Story by Ken Yarbrough
Earlier this year at E3 2011, I had the opportunity to play Dead Island. While I was keeping my eyes on this title prior to E3, after, it became my most anticipated title of the year. As is the case with many titles pre-release, the end product was something not entirely expected.
Dead Island, developed by Techland (Call of Juarez, Nail’d), and published by Deep Silver, has been a largely polarizing game. It seems many reviewers have been especially harsh on some of the pre-patch glitches that have been present, and there are quite a few gamers that were expecting something different. With that in mind, I decided to take a different approach to my review below.
Earlier this year, the now infamous Reverse-Trailer for Dead Island was released. For those that haven’t seen it, you should take a look. It’s a brilliantly crafted trailer, which creates a certain kind of emotional response. That said, you should not assume that the trailer is in any way indicative of the gameplay. This has been the first piece of the puzzle to why the game has been so polarizing. Gamers and reviewers that have seen the trailer have assumed that Dead Island was to be some sort of emotionally resonant zombie title. That’s a pretty lofty expectation.
So what IS Dead Island? Dead Island is a large, open-world, FPM (First Person Melee) game with Borderlands-esque RPG elements. Wow that’s a mouthful. A lot of people have compared Dead Island to its other zombie counterparts: Left4Dead, and Dead Rising. These are simply poor comparisons. At no point during my time with Dead Island did I ever feel like I was playing anything resembling either of those games.
Graphically Dead Island is a little hit-and-miss, with a lot more hit than miss. The environments–especially the Resort and Jungle areas–are absolutely gorgeous. The environments are beautifully crafted, and are so well done that they truly instill a sense of immersion not found in many other games. The true stars of the show, however, are the many different zombies themselves. With a multi-layer damage system that shows exactly what damage you’ve done to the zombies; they are truly hideous, but in a great way. They realistically lurch towards you, and you can almost smell the rotting flesh falling off their bones. The NPCs in the game–as well as your player character and co-op partners–don’t fare as well. While they are rendered well enough, the animations for NPCs and players alike are very stiff.
The story is one of the areas that the game has become so divisive. With the Reverse-Trailer insinuating some sort of emotional connection, I feel like many people have forgotten that at the end of the day, this IS a zombie title. As such the game does feature the same old zombie trope that has existed for years. This isn’t an insult to the writers, as there is a very specific formula that can be used for any zombie title, game, and movie alike.
There is a group of survivors, stranded somewhere the military cannot readily help them. There are four main characters which are extremely stereotypical (The African-American rapper, the Asian who excels at bladed weapons, etc). There is a zombie outbreak, which has been caused by either: A) scientific experimentation, B) mutated natural virus, C) government bio-weapon, or D) an alien parasite. It’s a plot formula that’s been followed for as long as I can remember, and there’s no reason to change it now. Knocking a zombie game for its story just seems a little silly, though.
Upon choosing your character you wake up in your hotel room, only to find that the hotel itself is empty. After a few moments a mysterious voice begins to lead you through the hotel via the PA system. After narrowly escaping an early rush of zombies, your character is knocked unconscious and awakes again surrounded by other survivors in a small hut on the beach. This is where your game begins, and you have your first opportunity to kill some of the flesh-eaters.
Once past this introductory section you are given mostly free reign to go as you want and do as you please. There are tons of survivors scattered across the resort, and many of them will give you quests to complete for them.
Most of the quests are very simplistic in nature. Fetch quests definitely abound throughout, though I never found myself bored of completing quests. There is a primary questline that will progress you through the story as well. At a certain point the questline will take you away from the resort, and into the second area of the game: the City of Moresby.
There are literally hundreds of weapons at your disposal (as well as weapons mods): from simple boat oars and kitchen knives to katanas and assault rifles. While there are firearms in the game, unless you are playing as Purna, don’t expect this to be a first-person shooter. The game’s focus is clearly on melee combat, and it does it very well.
The one single thing that needs to be mentioned is the City of Moresby. Encompassing nearly all of Act 2, this area of the game is an absolute tragedy. I’ve put roughly six playthroughs of the game in and still can’t quite nail down what’s wrong with this area. It features smaller outdoor areas, with less room to maneuver, as well as an exponential increase in difficulty. It also features three different indoor areas which are even smaller. Through many hours of co-op play, the only time I encountered any slowdown or lag at all was during the city. My game froze many times while doing nothing but walking through the area. The later acts are
actually easier than this one, so it isn’t a complaint about progressive difficulty, I just don’t feel the area was designed very well. It didn’t even feel like a chore playing through it…it was worse. One of my co-op partners nearly stopped playing Dead Island altogether because of the city. If there is one message I want to send to the developers, it’s that this area was a colossal failure. The rest of this game is utterly amazing, but the city fails on nearly every level.
Overall, I found Dead Island to be game-changing. The game offers the same basic gameplay as Borderlands (leveling system, co-op) but in my opinion does it better. Looting has never been more fun. Modifying my weapons to do insanely impossible things is refreshing and exciting. Killing zombies has never been as satisfying as it is in Dead Island.
There is some stiff competition this year for Game of the Year: a new Elder Scrolls game, two military shooter franchises vying for first, and even a new Assassins Creed. However, I truly feel that Dead Island should at least be mentioned in any conversation about GOTY. This is a phenomenal game through and through (minus “The City”), and is a testament to the hard work of a relatively small development team.
Read full review at GamingTruth.com (it is quite long). 4/5
