Dead Island is full of Zombies. Shambling zombies, flaming zombies, knife wielding zombies, bile spewing zombies, exploding zombies, charging zombies even giant, slow moving zombies, all set against the stunning backdrop of the fictional Australasian island of Banoi.
There are more zombies here than you can wield a freshly upgraded monkey wrench at. That said, it's not like we're starved of zombie based action these days. So does Techland's first person zombie brawler RPG have the meat bait required to entice the slovenly hoards?
Awaking from a drunken slumber following a wild night of island partying, it's clear from the outset that all is not well. Eerily lit hotel rooms and classic zombie ear candy penetrate your surroundings early on. It would appear that this was a wilder night than usual, as 'the infected' have taken quite keenly to chomping on human flesh.
You can choose from one of four, equally clichéd, characters to start your adventure. The Jock football player, career ruined by injury and alcohol, or the Asian woman fighting for honour and her father's memory. It's tiring to read their bios but essentially these are just shells for four different styles of play with which you can approach your adventure. You can choose to specialise in four types of combat; thrown weapons, blunt weapons, sharp weapons or firearms. Each of these provide a different combat experience, rewarding you the more you use the type of weapon best suited to your character of choice. Of course you can pick up and wield whatever miscellaneous article happens to drop into your path, but it may prove less effective.
These weapons are dotted around Banoi's winding, leafy mesh of sandy carriageways and dishevelled buildings. Bathed in the midday sun, Banoi's primary setting 'the resort' is truly pretty. Your brave party of adventurers must attempt to escape their seemingly doomed luxury island surrounding, via a local off-shore prison, where a mysterious voice offers the promise of an air lift to safety. Venturing out into the open, equipped only with assorted household items for protection, it won't be long before the streets are turned claret red....
...and turn them red you must.
Dead Island's post mortal wanderers are intent on helping you out as best as they can one way or another. Herein lies this games primary triumph, gore.
There's seemingly endless ways to dismember, disable or disembowel your foes and it's your choice as to how much of your free time, spent roaming around Banoi's sand box environment, is devoted to it. Every quest you complete rewards experience and every level you gain will enable you to invest one point into one of three talent trees to help boost your re-animated, corpse crushing credentials.
Zombies are varied enough in their offence to keep things interesting. Early on, most will topple upwards to their feet looking to chomp you from the ankles up, but as time elapses, shambling turns into sprinting and spitting and a well time swing of your machete will feel satisfying as cranium is cut from corpse.
Levelling up and talent trees aside, the name of the game in Banoi is money, undoubtedly fitting for a luxury holiday resort. Most of the infected bags of bikini clad bones you smite seem to have some cash on them, specifically in their pants it seems, almost as if the outbreak started at a giant stripper convention.
The liberal cash smattering is handy, as one of Dead Island's most frustrating elements is the rate that your shiny new weapons deteriorate. This does add to the tension, as what was once a mighty zombie mashing tool minutes before, may prove almost useless when faced with a ravenous horde moments later. You can repair and upgrade any weapon at work benches throughout the land. The more damage your weapon takes, the more repair costs. Although Dead Island does well at keeping the tension high as you scramble for your next weapon, it would be nice if one or two weapons lasted a tad longer than they do.
The main reason to digress from the central story is to keep the cash flow coming. There are almost as many side missions to complete as there are zombies to kill, not to mention hours to spend driving around pretending to be a zombie lawnmower. You could, should you choose, increase your game time many times over by not rushing through the story and taking the proper amount of time to roam. It's a shame that so many of the missions, whether side missions or not, are so uninspired. It would not be uncommon, for example, to be sent to retrieve supplies from a petrol station in a key plot quest at the start of the game, only to find yourself spending time doing something not dissimilar within minutes of completing the final stages of the story.
Leaving the scantily dressed young woman at the side of the road, begging for help, to her fate has never seemed more logical.
It's fun to smash zombie skulls on the way past but it seems at times that this is all Dead Island really has to offer. It also seems at times that it's not quite enough. One of Dead Island's key failings is that the risk to reward ratio is hopelessly misguided. It's not just all about money, it's too much about money. The penalty for death? Lose money. Kill a zombie? Get money. Break a weapon? Lose money. Sell a weapon? Get money. Do a side quest.... you get the idea. Respawing after death happens within seconds at random points near to where you last fell, there is no challenge to this, other than to be immediately swamped by infected, only to die again and lose yet more cash.
While Dead Island has hours of replay value for you achievement guzzlers out there, it may not carry the same appeal for the more narrative hungry. It could be argued that you could best experience Dead Island by playing so many side missions that you become a cash hungry mercenary, no longer able to contemplate human emotion. This will make Dead Islands story feel only slightly less tedious.
Killing zombies is the most intelligent conversation you will get from your time with Dead Island. The story, or more acutely the characters within, fail to capture any sense of real purpose and the quest givers any sense of urgency or circumstance. It would also be best for anyone of Australasian decent to play the game with no sound. Think 'Neighbours' on helium.
