Since I bought this game on Tuesday I’ve gotten roughly two or three hours of sleep a night. My eyes are dark and a little sunken, I’ve lost some colour and I likely smell a little off, so I’m in the perfect shape to review Dead Island for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.
Premise
For the longest time I’ve wished someone would make an open world zombie survival game. Dead Rising allowed the players to kinda adventure as they wished, but there were always some kind of restrictions tethering you to where you could go and when. Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare also had a few elements that felt nice, but it didn’t have that long-lasting appeal to me. I’m a Romero fan, I want to feel like I’m in one of his Living Dead flicks, so when I heard there was a game that would put me in an environment where I was free to adventure as I saw fit and that it contained RPG elements a la Fallout and Oblivion, my attention was had.
Gameplay
I wouldn’t say Dead Island does anything all that new, but it borrows from the right games. The game has the first person, open world RPG that players of Borderlands, Elder Scrolls and Fallout would be familiar with, combines the creative aspects of Dead Rising 2, and has four player online co-op like Left 4 Dead, and it leaves a pretty nice taste in the gamers’ mouths; and no I’m not talking about the gamers who have been turned into zombies and are snacking on their former teammates.
The game handles in a familiar way to players of any other first person RPG and the gameplay elements that are unique fit in nicely and don’t feel jarring, a gamer who has played any of the previously mentioned first person RPGs will feel very comfortable with the control elements of this game; avid fans of first person shooters, however, may experience a pretty drastic learning curve for the first ten minutes or so.
A very appealing element of the gameplay ,for me at least, is that this game is NOT a first person shooter, at least not entirely. In Left 4 Dead, for example, even though the player travels through evacuated areas, there are always a crap tonne of firearms just lying around. In Dead Island, the player won’t fall ass-backwards into a pile of M16s and shotguns, you will literally have to grab anything you can get your hands on to defend yourself from the horde of the undead that traverse the paradise getaway. Down the road more weapons will become available such as firearms and custom weapons, but the beginning has a very nice touch to it as the player literally does have to scrape and scavenge to survive, giving the game a very real sense of tension; it’s simple to feel safe when you have an assault rifle in your hands to cut down a dozen zombies, it’s not as easy when 30-40 are running at you and you have a broken kayak paddle.
Graphics
One of the crowning accomplishments in this game is the graphics. Yes, there are issues with texture popping in some instances, but they’re easy to forgive when you look out over the vistas and take in the beauty of the vacation paradise that you’re exploring, only to have it quickly take a backseat to the zombies that are shuffling up behind you. The characters and zombies themselves aren’t the crispest looking models ever seen, but they are still more visually appealing than Bathesda’s first person RPGs. The environments are what really make the gamer stop and go “wow, that’s awesome”.
Sound
The music isn’t going to be the most memorable soundtrack of 2011, but it serves its purpose with subtly tense music in places where a big confrontation is about to take place, and utter silence when the gamers realized how isolated they are from any help.
The other major achievement in this game is the voice acting. Like any game, Dead Island does feature some less than stellar showings, but the majority of the voice actors bring their A-game and drive a very emotionally driven narrative. Where Left 4 Dead had a more satiric sense to it, Dead Rising had a very forced angst, and Resident Evil is just plain laughable, Dead Island has a genuine sense of fear and despair as other survivors in shelters and locked areas make their grief and fright known, with others trying to console and comfort; the safehouses feel very realistic in this sense as it is filled with personalities that are real and that one could expect to actually find if a scenario like this was to occur. Cut scenes also contain some very emotional moments as again the actors took the time to put themselves into the roles; a scene that primarily sticks out in my mind is a scene where a man who has been bitten by a zombie knows he only has a few hours left before he turns, and has to say goodbye to his daughter and convince her to go with the other survivors, all the while the daughter is refusing to accept that her father will be lost to her and pleads with him to come, swearing she’ll find a way to cure him. It’s a very emotionally driven scene that left me thinking “wow, that was genuinely gripping” and made me feel for both these fictional characters as a father had to make the tough, but right, choice, and a daughter knowing deep down it’s right but refusing to accept it. The game’s acting is a very powerful element and puts Dead Island in a category all its own in the zombie apocalypse genre.
What I like
The graphics are great, the game plays smoothly and the acting is good enough to make this narrative go toe to toe with a Romero movie.
What I would change
There’s not really a lot I didn’t like. A few objects spread around the scenery, such as beach chairs and the like, should be moveable, but ultimately those are small potatoes.
Final Thoughts
I would love to see this game be the sleeper hit of 2011. No one really thought this game would be all that great, and to hear that this excellent game has sold so well has made me very glad and I hope to see this game flourish with future downloadable content.
Get this game if you’re a fan of open world games, first person RPGs or anything zombie related, you will not regret it; now I must get back to the island of Banoii, the legions of zombie bikini babes are awaiting my return.
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