by R834, 27th August 2012
 Dead Island Release Date: 9th September 2011 Available For: PS3, PC, Xbox 360 Reviewed On: PC | On the fictional Papa New Guinean island of Banoi, a party is in full swing at Royal Palms Resort.
After a night of dancing, drinking, and being rejected repeatedly by
women, our hero crashes out in his room, only to awaken the next
morning, hungover, and sharing his hotel with considerably more zombies
than he remembered the night before. |
Dead Island is a first-person zombie action-adventure survival, with RPG elements, and is certainly a mature game with lots of violence, gore and swearing, but it's not quite sure what it wants to be a serious, adult title, or a silly one.
Starting out, you choose one of four zombie-immune survivors each with different attributes and skills: rapper Sam B acts as the tank class, and prefers blunt weapons; Royal Palms employee and Chinese spy Xian Mei specialises in blades; ex-NFL star Logan Carter is best at throwing; and VIP bodyguard Purna is the firearms expert.
As a traditional survivors versus horde game, there's plenty of angry zombies to contend with, and there's a fair variety, including hefty Thugs, exploding Suiciders and vomiting Floaters, alongside your average shufflers. They're designed well, with enough different zombie models to help shake the feeling of fighting identical enemies.
You'll be using the melee combat system to fend them off, the results of which are actually very impressive: weapons have brutal solidity, and blows from blunt objects break bones, while blades will lop off limbs completely, as zombies receive procedural damage that steadily ravages their bodies with muscle, bone and organs beginning to show as blood splashes the walls and floors. Occasionally, you'll hit a zombie just right, and initiate a slow motion strike. It's gruesome stuff, but the melee system does suffer from simplicity, with encounters boiling down to moving while mashing attack and kick.
At first you'll be delighted finding an old pipe or wooden paddle, but over time better weapons start showing up, with sledgehammers, sickles and katanas to name a few. Melee weapons have a health system, and as they are used they visually deteriorate and slowly deal less damage, although can't be broken completely.
Firearms do show up late in the game, but never on zombies, so you'll be looting from human enemies to acquire them. Gunplay is average, and human-human combat sections pull the game towards the FPS norm.
Workbenches dotted around the map allow you to repair your weapons - for a price - as well as upgrading and modifying them. Upgrading is a linear process that allows you to improve your weapons up to four times, each time increasing damage, force, durability and handling stats.
Modifications are one of the more interesting additions to the game, and by combining different 'scraps' and a weapon, you can produce
something even more devastating. Mod recipes are found in blueprints
scattered around the game, including ones for electricity, fire and poison weapons, as well as for make-shift devices such as Molotov cocktails and deodorant bombs.
Some items are restricted by level: as you gain XP for completing quests and killing zombies, you can rank up, which grants you access to higher level weapons. It's standard RPG stuff, but it almost seems out of place in this game to suddenly forget how to wield a baseball bat because it's a few levels above your character.
As you go, you'll meet survivors who will provide plenty of sidequests, which extend the game's length, and reward you with XP, cash and item give-outs upon completion, although quests are all kill, fetch or escort based, so lack variety.
The escort quests are of particular annoyance as those being escorted are just too dumb and too slow for their own good. Their destination isn't even marked on the minimap, so there's no chance to run ahead and clear the way - you just have to wait for them to waddle along, waiting for the inevitable zombie horde. And what is wrong with these people's flight or fight instincts? Considering how vulnerable they can be to undead attacks, they certainly don't back down from a fight.
And this isn't the only problem in the game: Dead Island suffers from a number of issues, even after several patches since launch.
The plot is very thin, with stiff, poorly written cutscenes that feature all four of the games heroes regardless of which one you picked, which screams developer laziness. The game comes to an abrupt end with simple final boss fight, and anything that sounded like lies is revealed to actually be the truth (a sort of failed double bluff). The death of one character also resulted in nothing but a cheer from me and deadpan from my co-op partners due to what a pain they'd been throughout.
The survival aspect of the game comes into question when NPCs are moaning about lack of resources, but your inventory is bulging from all the things you've pilfered from around them - and that's without mentioning resources (and enemies) respawn when you exit and re-enter an area.
Dying only results a few seconds delay as you respawn somewhere nearby, with 10% less cash but all enemies and items in the state you left them in. This does prevent tedious repetition of potentially challenging sections, but severely reduces the desperate need for self preservation.
Technical bugs plague the game, with clipping issues ever present, graphics very poor in areas where the devs seemed to think nobody would see, Vsync only seems to make screen tearing worse and crashes occasionally occur.
Controls will take a while to get used to to say the least, and are obviously designed for console, so if you can play using the natively supported Xbox 360 controller I'd recommend it.
Driving mechanics can be a little troublesome, but is the most effective way of travelling. A third-person view would have been much appreciated, or at least functioning mirrors and an ability to look back a full 180 degrees.
Dead Island is saved by its co-op - I played the entire game with two friends and had a great time doing so.
The game is clearly made for multiplayer, and the system functions well, with players being able to drop in and out fairly painlessly. Friends can
jump in through Steam invites, and you can join randoms when you are
notified of another player with similar campaign progress in
your vicinity. Depending on what you want you can tune co-op lobbies to your preference, allowing randoms, friends only, or keeping it singleplayer. Voice chat works nicely, and there's text chat as well if you need. One great feature is the ability to completely pause the game if everyone is in the menu, which other games should take note of.
