Review
Played on: Xbox 360Released: 2011
Dead Island is a difficult game to review. It contains a lot of great ideas, a brand new concept and some great gameplay moments. Sadly, it also falls short in other parts.
The game is viewed in first person, with both shooting and melee fighting, there's even a slight RPG touch here, all combined into a sandbox structure. Sounds confusing? Well, yes it is. But get this: It's mainly focsued in melee weapons, letting you build up experience points to level up your character. The game world is open structured, allowing you to choose to play the main missions or go around exploring and look for side missions. Everything you need to understand about it's structure is introduced in the first hour, quickly leaving the player to explore by yourself.
The story puts you in the character of one of four people. Your character wakes up after a night of heavy drinking, at a resort hotel on an island, only to find out a zombie virus has spread and everyone is roaming half-dead around. It sounds absurd and is even more so when watching the incredibly cheesy and almost laughably bad intro-movie.
Gameplay, unlike the story, picks up fast and you get the idea that this is where the main development time of the game has been spent. While difficult at the beginning, the melee fighting and techniques for breaking arms and legs and finally killing the zombies are learnt fairly fast. The combat is actually quite satisfying.
The game relies heavily on melee, guns are introduced far later and aren't very effective requiring you to either upgrade hand-weapons, create new ones or switch them out with unused ones. Gunplay isn't this titles strong suit either.
All melee weapons take damage from extended use, thus resulting in the need for maintenance or swapping out. You can even switch to a manual mode for melee in the options, where you actually control the swing of your arms, but this is very tricky to control.
The combination of wear and tear on weapons, with the levelling system, works surprisingly well. I thought it would be annoying, but in reality it’s enjoyable. There’s a great satisfaction when levelling up and using them on desired abilities. In fact, without this RPG element it would've been a duller game. It gives purpose to the endless zombie slaying and a feeling of getting stronger along the way.
A complaint here is the difficulty level when playing alone. You die a lot, there’s an instant respawn, but it feels strange to constantly get a new chance in single player. Luckily, the pace of the zombies are slow, unlike the stressing Left 4 Dead, so you can often retreat and try to attack in another way. Inside buildings though, it gets a lot harder to avoid being surrounded and cornered.
Location are varied, ranging from the tropical beaches at the beginning, to Favela-like slums and rain forest jungles, finally ending up at a jail. The latter is a utterly disappointing location. The slums are a little too much trekking in sewers for my liking, but the opening level starting in a hotel and moving on to a beach really take the crown. They look good, is a large size and begs to be explored.
The feeling of trying to get into buildings while constantly checking over your shoulder for some fast, screaming zombies jumping at you, really gives a sense of survival. The parts were you're all alone, are the best. In a sense, contradicting to the clearly co-op centred idea this title is meant for. Even though the tropical location may look like a colourful and nice place, it manages to scare the player with the feeling that you're in a believable world where zombies have taken over.
While it's clearly meant as a co-op four player game, they seem to have forgotten to add a proper story and focused on making a fairly linear progression. The cutscenes are beyond terrible, with careless voice-acting, though never near the cheese a lot of Japanese titles are, and you simply end up skipping the talking.
It’s just a gang of four, even though you play alone they all appear in the cutscenes, idiots with stupid remarks and bad ideas of surviving. This lack of a solid story, with good cinematics, hurts the game after the initial amazement of getting your bearings of what's happening in the zombie outbreak. Once this feeling settles, you crave a quality story to explain things, and you never get it.
It can't be hidden after some play time that it's a cheaply produced title, b-tier if you wish. Annoying gameplay issues, repetitiveness and meaningless side-quests only inspired by the earning of XP, just doesn't cut it in the longer run. Even more so, when the game introduces some truly terrible gunfights against rebelling humans. Yup, that’s humans not zombies you're fighting, sigh.
Apart from the first part and fun segments where you’re trying to find out how to survive, collecting car parts to drive, food and drink etc. it falls short after. It only, slightly, relights the entertainment value when you reach a research facility, but this ends up being a disappointing story too.
