Review : Dead Island

     Welcome to the beautiful Banoi Island Resort, grab a drink and head on over to the beach or grab some friends and take a canoe trip down one of our picturesque jungle rivers. We’re glad you chose us please help yourself to a complimentary zombie... or an island full.

     First off lets an objective look at the characters. There are four playable characters and more NPC’s than you can fit in a meat grinder. Before you get your hopes up I meant it when I said there are only four playable characters, just four, no customization regarding name, facial features, classes, gender, anything, in fact all you get to choose is where you place skill points when you level up. It seemed they also cut some corners with the NPC’s, all they had the time to edit it seems is the facial features, remember Oblivion where even the old ladies had the body of a twenty year old model? You’ll get a lot of that here. There are a couple NPC's that they spend a little more render time on, most importantly the leaders of the survivor groups, one of which saved you in the prologue and a survivor who will later follow you through the game acting as a portable storage unit. The backstories for your characters are pretty bleak and useless as they are nothing more than a two minute narrated sob story, and create next to no connection with the player and influence barely anything in the game. While we’re on characters lets take a little more in depth look, theres the blunt weapon specialist; who just happens to be black and a failing freestyle rapper, the ranged damage dealer; who happens to be an ex cop with a daddy complex, the throwing weapon specialist; a white football player who can’t hold his liquor; and last but certainly least is the sharp weapon specialist an undercover Asian investigator , anyone want sushi with your racial stereotypes?

     So if you read that you now know there are roughly three types of weapons, blunt, sharp, and ranged. Blunt weapons are the easiest to find and in fact your first weapon is a great example, a wooden paddle (thank you sir may I have another?), I would say that blunt weapons are the easiest to find as every broomstick and piece of wood flooring you feel like ripping out of a zombie classifies as blunt. Its what I call the Dead Island complex: the state of mind where you think that anything heavier than a dust pan is a weapon. Sharp weapons range from the lowly kitchen knife to the high horse katana that will elude your inventory for the majority of the game. Ranged weapons encompass every weapon, as you can throw everything you find at a zombie, but along the way there are a few specialized types. Grenades play a prominent role as nearly every survivor shanty you stumble upon has a pyro waiting to make molotovs, actual grenades will appear later in the game and cause all kinds of explosive fun. If you’re lucky you’ll find a gun early in the story line, if not then wait till act two and three consecutively and you’ll have your pick of pistols, assault rifles, and shotguns, but be wary ammunition is priceless and more often than not you’ll find your magazines dry and become a brain buffet. One thing I was definitely a fan of was the modding, every now and then you’ll be rewarded with a weapon mod blueprint and from there you skip over to a repair table and strap some random (so it seems) items onto your weapons for various effects. Effects range from additional force to an elemental chance ranging from electric to toxic and incendiary.

    The combat in this game can make or break the experience, I mean sure the graphics are pretty and you may find you have multiple zombie hotties following you around but when they forget your money and you have to show them who’s boss you need to be able to survive. There are two types of combat controls, digital and analog, digital being your standard FPS hack and slash and all that shiny stuff, analog is a more immersive style and requires you to violently swing your analog sticks until you smash your controller on the wall. So now we’ve gotten past my broken controller I can explain how I think the combat works. Every weapon has attributes that deal numerical damage to the enemies, taken as hit points and displayed onscreen, thats all fine and dandy but you still need to factor in weapon condition as the more you use the weapon it will degrade and eventually become useless. Any mods also factor into the math and weapons also have a “force” attribute, that basically means your sledgehammer is going to knock a zombie on its ass faster than your kitchen knife. Obviously thats not all I mean thats a weak equation to all us geeks, so weapons also have a critical chance and most enemies have a critical hit location that may or may not be easy to spot.

