Thanks once again to James Wells for reviewing Dead Island for the Xbox 360.
Ever since the now world famous trailer for Dead Island came from nowhere earlier this year, many gamers looked forward to this game with much skepticism and doubt on whether or not it could match the emotional levity of its trailer. I've seen the trailer, you’ve seen the trailer, and most likely Mrs. Heffernon, your neighbor with fourteen cats, has also seen the trailer. So does Dead Island live up to the hype? Or does this undead nightmare just shamble along the beach into obscurity?
Dead Island is set on the popular vacation island of Banoi, when -- from out of nowhere -- an outbreak of the undead rips across the island overnight, and your character wakes up the next day in the midst of the carnage. The Chrome 5 engine that developer Deep Silver used for Dead Island offers striking visuals from both environments and enemies, and has some of the most stunning visuals of this generation when the engine is working correctly (more on that later). The damage modeling on the zombies allows you to break almost every bone and tear flesh from the body and get visual feedback. Break both arms on an undead and laugh as the zombie’s arms flop around limply as it tries in futility to bite you.
You begin by selecting one of four characters that have their own specialties and stats. Logan is a former professional football player who specializes in throwing weapons and gains abilities allowing his weapons to boomerang back to his hand, but has low stamina. Purna is an Australian woman who specializes in guns. Xian is a Chinese woman who specializes in knives and strikes with amazing speed. Sam B. is a blunt weapon specialist and can take the most damage out of the four.
Your character choice will have a direct impact on how your approach combat throughout the game, and as combat is the bulk of the experience the game will play much differently from character to character. I did my full play through with Sam B. and the combat is some of the most satisfying I ever had the joy of controlling. Each character moves very deliberately, and with a lot of weight behind every movement. If you swing a heavy sledgehammer side to side, you can feel the weight in every swing as your vision is being pulled by the heavy weapon; this makes timing key when approaching combat with any of the games multitude of undead types. The kick is also an invaluable combat tool allowing you to knock down opponents, stop the quick “Infected” zombies in their tracks, or just give yourself some space if you get surrounded. The kick also does not use up any stamina, which swinging a weapon, jumping, dodging, and sprinting all do, so it’s also a good attack in a pinch.
The brilliance of the combat, however, did not show itself until I made it into the second main section of the game. You think that maybe the resort is the only area, and it’s a fairly large environment, but then you go to the city and upon entering the city, the entire dynamic of the combat changes. Before I was just wading in to mobs of zombies with no problem, but once entering the city that was not the case. The walkers became much more aggressive, more apt to lunge at me, and the debris scattered throughout the city made spotting all of my enemies upon entering combat difficult. If I did not play it safe, I became easily surrounded and torn to shreds. This caused me to do a sort of hit-and-run tactic where I charged in making a few swings and bounced back out. I then took a look around to make sure no other zombies took notice of the fight, and then moved in again. If any of the special infected like the tank-like Thugs or exploding Suiciders are involved, then your tactics must change to take care of these threats independently while also taking care of the weaklings.
Another factor is that weapons have a durability bar, which makes them virtually useless when reduced. There are plenty of repair benches scattered throughout Banoi, so once you get a good supply you are never really without weapons in the game, and a rusty pipe is right around the corner. You can also upgrade weapons and add mods -- like electricity and fire -- to your weapons, but it’s not until midway through the game that you really take advantage of this.
You also don’t need to get up close and personal with any undead uglies, as every weapon can be thrown with pin point accuracy . There are also guns in the game that are extremely rare in the resort section, but once you move out they become almost commonly found throughout the city. The guns didn’t seem to be that effective against the undead but were really effective versus the human gangs that you must fight in some of the missions. Molotovs and grenades also become available, which helps you clear larger groups if you can see them coming. Each character also has a rage move. Sam B. for example begins punching zombies like he was Rocky in a meat factory, and they literally fly away. One punch kills on zombies for a limited time, and you also can get additional perks like healing and reduced damage taken while in fury.
The story is alright; it has that SyFy channel feel to it for the most part with nothing too amazing or shocking happening throughout the game. The sad part is that the people who are actually alive look worse than everything else in the game, and stilted movements paired with eyes more dead than the undead they are fighting kind of breaks the experience. The voice acting runs the gamut from laughably bad to decent with a spattering of “That’s a little racist” mixed in. The reason to play this game is most definitely not the moving narrative or the hammy cut scenes.
The quest structure mostly breaks down to fetch quests like getting food and supplies from far off areas, you can get a geometric ton of side quests at one time, I had 15 going at one point. The best part is that these quests encourage you to explore the island, which is something everyone should do, as interesting weapons and additional quests can be found in the far off places of the island, the main story quests will only have you cover about half of the real estate that is actually in the game, which is a shame as the environments are stunning and fun to explore.
The game also contains 4-player online co-op, which makes the combat a little easier to swallow when four people take on a small hoard of zombies, but matchmaking can be an issue, and the quest that the group is on only appears in the menu of the player who accepted the quest, which seems a little strange. It's still a fun way to spend an evening with friends, though I’m not sure if four people could make it through the twenty hour campaign in only co-op due to the wealth of things to do.
Now the Bad Stuff
If I could rate this game on its combat alone, it would be one of my favorite games of this generation. Unfortunately, the game should have been left in the cooker for a while longer before hitting release, as this game is a buggy mess comparable to Fallout: New Vegas. Graphically, the game has textures taking twenty to thirty seconds to pop in, as well as just popping-in objects like surfboards and other small items in the games world. Enemies also have a tendency in the later areas to just pop into existence, apparently these zombies can go all Nightcrawler and teleport as well.
I ran into a few other small bugs as well and one huge one. On multiple occasions I would find an item, then spend the money to upgrade and then modify it right away only to have the item disappear from my inventory upon completion, this happened not only once, but three times, I was also unable to make explosives fifty percent of the time for the same reason. And the huge bug happened after I died and respawned during an escort mission mid game. All of the weapons in my inventory had vanished, including my fists, I was able to restock my weapons but my fists never returned for the rest of my play through with that character, meaning even if I wanted to I could not punch something.
There is also an issue with thrown items in the game, which have a tendency to get stuck in the environment or under bodies and become impossible to retrieve, which sucks if you’re Logan, the throwing expert, with a kick ass weapon and you throw it only to have it vanish, oops.
And this is not a bug but the save system can be downright frustrating, the game saves automatically, it appears to be at random but I’m not sure. When you die you respawn with whatever conditions your weapons were in when you died, your weapons do not repair on respawn. This means if you’re in a hard enough combat area, and you are dying constantly, your weapons will continue to degrade until you either get lucky and get past the area or can exploit the AI enough to proceed. I also had instances where I would respawn either at the end of the mission or further along than when I died, which was very annoying.
The Bottom Line
Standing on its combat and exploration alone, Dead Island is the most fun I’ve had with a game so far this year. I can’t, however, recommend it as a buy to everyone due to the tremendous amount of bugs and glitches in the game that could seriously hamper someone’s experience. The game is unfinished and at times seems horribly rushed, but if you can overlook some of the games flaws, the more than thirty hours of content in this game can be seriously rewarding and fun. A patch is due for the game soon so many of the bugs I’ve mentioned may be fixed.
Despite the bugs and unfinished feel of the game, I cannot stress enough how much love I have for it. This is the most “realistic” depiction of the inevitable zombie apocalypse and before we are over taken by the horde of games this fall, every serious gamer owes it to themselves to try this game.