A Zombie Elder Scrolls

User Rating: 8 | Dead Island (Platinum Hits) X360
Dead Island is an open-world RPG with many similarities to games like Skyrim. You travel the island which is full of zombies and not many survivors, starting in the beautiful sunny resort, then making your way through the dark, ravaged City and finally the jungle environment. Following the main quest sees you helping a group of survivors and trying to get in touch with a mysterious fellow who sends out communications over the radio. Survivors dish out the usual fetch, kill, and escort quests, rewarding you with bonus exp and extra weapons or cash. The combat is the hack and slash Elder Scrolls affair but weapons wear out very quickly, so you must salvage whatever you can find. At the start of the game, you are constantly switching and dropping weapons, using rowing paddles, broomsticks, pipes etc to bludgeon away at your enemies. Later on, you tend to have a set of weapons which you switch between and repair them later at the workbenches which are found at regular intervals. Picking up all the random items can help upgrade your weapons as long as you acquire the blueprint which are usually part of the side quests. Attaching barbed wire to a baseball bat increases the damage, or adding wire and a battery can add an electric shock to your hits. There are 3 types of weapons, blunt, sharp and fire-arms which the choice of characters specialise in. When you level up you can spend a point in the skill tree, giving you more stamina, weapon proficiency and extra skills like lock-picking the locked chests. The combat with the knifes is particularly satisfying and brutal because you can lop off heads and limbs. You cannot block but can jump back or to the side to avoid attacks, and can also use careful timing to minimise damage to yourself, giving zombies a kick or a swipe with your weapon as they lunge at you. There are many times in the game where a whole hoard of zombies surround you and you will quickly run out of stamina. If you run out, you cannot attack and being hit will send you flying to the ground. Bizarrely, when on the ground, the zombies back off and let you get back up. You would think a game based on survival would be punishing in difficulty, but there are frequent auto saves and the penalty for dying is a small loss of percentage of cash. Items seem to respawn, giving you plenty of access to health items, weapons, weapon upgrade items, and cash. The lenient system limits the tension, but to be honest Dead Island isn't very scary. There are occasional moments where you have to use a flash-light to help see in dark areas, but the majority of the game is played in the light. There are a few tough areas to the game, particularly when you get to the city and the zombies suddenly become a lot stronger, and the game introduces human 'punks' who carry guns. Once you kill one human and acquire the gun, it becomes more of a level playing field. The guns don't seem to be too effective against zombies and apart from the sections involving humans, gun ammo is very scarce. When the game came out, it was heavily criticised for its bugs, but the patches seem to have fixed the issues because I didn't experience any problems. Therefore the game now deserves a higher score than the initial reviews.