As beautiful as Banoi's opening 'resort' set piece and latter 'jungle' areas are, the mid and near end game forays into the sewers are dank, uninspired and broken. The free roaming, sand box experience is replaced by a linear and irritating drudge through misconstrued muddiness. It is often simpler and strangely more rewarding to play a game of cat and mouse with your dishevelled fan base by charging past undead and uninspired alike towards daylight once more.
Dead Island deviates at random from what it generally does best. Mid way through, zombies fall by the wayside, as without warning, Dead Island turns itself into a terrible first person shooter. The brainless AI fitting the games theme and the gun-play streets away from the fulfilling melee combat. It's fortunate that these moments are brief but barely believable as they become more integral as the story concludes.
Dead Island's most endearing feature is possibly it's drop in drop out co op for up to four players at any one time. Whenever another player at a similar point or on a similar quest is nearby, the option to hit the d-pad and join in will pop up on screen. It's a non intrusive outlet that may help you through a sticky spot or two. The unfortunate theme here is like much of the single player experience where no good deed quite goes rewarded.
Online co-op is the most buggy game mode of all. Lag, stuttering visual slow down and graphical pop up or sometimes grouping with players that aren't attempting to accomplish your same goals are all common. It's another idea that should work and with a little more time working out the kinks, it surely would add further hours to the experience.
Dead Island is Marmite, it's Charlie Sheen. Not brilliant but not bad, it'll leave an odd taste in your mouth. It's insane and flawed but strangely enjoyable to behold, at least for a while. It's pretty too, but mostly uninspiring, predictable and forgettable.
Dead Island has enough content to take up 30 hours of your time, but not enough unique and enjoyable content to demand that you stick with it for that long.
If you want a zombie game with the most zombies and weapons, Dead Rising has two iterations with a third on the way. If you want the maximum co op experience, Left for Dead (at least for Xbox 360) has got your back.
If you want an intense but brainless first person melee combat experience with smatterings of glitter and bucket loads of blood, then maybe, against all the odds, Dead Island might be what you're looking for.
We might be in the age of remasters, but it doesn't look like the Dead Island 2 devs believe remaking the original game is the right move for the series.
but remakes require far less effort for these companies and they can still charge $70 for them!
Feel like everyone makes fun of Skyrim re-releasing like 18 times yet applaud these remasters elsewhere. Would much prefer NEW games
Making sequels really is the way to go. Otherwise we'll be stuck playing only the first entry, forever!!!
Josiah Motley of KnowTechie writes: "I love video game trailers. While I don’t believe they are an integral part of a game’s success (especially these days), there’s something about a well-produced trailer that really just reminds me why I like video games."
How so? Because it focused on a family that you see dying? (innocent question, haven't gotten a chance to play any Dead Island game yet)
More the tone of it - the tone of the trailer suggested something personal and dramatic, but the game was very much reminiscent of Left 4 Dead in that you were just there to kill zombies and nothing more
You play as a singular character there is no family involved at all in the game. Still a stand out trailer that I remember clearly from years ago.
Did you not like the game?
I remember going in expecting a L4D style of game, but the excessive camera swaying honestly made me feel ill, and it's rare for a game to do that to me, still don't understand why the need for anything other than maybe a subtle slight camera movement when doing melee attacks etc. Other than that i didn't really find the game that good. In all honesty i had more enjoyment out of DNF, and i know many people crap on that game.
It’s the music. It’s perfect. I agree with this for sure, it is well choreographed….unfortunately the game didn’t live up to the trailer.
Maybe not, but it was still a good game. I liked how they expanded things with Dying Light, but Dead Island was a great first attempt! I really liked all the Easter eggs and homages to other horror franchises sprinkled throughout. Sure it was a little cheesy and over there top, but it was a good happy medium between Far Cry and Fallout with zombies.
Have you ever seen any of the MGS 3 or MGS 4 trailers? Those blow this out of the water for me.
They require prior knowledge of the franchise, tho. You show this trailer to anyone, and I mean ANYONE, and they can understand what's going on and relate to the family dynamic almost immediately. No need to know who is Snake, or Fox Hound, or Raiden, or Metal Gear...
Kevin F. from Link Cable Gaming writes: "Many of the best Xbox 360 games are playable on the Xbox One and Series X|S consoles. Some even with some enhanced visuals and performance. Unfortunately, not every game from the Xbox 360 library has received this glorious feat of being able to be played on more modern Microsoft consoles."
The Spider-man games will never happen. The xbox 360 Marvel Ultimate Alliance games have a better chance of happening than Spider-man titles but won't happen. The Xbox One Ultimate Alliance games delisted years ago
Yeah... you can totally forget about those entries that got delisted because of licensing issues. Those are not happening.
Almost all of the games people want to play are BC, and that's a hell of a lot better than having none available.
Almost all the games people want to play? Not true. Majority picks screw over the minority who have games collecting dust. Metal is right. Fans make it seem that it's all. 39/997 games from OG Xbox is NOT all. 568/2154 from 360 is NOT all. But you guys play it up like it is.
And from my count, there are 4,000+ PS4 BC games on PS5 that I see. And almost every VR game. Series X has no Kinect games or Kinect 2. But you played that up too. No more dancing.
As for the article, some of the BC games make sense. The others with Spider-Man aren't happening.
I would have rated it the same. Good review!