rank up, and you’ve got yourself a juggernaut.

Plays can progress through the three Talent sets by completing their daily missions, and when you finish each five-day session, any XP you’ve accrued feeds into a class-specific Rank meter, unlocking further Talents or cool Session Modifiers you can apply to future sessions.

If you want to battle zombies in Hollywood-style suits or zombie firemen or cops, the choice will be yours. Some modifiers will make the session even more challenging for the Bobcats, but don’t worry: you’ll get an XP boost to make it worth your while!

See You in HELL-A