Game Review: Dead Island

Dead Island is an open world action-adventure RPG with FPS elements. The game is set in the fictional island of Banoi which is located somewhere off the coast of Papua New Guinea. You play a guest or employee of the local tropical resort when suddenly there is a zombie outbreak. The game was developed by Techland and published by Deep Silver. It released in North America on September 2th, 2011.

Title : Dead Island

Genre: First Person Action Horror

Developers: Techland

Consoles: PS3, Xbox 360, Windows PC

Rating: M for Mature

The game started making headlines when it released its debut trailer highlighting some dark and emotional elements along with hauntingly beautiful music. While it may be one of the greatest game trailers ever made, it is also very misleading as there is very little in common with that trailer and the actual game. While the trailer indicates an emotional survival horror style, the game is actually a detached and shallow action game. Not to say that Dead Island is a bad game, it can actually be very enjoyable.

The island itself is rather large and even more areas become available to you as you progress through the main story line. I use the word “story” loosely. It’s a zombie game, suddenly there’s an outbreak and everyone is in a panic, you go around trying to help out but eventually your only option is to run. There’s your story. The game is filled to the brim with side quests and if you’re a completionist then it can take you upwards of 30 hours to finish the game.

The first thing you’ll notice about Dead Island is that it’s incredibly and appropriately gory. The game actually encourages you to hack off limbs and decapitate as many of these bikini clad monsters as you can. So much so that guns are incredibly underpowered. I could unload an entire pistol clip into one of the freaks heads and they’ll still come after me. Whereas I can cut their heads off with one swipe of a machete. It’s a little frustrating if you were looking forward to using guns as your primary weapons.

While the game bears many similarities to Left 4 Dead or Dead Rising 2 its uniqueness comes from its setting.  All this blood and violence on the beautiful tropical beaches make for a great change of zombie scenery. And just when you start to get sick of looking at sand the game lets you explore further inland. But no matter how far along you are in the story, there’s always a bright sunny sky above you. I don’t know if this is all supposed to take place in just a few short hours but it never gets dark out. Furthermore at the beginning of the game we are told to act quickly because there’s a monsoon coming.  I don’t know about you but I got goose bumps thinking about fighting zombies in a dark torrential downpour at the end of the game when things are at the absolute worst. It never happened, we got a little rain in the final cut scene but it certainly wasn’t anything more than a sun shower.

Speaking of cut scenes, they are probably one of the worst aspects of the game. They advance the story but you learn very little from them and they take forever. The starting point of each scene was strangely off putting and I always thought that I had missed something but nope that’s just the way it is. The further you get in the game, the worse the scenes get until the final showdown which may have been one of the worst video game endings I’ve ever seen. On top of that the cut scenes reveal that all the playable characters are walking around together, something that’s never acknowledged in the actual gameplay.

Let’s delve into the mechanics. The weapons are really the core of the game. All throughout the island are items that you can use to help fight off the zombies; from boat ores, to boomerang knives to samurai swords. Despite being able to arm yourself with dozens of weapons you will still die… a lot. The only real punishment for dying is the chunk of change you have to pay out.  As such you’ll constantly be scraping up as much loose change as you can to make up for the lost wages. You’ll spend a lot of your time customizing, repairing and upgrading these weapons. Money is incredibly important.

As you gain kills you’ll increase your experience and constantly level up. With each level you can put a skill point into various tech trees that will help develop your characters skills, stats or gain bonus buffers. There are three different tech trees to choose from, giving this game a fairly deep leveling up system. On top of that you have a sort of Rage meter that allows you to execute a special ability. When you start the game you have a choice of 4 characters that you can play as, each one has unique abilities that can be used consistently throughout the game. This comes in handy when playing the game with other players as each type of character can help the team. In fact one of the best qualities to Dead Island is the multiplayer mode. At any given time during the game a player can hop into your game and vice versa. Of course you can turn this off at any time if you want to play it solo. I made quite a few Steam friends this way and some of the most memorable moments I had are when a player joined my game without me noticing. Suddenly when I was backed into a corner with no hope of survival, a strange mysterious character shows up and saves the day. It was like something straight out of a movie.

It’s not perfect though. Sometimes a player joined my game and it transported me further into the story, skipping story elements that I hadn’t seen or done yet. Hopefully that’s something that will be fixed in the near future and I should mention that I played the patched version. There are some other minor annoyances worth mentioning. For some reason your character will automatically attack as soon as you finish using a repair bench. That means if you’re holding a molotov or grenade when you back away from the bench then you better believe you’re throwing that thing immediately burning yourself and any friends around you, oh and wasting a precious range weapon that’s not easy found. On top of that I’ve had items completely disappear from my inventory after immediately purchasing them from someone. Also, your game will only save your progress when you hit a checkpoint. In other words whenever you pick up a new quest or complete an existing one. If you need to leave when you’re only halfway done with a quest then you’re out of luck and will be starting it from the beginning next time.

The game feels unfinished in some areas and could have gone through some more testing before release. While it’s obvious that it lacks polish, Dead Island is still strangely addicting and lots of fun with friends. The island of Banoi is gorgeous and I wouldn’t mind taking a vacation there myself someday. Provided it actually existed…and there were no zombies. The game isn’t great but it isn’t bad either and despite the sunny outdoors, you’re guaranteed to be startled out of your seat on more than one occasion. It’s a fresh take on the zombie genre but isn’t original enough to be remembered five years down the road.

And keep your eyes out for news on the upcoming live action movie being made and the DLC “Bloodbath Arena” coming in November.