Dead Island is as terrifying as it is frustrating.
The basic premise of the gameplay is a FPS style hack and slash. There are guns in the game, but ammo is so limited that its really only used for a couple of situations in the game like destroying suicide zombies and the occasional human enemies. There are tons of weapons to pick up along the way and they vary based on being a blunt or sharp weapon.
Once you've got your weapon, you have to maintain it because much like Fallout, your weapon degrade over time making them useless against the zombies and humans you fight in the game. To remedy this, you can go to periodic workbenches and use cash you find to repair, upgrade, and even modify some weapons. Some of the modifications are cool like attaching a circular saw to your baseball bat or turning a baton into an electrified stun rod.
Running on this, combat is a terrifying affair as well as frustrating. When your fighting a couple of zombies there is real tension to outmaneuver them and kill them with your weapon. However, more than two zombies pretty much is suicide under most normal circumstances. I can't tell you how many times I failed fighting one zombie for two more to attack from behind. Thankfully, there is no real death. You're merely knocked out for about 10 seconds and then you respawn at the nearest checkpoint. Even better is experience and damage to zombies is retained, so at best you just need to be persistent.
Sadly though, there are only eight types of zombies and one type of human. This lack of variety strains the enjoy-ability of the game as you're hoping for a greater challenge than just being swarmed. Ultimately, the game is best played cooperatively because certain sections will have you repeatedly knocked out to the point of anger.
Visually, the game has issues. While the island looks nice and the characters are at least passable, there are visual glitches all over. Clipping errors happen often like a sequence where I was driving a truck and wrecked into a tree and had leaves in my truck. Sometimes you destroy objects like plant holders for the plants to simply float there. Overall, this is one area Dead Island needs a lot of work.
The sound design here is very strong. Zombies are nerve-wracking to hear and each sounds different. The background music ranges from melodramatic in safe zones to pulse pounding in the heat of battle with zombies. The voice acting for the game is decent and I had no complaints here.
Value is strong. The main quest is going to take 20 or more hours to accomplish. In addition to that, you've got dozens of side quests along with the Ryder DLC and the arena, so the game will keep you entertained for quite some time.
Overall, I struggle with whether or not I like Dead Island. As a single player game, it's terrifying and horrendously frustrating to the point of quitting. As a multiplayer game it works nicely and flows much better. I unfortunately had issues connecting, likely due to more glitches in the game, so I haven't gotten in as much multiplayer as I would have liked. Ultimately, there are some really good ideas here, but they're going to need to refinement. Dead Island in the end is a good game, but it's not a great game unfortunately.
The Good: Excellent survival elements, wonderful sound design, weapon maintenance and upgrading is fun and essential, tons of value.
The Bad: Visual and technical glitches are everywhere, very frustrating to play in single player mode, not enough zombie variety.