Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Underappreciated"

Gameplay

Dead Island certainly isn't dead, which is a joke I've made about a lot of games with "Dead" in the title. There are plenty of zombies, and a couple humans, most of which who seem to care more about you getting their three bottles of beer or other random hunt and fetch quests than important things like escaping the bloody island. At times it feels a bit unrealistic, and it seems that Dead Island sort of wanted to be like an RPG

There are around a dozen instances where you're forced to enter the wretched sewers of Dead Island, which wasn't even fun the first time through. Luckily, you can just run through it, but there's not much fun to be had in the sewers. It's basically room after room of toxic-waste pools that you probably shouldn't go in, because they're toxic and have a bunch of Floaters, which might be the babies of Left 4 Dead 2's Spitters and Boomers.

Driving in Dead Island is actually very enjoyable, and it doesn't make walking boring, as there's still a lot to explore outside of your vehicle. The handling on the vehicles are fairly good, and luckily the vehicles don't glitch into things as much as the characters do.

Dead Island focuses on melee weapons more than guns, which is a nice touch and adds a sense of realism to it, because in reality you wouldn't find a gun every five steps and ammo every time you blink in real life, unless you're at Solid Snake's house.

Weapons can be upgraded, which is a neat feature, but what's even more neat is that they can be customized. You can add fire to your machete, or even electricity, making them do burn damage and electric damage, which are a great way to kill special zombies. However, weapons do start to break, and it costs quite a bit of money to repair them, so don't use your most expensive and powerful weapons unless you really need them, since they're probably more prone to breaking easier.

Escort quests are a pain, but there are only a few mandatory escort quests anyways, so it's not too much of a big deal, but you'll probably spend a lot of time re-doing those quests, as the AI in Dead Island is atrocious. The NPCs will not help you fight off the hordes of zombies that are coming to attack them, but after you take them down by yourself (or with your friends online), they'll skip ahead until they find the biggest zombie in the area and start poking at him with a stick, until he turns around and smacks them a few times and kills them. NPCs in these escort quests also refuse to get in vehicles, so you'll have to transport them by foot, which will take ages.

Graphics

The graphics in Dead Island are nothing short of average. I bet you feel let-down now, after all of that build-up, all for "average". It's true, though, the graphics in Dead Island are nothing special. They're not bad, by any means, and for such a big game world, they did a pretty good job, but it's nothing special.

The character models aren't great, and there are a lot of visual artifacts and glitches. Zombies may glitch into or even through walls, which obviously can cause problems when you're actually trying to, you know, complete a mission and a zombie goes through a wall into an unreachable area. This happened more than once in the course of a few hours.

Sound

There isn't really anything that pops out at you in Dead Island, so there aren't many great sound effects to be had. The zombies sound like zombies; however, you'll be able to hear the special zombies from far away, as they have their own distinct sounds that can be heard from a mile away, proving to be useful.

The sound-track is nothing special, which is kind of disappointing, as the trailer led players to believe that Dead Island was going to have an emotional sound-track along with a great story, but there wasn't much to the sound-track at all. It wasn't like heavy-metal music was expected, but it would have been nice to have some light spooky music to set the mood in some of the creepier places, and maybe some ukelele music playing when you're out in the holiday resort soaking up the sun and blood.

Story

There isn't really that much to Dead Island. It's basically an FPS-RPG, so like Borderlands, there's a main quest that isn't all that interesting, and a bunch of side-quests that require you to fetch objects for people that simply won't do a good deed for you unless you find them something that's totally out of your way and that only hoarders would want.

The main quest is basically you and three other people, who consist of Sam B, a rapper who acts as the tank for your rag-tag group of zombie-bludgeoners, Xian Mei, the sharp-weapons expert (my choice), Logan Carter, the all-around character for people who are boring and like guys with mohawks who aren't really good at anything in particular, and Purna, who's an ex-cop who knows how to use guns (which you'll rarely use anyways). You won't really get attached to any of these characters, except maybe Sam B, because he's a cool rapper.

The side-quests are usually really easy, and you'll find clusters of people in your safe-houses that never seem to be satisfied with the last thing you just gave them, and need you to fetch them some more stuff. You'll probably find a lot of quest items while you're doing the main quest, and each side-quest shouldn't take more than five minutes to do anyways, unless you've decided you love being frustrated and take up the hobby of escort quests. As previously mentioned, escort quests are basically broken, as the AI is frustratingly awful, and there are quite a few glitches along the way during these quests.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer experience is probably the best thing about Dead Island. It's a really fun Co-Op game that can be played with anywhere from 1-4 players. It's obviously going to be a lot easier with four people, as then you can just do all of the side-quests easily, by having one person go for one side-quest each.

One of the options that really helps you out before you start playing is the ability to make zombies always stay at your level. This makes the game a lot easier and a heck of a lot less frustrating, but it also takes the entire RPG-part of the game out and basically makes it an FPS with zombies that are the same level as you always, which if you're decent at math basically means that there might as well be no leveling system, besides the fact that with level-ups come skill upgrades that are mostly useless anyways.

Longevity

Dead Island is a very entertaining game that you'll want to play in shortish bursts (hour or two), as it does start to get boring if you play it too much, because it's basically the same formula throughout the whole game: Slash Zombies > Side-quest > Cut Zombies > Main Quest > Kill Zombies > Run Away From Ram > Upgrade Weapons > Go Through Sewers Again > Rinse & Repeat.

That may sound like it has a lot of depth to it, but it doesn't. It's fun for the most part, but you'll definitely be bored of side-quests after a few minutes, and you'll be really bored of going through the sewers, which are probably the thing that's most likely to make you take a break from playing.

It's definitely good for a second playthrough, as when you play it again with your original character, the zombies will be a lot tougher, and you'll find a lot more great stuff than you did in your first playthrough.

The Verdict

Pros:

• Fun combat

• Great game-world

• Very entertaining Co-Op mode

• Special zombies are great

Cons:

• Glitchy

• Boring side-quests

• Sewer sections are boring

• Bad AI

Gameplay: 9.0

Graphics: 8.0

Sound: 8.5

Story: 7.0

Multiplayer: 9.0

Longevity: 8.0

It's true that Dead Island didn't deliver the deep story and great sound-track that was expected from all the hype from the trailer, but if you stop and give Dead Island a chance, you'll find that it's actually a very entertaining game that's great with friends, and you'll probably want to keep playing even after your first time beating it.

8.0/10