Dead Island

Dead Island is set on Banoi, a tropical paradise. Our protagonist (whoever you choose) wakes up in their hotel having been left for dead [pun intended] and finds that the resort is overrun with flesh-eating zombies. Grabbing whatever is at hand, you proceed to bash, slice and hack your way out of the chaos, stumbling across survivors as you go.

Firstly, a little about my set-up: 2.66Ghz Intel Dual-Core, Nvidia 9600GT with 4gb RAM, the game runs well at 1900x1200, details are great, there is a little bit of slow-down at some points, usually when there are a lot of the undead on screen. The game allows you to adjust your preferred set-up for quality vs. performance with a simple slider bar - very convenient.

DI is simply a great game. The island of Banoi is in no way bland; all the environments feel as if they have had a lot of time spent sculpting them rather than a cookie-cutter standard layout, which given that it is a hotel complex could have been an easy shortcut. They took the high-ground. The character models are decent, you have weapon specialists (blunt weapons, throwers etc) and get to choose your character from 2 guys or 2 girls. The animation is fantastic as well, you have location sensitive damage on the zombies and the weapons splinter and degrade realistically too.

Unfortunately, the game is immensely repetitive; the story-progressing missions are nearly all fetch-quests of some kind and the only difference between them is whether you need a vehicle or not to bring back the items, be it fuel, water or a key of some kind. The side quests which earn you XP and cash can be completed at any point and don't even bother disguising the fact that they are a simple fetch-quests e.g. "I left my favourite necklace in bungalow 15 of the Silver section, can you get it for me?" - Very boring, and obviously as soon as you leave an area, all the zombies respawn, meaning you have to fight your way in. And then out again.

The XP system is great, it's similar to Diablo II in this respect, you can repair, upgrade and even customise your weapons and skill tree, making for a truly unique experience. For instance, collecting a load of nails and then combining it with a baseball bat makes a fearsome weapon, deodorant cans, duct tape and a lighter make a throwable incendiary device, the list goes on - it's immensely entertaining and causes you to scavenge every available item - a neat trick.

The cars however are a pain. Often the only difficulty scaling they can apply to each quest is the distance you have to travel between the locations, meaning a vehicle is essential, but the cars drive like a boat; you can move your head inside the cab too meaning that you are never quite central and will end up bashing into something, oh and they didn't bother to allow the cars to scrape off incidental minor blows, oh no - you stop completely.

I'm hooked though - the beautiful tropical resort milieu and the combination of bashing zombie's heads in is just too much fun - despite all of the missions revolving around NPCs inability to walk or go anywhere without you - you can also play the entire game online in co-operative mode. Recommended for a great zombie-based FP sandbox experience.

I'm not convinced the game is finished. The enemies and pick ups level with your character to the point of making a level up largely pointless. The ability to select a light skill refinement on level up such as 10% more durability on blunt weapon use isn't much payback. I would swing my bat the same number of times to drop an enemy whether at level 1 or 40. I unlocked the game on the American release date which backfired as the European release date included an update that wiped mission progress.

The wipe meant that on my first play through I finished probably 10 levels higher than a normal first play through. This highlighted something strange; level 24 weapons. They are everywhere from the first area to the last, special skull weapon creations are also created at level 24. What was so special about level 24 that say 10% of weapons aren't levelled but are level 24? Also what is the obsession with sharp weapons? The start of the game dishes out blunt weapons but afterwards nine out of ten decent weapons are sharp. That goes for quest awards, drops and modifications.

The abundance of sharp weapons is annoying if you pick a blunt weapons guy. Not that the blunt weapons guy is useless. He has a very handy health refill over time which pretty much lets you shrug off minor knocks. Playing another character after playing the blunt guy and realising your health is still low after a cut scene is a pain. The decent sharp weapon availability just meant I completed the game using sharp weapons half the time even as a blunt guy.

Why would you want to be a firearms specialist when firearms aren't effective against zombies, ammo is only plentiful on humans, you can only carry a small amount of ammo and humans are one hit kills for head shots with any character?

Why would you want to be a thrown weapons guy when you can only hold a limited number of weapons and are in allot of close quarters fights with zombies?

Put it this way I'm not convinced about the skill tree system for anyone. It is the little skills such as stomp, barge past and health regeneration that give survivability (blunt guy) and sharp weapon abundance and limb chopping ability that will take down most of your enemies (sharp girl) but at the end of the day you can pick up and hack with anyone.

Missions involve following a dashed line on the map. Killing a dozen of the two common zombie types on the way and maybe encountering a less common zombie. The less common zombie types are still common as there are only 4 types. Click on an item at the map destination and sometimes head back. The story attempts to cover the one trick mission system up.

If you just use the weapons from the floor you will save up loads of cash. If you build and repair modified weapons then your cash drains away. Money isn't used for anything else though except as a punishment for dying. If you die you lose some cash and re spawn nearby, sometimes further on in the mission. The weapon mods are satisfying when they critical on a less common enemy. They then guarantee a quick kill as the enemies health drops and they become incapacitated for further hits. That is all modified weapons do though.

If connected to the internet you are automatically available for up to three others joining you or you joining another game. Now a player joining re spawns nearby enemies sometimes at the worst possible moment. My experience of multi player was sudden re spawns, some uncooperative fighting followed by a quick exit from the other player.

It sounds like I'm not that impressed with the whole game. I'm not. It is still possibly worth playing though. A hand to hand, limb slicing, free roaming, zombie killing Far Cry 2 ish game is a genre that should be full to the brim, but it isn't. Dead Island does satisfy at putting you in the position encountered in many zombie survival movies. In that respect its near the top of the pile. A very very small pile.

Goood game, lots of bugs. Overall around 3 stars. It did not live up to all of the hype and marketing it was put through.