Not a bad game. Good ideas, badly developed. Hoping in a better sequel.
A full island only for our entertainment: women, booze… zombies?!?
Dead island showed some promises until its first appearance on our gamers radars. Later fallen in oblivion finally managed to come to life. The result is a zombie game sometimes original, though taking example from some features of other games, and with some good ideas unfortunately non perfectly developed.
Once chose your favorite avatar between a football player, a flashy rapper, an hot asian girl good with knifes and a violent feminist chick; you wake up in your hotel room ready to face an explosion of mass violence. Soon you'll discover that actually Banoi (the island where the game is set) is under a very zombie outbreak and for some reason (design requirement) you are immune to the contagion. This will make more easy for you attempt sortie outside from secure shelter in order to retrieve goods (food, water, weapons) or try to uncover the truth behind the outbreak and finally make an escape from that hell.
The game is basically a first person action with strong RPG elements set up similarly to the games of Left 4 Dead series but more oriented toward melee fight than gunfire. That is surely one of the most coherent choices of gameplay and design. Though fire weapons will not lack later in the game, to find an arsenal in a holiday resort (initial location of the adventure) should be pretty awkward.
Typically RPG even the experience system, development of characters following three different ability trees allotting skill points earned on every level up, and the quests either related to the main mission than absolutely optional dispensing experience points or valuable and powerful weapons.
Some lines up I mentioned Left 4 Dead. Well… the motto of Dead Island seems to be: "Wanna copy? So then, copy from the bests."
And Dead Island takes a lot from almost all zombie games published in last five years.
From L4D takes the first person view and the presence of specific enemies very similar to the special classes seen in Valve product (tanker, spitter…).
From another zombie best seller, Dead Rising 2, is taken the idea of weapons customization and money necessity.
Roaming Banoi and completing quests you will find several mod plans allowing you to modify normal weapons in order to transform them in more lethal instruments. Differently from Dead Rising 2, where a customized weapon was totally different from its base ingredients, here modded weapons behave in the same way simply adding some damage or the possibility to poison or paralyze enemies. It's also possible to retrieve plans for some juicy tools like bomb or various ammunition.
Money are a binding necessity in Dead Island; can be retrieved all around or examining luggage and other crates. Though expendable in the usual black markets typical of every catastrophe game, the main purpose will be to maintain effective and clean the various melee weapons ruining at alarming rates soon becoming useless. Even weapons upgrades and modifications will cost a ton of your wealth as well of the unfortunate cases where you'll be killed. And the very respawn is among the more questionable features of the game; either for the enemies that appear again pretty fast on a location just cleaned either the post death resurrection of main characters. If your character dies simply will respawn some distance from the death point, something in a part of the location not yet purged with the only result to be attacked by several enemies at once much likely dying again.
Though not critical flaws, the biased respawn mechanics tend to be annoying and added to other lacks of the game, either venial either really serious.
Among the venial we can include the laughable background plot, so ephemeral that is simply useless to waste ink on it, worsened by a cast of characters charismatic like the keyboard I'm writing at the moment. In addition the voice acting for all the game characters, main and secondary, is awful. Too bad 'cause, beside the poor story, an effective characterization should help the identification with the setting and the game mechanics, however already pretty high.
Definitely more unforgivable are the technical issues, beginning with a use of the engine under its possibilities. Ok, we are not in presence of the Unreal engine, but the Chrome surely showed better results elsewhere. Overall the outdoor parts of the settings are pretty good, but almost all the section indoor bounce from poor to unwatchable. Better the polygonal models, good modeled and animated.
To the flaws we must add a series of little/big bugs, no one really critical, but surely annoying.
There are for all tastes, from the medikits that does not cure your player, to weapons that disappear after you toss them to an enemy; and more we have invisible walls, portions of the setting where the zombies cannot see you and behave just like your character was behind a fence, and the inevitable "I'm stuck into the background!"
Though all its lacks, I must admit that Dead Island still shows a good concept.
Bringing the mechanics of L4D in a more reasoned setting really was a great idea, as well as the attention showed for the co-op play. Though enjoyable in single player is in cooperative that the game give its best.
Final line
Sometimes I commit sensational mistakes. I'm into videogames from so much time that I cannot remember clearly when I started to play them and as result of this looong period of time I developed some sixth sense for games. Really I'm pretty good in foretell if a game in development will be worthy or not. Among my correct previsions I can call the last Alien vs Predator or the useless Duke Nukem forever; one of my greatest mistake was a lack of trust in a little project called… Batman Arkam Asylum… (lol).
With Dead Island I plenty centered my forecast. From the beginning I liked the idea of the game, but something keep saying me the final realization won't be up to the game concept.
Dead Island is not a bad product. Though derivative from other zombie game manages plenty to involve and entertain the player. Unfortunately on the global production, and on the final score as well, weighs an approximate realization and a beta testing absolutely insufficient.
So, the final score I chose may result too punitive, but don't misunderstand me: I really appreciated Dead Island and hope in a great sequel where the good ideas of the game will have a worthy development.
Final Score: 6.5