There are a few quirks with multiplayer though - Dead Island allows anyone to play together, regardless of level and progress, but joining somebody further into the game than you will prevent your progress from saving. Also, zombies level with you, so different level players will see different level zombies to the others. The ability to trade is useful, but it's often simpler just to throw your items on the ground at each other, and the ability to give out money seems an obvious omission.
Overall, Dead Island is a game that tries hard to provide a lot of things, but unfortunately it's very rough around the edges. Despite its failings though, Dead Island has a strong appeal and a simple charm. Most importantly, it offers one of the best co-op experiences I've ever played. If you're looking to play this game solo, then maybe you should think twice if picking it up for anything other than a bargain, but if you've got a few friends to join in on the action, I highly recommend it.
This is far from the ultimate zombie title we were hoping for, but it's on the right track, and with Dead Island: Riptide on the horizon, we can expected more undead goodness from Deep Silver soon.
Final Score
7/10
Starting out, you choose one of four zombie-immune survivors each with different attributes and skills: rapper Sam B acts as the tank class, and prefers blunt weapons; Royal Palms employee and Chinese spy Xian Mei specialises in blades; ex-NFL star Logan Carter is best at throwing; and VIP bodyguard Purna is the firearms expert.
You'll be using the melee combat system to fend them off, the results of which are actually very impressive: weapons have brutal solidity, and blows from blunt objects break bones, while blades will lop off limbs completely, as zombies receive procedural damage that steadily ravages their bodies with muscle, bone and organs beginning to show as blood splashes the walls and floors. Occasionally, you'll hit a zombie just right, and initiate a slow motion strike. It's gruesome stuff, but the melee system does suffer from simplicity, with encounters boiling down to moving while mashing attack and kick.
At first you'll be delighted finding an old pipe or wooden paddle, but over time better weapons start showing up, with sledgehammers, sickles and katanas to name a few. Melee weapons have a health system, and as they are used they visually deteriorate and slowly deal less damage, although can't be broken completely.
Firearms do show up late in the game, but never on zombies, so you'll be looting from human enemies to acquire them. Gunplay is average, and human-human combat sections pull the game towards the FPS norm.
Workbenches dotted around the map allow you to repair your weapons - for a price - as well as upgrading and modifying them. Upgrading is a linear process that allows you to improve your weapons up to four times, each time increasing damage, force, durability and handling stats.
Some items are restricted by level: as you gain XP for completing quests and killing zombies, you can rank up, which grants you access to higher level weapons. It's standard RPG stuff, but it almost seems out of place in this game to suddenly forget how to wield a baseball bat because it's a few levels above your character.
As you go, you'll meet survivors who will provide plenty of sidequests, which extend the game's length, and reward you with XP, cash and item give-outs upon completion, although quests are all kill, fetch or escort based, so lack variety.
The escort quests are of particular annoyance as those being escorted are just too dumb and too slow for their own good. Their destination isn't even marked on the minimap, so there's no chance to run ahead and clear the way - you just have to wait for them to waddle along, waiting for the inevitable zombie horde. And what is wrong with these people's flight or fight instincts? Considering how vulnerable they can be to undead attacks, they certainly don't back down from a fight.
And this isn't the only problem in the game: Dead Island suffers from a number of issues, even after several patches since launch.
The survival aspect of the game comes into question when NPCs are moaning about lack of resources, but your inventory is bulging from all the things you've pilfered from around them - and that's without mentioning resources (and enemies) respawn when you exit and re-enter an area.
Dying only results a few seconds delay as you respawn somewhere nearby, with 10% less cash but all enemies and items in the state you left them in. This does prevent tedious repetition of potentially challenging sections, but severely reduces the desperate need for self preservation.
Technical bugs plague the game, with clipping issues ever present, graphics very poor in areas where the devs seemed to think nobody would see, Vsync only seems to make screen tearing worse and crashes occasionally occur.
Controls will take a while to get used to to say the least, and are obviously designed for console, so if you can play using the natively supported Xbox 360 controller I'd recommend it.
Driving mechanics can be a little troublesome, but is the most effective way of travelling. A third-person view would have been much appreciated, or at least functioning mirrors and an ability to look back a full 180 degrees.
Dead Island is saved by its co-op - I played the entire game with two friends and had a great time doing so.
There are a few quirks with multiplayer though - Dead Island allows anyone to play together, regardless of level and progress, but joining somebody further into the game than you will prevent your progress from saving. Also, zombies level with you, so different level players will see different level zombies to the others. The ability to trade is useful, but it's often simpler just to throw your items on the ground at each other, and the ability to give out money seems an obvious omission.
Overall, Dead Island is a game that tries hard to provide a lot of things, but unfortunately it's very rough around the edges. Despite its failings though, Dead Island has a strong appeal and a simple charm. Most importantly, it offers one of the best co-op experiences I've ever played. If you're looking to play this game solo, then maybe you should think twice if picking it up for anything other than a bargain, but if you've got a few friends to join in on the action, I highly recommend it.
This is far from the ultimate zombie title we were hoping for, but it's on the right track, and with Dead Island: Riptide on the horizon, we can expected more undead goodness from Deep Silver soon.
Final Score
7/10