     Tying into combat are the health and stamina systems and their various upgrades. Stamina is obviously how much you are fatigued by exercise such as sprinting and swinging a sledgehammer, every blow reduces your stamina bar which is only shown when being depleted. When your stamina bar is depleted you can no longer fight effectively, causing you to stop sprinting or stumble around, and when your stamina bar is completely gone zombies can also get in a few very effective cheap shots and send you flying. The health system is refreshingly old school, being a series of blocks arrayed at the top left of the screen portraying how   much health your character retains. Health can be replenished by eating, drinking, and leveling up, although food choices are very sparse. Along the way you will find snack bars available in standard and extra format, fruit, and energy drinks, thats it, thats pretty much it in the way of interactive health products.  I should also mention the "Fury" meter, essentially beat enough zombies and you can fly into a character specific rage. Whether it be a personal side arm, or an infinite stash of throwing knives, your fury will get you out of many a sticky situation. 

     The enemies are pretty basic for zombie games. Theres your standard Max Brook’s zombie, called a “walker”, that does just that, theres the fast plague zombies called “infected”, the “thug” or giant asshole as you will soon call him, the floater which might as well be a boomer from L4D, the “suicide” which is just a Dead Island version of a Creeper, the “Ram”, a slavering mental patient (pro tip: let him run past then head on in the back door), the “butcher” who has no hands so stabs you with the bones of his arms (pro tip: use an axe for added MLG score), and a guest appearance by the very much over used Jason Voorhees. The basic walker can be upgraded with weapons or a miasmic cloud of flies or for your gaming pleasure, set on fire; cause the only thing worse than a zombie is a flaming zombie. All enemies are introduced with a cut scene the first time you meet them and throughout the game you’ll acquire the ability to choose your path through the levels by what sounds you hear coming from certain paths. All enemies respond to you by your threat level and theres a strategy for all of them, most of which involve a machete enema or shoving a car down their throats, but do experiment.

     Now that I’ve talked about everything out of order lets hit the plot. Essentially (based on what character you choose) you are sent to Banoi Island a beautiful resort, from there shit goes bad and you wake up in your bed to an emergency broadcast urging you to leave the hotel. Along the way you are guided by a man from the radio who (spoiler alert) eventually fucks you over and gets his ass beat, but I digress. From the first act you’ll be meeting and helping every bleeding heart survivor you should have fed to the horde, you’ll be collecting car parts and pharmaceuticals from the resort to the heart of the jungle and everyone has a weapon or new mod they will be willing to trade for services rendered. Long story short your merry band of immune survivors make it off the island via helicopter piloted by an “innocent” ex con. So military scandal and dead scientists aside the plot is simple but effective and still manages to provide a twist and turn hear or there.

     Multiplayer is just the campaign with four players, theres no difference in number of enemies or plot and everything can be accomplished by one person, aside from fast travel and main quests you rarely have to be a group player.

     Overall I was satisfied with the plot, the graphics are beautiful and I rarely encountered bugs until later in the game when I stumbled across enemies glitching into walls and had problems loading textures on start up. The combat can either be the most fun you’ve ever had while shoving a wrench into your girlfriends mouth or become the most frustrating thing you’ve ever attempted, it even says in the loading screen tips “some areas have a high threat level, it may be harder to play on your own”. One great thing that will make up for these bugs is the fact all the game data is stored on the disk, it even says on the case that it only needs 51mb of hard drive space which is uber small for such a huge and beautiful game, I recently picked up RAGE and right at the desk they warned me it would take an hour to install as it takes up 8gigs of hard drive space... So Dead Island, its a beautiful immersive world of zombies and other assorted a-holes, with a small number of glitches and racially styled characters, but its damn fun and with the chance to bring your weapons over to the next play through and start up from every chapter, its worth coming back but try it on your own before you get too attached to your brains....

*Just as an end note don't let my assorted pessimism and cynicism dissuade you from trying this game, I absolutely loved it and lost a lot of sleep from the insane amount of tension it builds, and in my defense its my job to find the bad in everything that is good. Let me also say this game did better than anyone thought it would, when I went to buy it three days after it was released I went to four different stores and they all told me it had sold out at least four times already, it makes me wish I had preordered it instead of Resistance 3, but I digress, get this game, get some friends and let the good times roll.