Dead Island Review

By: Michael Bee

Dead Island was the game that promised a brutal, gory zombie apocalypse from the comfort of your black leather executive chair. It promised melee action and zombie slaughter by the truckload. So does the game live up to its promises?

Well, the short answer is yes. The long answer is not so cut and dry. Yes, I had a blast playing this game, but it was far from a perfect ride. 

Dead Island begins with your character waking up from his drunken stupor to find emptiness around him. I played my game as Logan, since...well...I'm a white guy, and he was the only white guy. But I don't think it matters much as far as the story is concerned because all four characters seem to be assholes. Logan's back story is that he was a professional football player who got drunk, ran over and killed a girl while he was driving intoxicated and does not show the first sign of regret for doing so. Nice! Once you exit your hotel room, the plot basically becomes "let's figure out how to survive and get off this island!" It's nothing deep or intriguing by any stretch of the imagination, but it serves its purpose in keeping you moving forward. It boils down to helping one group of survivors, then helping another, and so on.

Now to move on to the good bits that everyone wants to hear about. The first good thing most people will be able to say about Dead Island is the simplest. It's fun. I admit I had a blast during most of my 30 hours with the game and there were moments when I actually thought to myself, "This is great."

It's a special feeling to walk up to a "Thug" zombie, cut off his arms, watch him lunge at you for a bit, then lop his dirty head off. And the visible damage on the zombies really adds a nice touch to the brutal feeling of the melee combat. You could chop a zombie leg down to the bone before slicing through. Sure, saying dismemberment is fun might make me sound like a guy who likes to microwave kittens in his spare time (which I highly recommend*) but the developers seem to have put together a very solid damage model to go with the superb melee action.

Moving on to the melee system, I have to say, it's great fun as well. You are able to target any part of the zombie you wish. Want to take off an arm? Do it. Want to remove the head? Then what are you waiting for? I didn't try the analog control scheme on my Xbox 360 gamepad, I found the mouse and keyboard action to be great as it is. And the abundance of different weapon types and customization options really lets you experiment with different ways to dispatch a zombie.

And weapon customization was one of my favorite parts of the game. I decided to go with bladed weapons for the most part: you know, katanas, machetes, sickles, etc. And I favored electrical mods for these weapons. There was just something beautiful about watching a zombie do a jig while he rode the lightning. All the mods basically behaved in the same fashion, so you're kind of left to decide which you think looks better, because that's the only difference. For example, the venom mod causes the zombies to keel over in a green cloud. Not nearly as impressive as electrocution.

The leveling system in Dead Island is ok for the most part. What can I say? The zombies level with you, so what's the point really. I hate auto-leveling systems. It is neat to acquire a new skill, such as stomping on a zombie's head, or getting the ability to carry more weapons, but it isn't very deep or interesting.

Dead Island's graphics are nothing special, but they are far from awful. It's a happy medium that neither adds nor detracts from the game. Would that be a positive I wonder? But honestly, there are moments during the beginning of the game (in the resort area) that are actually pretty impressive. Don't get me wrong, the later areas are nice as well, but that first area is just delightful. The textures are generally low resolution, and the model are none too impressive, but what can I say...it gets the job done.

Now on to the unmentionables. Yes, it's time for the things I did not like. The first being pacing. Like I said earlier, I was having a blast with this game for a long time. But then I hit a snag toward the end of the second act. I'm not sure what it was, but the game (or maybe it was just me) seemed to hit a wall. I became tired of running from this point to the next. The missions all seemed to be the same thing over and over: "Fetch this for me," "Save my daughter." I also think it was at an odd point in the game where the auto-leveling zombies had possibly surpassed me by a bit. I started to dread everytime I entered the City of Moresby from one of the "safe zones" as I call them, because now matter where I went I was faced with spawning Kenyan zombies. And by Kenyan I mean they could run faster than a cheetah with its ass on fire. And not only that, they could kill me in four blows, which normally wouldn't have been a problem, but they were so quick with their strikes they would hit me three times before I even knew they were there. At this point in the game I spent a lot of time dying. I'm not ashamed to admit it. It became very frustrating. Coupled with the fact that I was no longer enjoying the missions, it actually made it hard to continue. But I powered through and made it to the third act.

When I began Act Three, the game picked up a bit for me, but honestly it wasn't long before I just wanted to blast through the remainder of the quests and finish the game. I could tell it was nearing the end and that's my main problem with this game. It seemed like I was ready for it to end long before it did. When playing Deus Ex Human Revolution, I tried to make the game last longer when I saw I was nearing the end. It was the opposite here. It just turned into a grind. The quests were uninteresting and the novelty of slaying zombies was wearing thin. When I saw the end credits start rolling, I didn't have that satisfied feeling, it was more like a sigh of relief that it was finally done. And it hurts me to say that because I honestly loved the game up until the latter part of Act Two.

So there you have it. A game that had me bright-eyed and bushy tailed for a good 24 hours or so, and then grinding for the remaining six hours. Someone shoot me now, because I never thought I would say this. As much as I hate short games; I think Dead Island could have benefited from a few cuts.

With that being said, Dead Island was a great game. Enjoying a game for 24 of its 30 hours isn't bad is it? Maybe some players will go through the game faster than I did and this won't be a problem for them, but I hit a wall in this game, and that shouldn't happen. However, this is a game I purchased myself, and I don't regret the purchase. Confusing huh? Well confusing pretty much sums up my experience with Dead Island. Having a great time, getting stuck in a rut and powering through to the finish. It's like that Mitch Hedberg joke (may he RIP), "A person came up to me and asked, ‘Why do you drink red wine, doesn’t it give you a headache?’ I said, Yeah eventually! But the first and the middle part are amazing. I’m not going to stop doing something for what happens in the end. ‘Mitch you want an apple?’ No eventually it will be a core!"

*I do not condone the microwaving of innocent little kitties