The combination of wear and tear on weapons, with the levelling system, works surprisingly well. I thought it would be annoying, but in reality it’s enjoyable. There’s a great satisfaction when levelling up and using them on desired abilities. In fact, without this RPG element it would've been a duller game. It gives purpose to the endless zombie slaying and a feeling of getting stronger along the way.
A complaint here is the difficulty level when playing alone. You die a lot, there’s an instant respawn, but it feels strange to constantly get a new chance in single player. Luckily, the pace of the zombies are slow, unlike the stressing Left 4 Dead, so you can often retreat and try to attack in another way. Inside buildings though, it gets a lot harder to avoid being surrounded and cornered.
Location are varied, ranging from the tropical beaches at the beginning, to Favela-like slums and rain forest jungles, finally ending up at a jail. The latter is a utterly disappointing location. The slums are a little too much trekking in sewers for my liking, but the opening level starting in a hotel and moving on to a beach really take the crown. They look good, is a large size and begs to be explored.
The feeling of trying to get into buildings while constantly checking over your shoulder for some fast, screaming zombies jumping at you, really gives a sense of survival. The parts were you're all alone, are the best. In a sense, contradicting to the clearly co-op centred idea this title is meant for. Even though the tropical location may look like a colourful and nice place, it manages to scare the player with the feeling that you're in a believable world where zombies have taken over.
While it's clearly meant as a co-op four player game, they seem to have forgotten to add a proper story and focused on making a fairly linear progression. The cutscenes are beyond terrible, with careless voice-acting, though never near the cheese a lot of Japanese titles are, and you simply end up skipping the talking.
It’s just a gang of four, even though you play alone they all appear in the cutscenes, idiots with stupid remarks and bad ideas of surviving. This lack of a solid story, with good cinematics, hurts the game after the initial amazement of getting your bearings of what's happening in the zombie outbreak. Once this feeling settles, you crave a quality story to explain things, and you never get it.
It can't be hidden after some play time that it's a cheaply produced title, b-tier if you wish. Annoying gameplay issues, repetitiveness and meaningless side-quests only inspired by the earning of XP, just doesn't cut it in the longer run. Even more so, when the game introduces some truly terrible gunfights against rebelling humans. Yup, that’s humans not zombies you're fighting, sigh.
Apart from the first part and fun segments where you’re trying to find out how to survive, collecting car parts to drive, food and drink etc. it falls short after. It only, slightly, relights the entertainment value when you reach a research facility, but this ends up being a disappointing story too.
There are large amounts of potential in the game. Technically, the game engine makes the game look really good sometimes and handles large as well as claustrophobic indoors environments very well. But even graphically the game ranges from very good looking to extremely bland and downright ugly.
The first area could almost reach an 8/10 for me, the later ones fall far below and the ending is terrible. DI could really do with a spectacular sequel where a story and high quality cutscenes are added, gameplay feeling and flow tweaked (it often feels a little buggy and sluggish) and a far more inspired environment design. It needs more variation, better level design and generally a sense of being a more finished product.
That said, I loved the first part of the game. It felt like waking up in a zombie movie, and it felt exciting looking for food, supplies and generally keeping an eye for yourself while zombies lurk at each corner. I liked the drastic change from a bright outdoors to a creepy and tense indoor atmosphere. Sadly though the game doesn't have what it takes to keep you interested and feels very uninspired from then on.
The first area could almost reach an 8/10 for me, the later ones fall far below and the ending is terrible. DI could really do with a spectacular sequel where a story and high quality cutscenes are added, gameplay feeling and flow tweaked (it often feels a little buggy and sluggish) and a far more inspired environment design. It needs more variation, better level design and generally a sense of being a more finished product.
That said, I loved the first part of the game. It felt like waking up in a zombie movie, and it felt exciting looking for food, supplies and generally keeping an eye for yourself while zombies lurk at each corner. I liked the drastic change from a bright outdoors to a creepy and tense indoor atmosphere. Sadly though the game doesn't have what it takes to keep you interested and feels very uninspired from then on.
