Dead Island review

Dead Island already has a lot to live up to, and that’s even before anyone other than us reviewers have managed to get their hands on it. Perhaps publisher Deep Silver made a rod for its own back with THAT first video, because, although it certainly had the desired affect in terms of publicity, it kind of set expectations through the roof. Thankfully we have been splattering our way through thousands of zombies to tell you if this hype was justified, and now that we have cleared a path, we have time to let you know.

To get you up to speed, Dead island is an action FPS which includes a mixture of RPG and open world exploration. You play through the game as one of four characters; Xian Mei, an employee at the Royal Palms Resort who is pretty handy with a blade; Sam B, a blunt weapons expert and one-hit wonder rap star whose catchy tune, “Who Do You Voodoo,?” you hear at the beginning of the game; Logan, a former NFL star who has a good throwing arm and finally Purna, a firearms expert and former officer of the Sydney Police department.  For the purposes of the review we started off the game with Sam B, pretty much because he looked like a guy that could take care of himself.

At the beginning of Dead Island your basic task is to find some survivors, however it isn’t long before you do, which then results in you getting them to safety on the lifeguard station, and from there completing other tasks which eventually sees you exploring the rest of the island and making your way to the lighthouse, church and a few other safe havens, from which you can fast travel between areas.

Dead Island is broken down into the main quest which sees you trying to help people survive, and eventually escape the island, and also side quests, which help you gain experience and money, therefore making your character a lot stronger; strength you will need to get through the main quests. As you choose a quest the game informs you as to the difficulty of the task at hand, so at the beginning you will know if it’s possible for you to get through the task without too much bother or not.

Obviously Dead Island is all about the zombies, and in this respect the game does not disappoint. To start with the game takes it fairly easy on you with slow moving zombie ‘walker’s,’ who aren’t too hard to take down thanks to their slow pace and your ability to use anything you can possibly pick up as a weapon. Interestingly I found that a swift boot to the face was a very effective way of dealing with zombies, even later in the game. The thing about kicking enemies is that it knocks them over, clearing the way for you to continue kicking them until they perish or wack them with your weapon in this more vulnerable state. It has to be said that it isn’t too long before enemies become a lot harder to deal with, thanks to creatures such as the ‘infected,’ who run at you at speed and the ‘thugs,’ who are large, tough zombies which makes an appearance quite soon into the game. Later on it gets even tougher with exploding, toxic, psycho and poison-spitting zombies, all of which will have you cowering in a corner wishing you had never pushed the start button.

What makes Dead Island really tough is that as you level up, the zombies become tougher, usually matching your level and then taking even longer to kill, although you can always run if you don’t feel like facing them. Speaking of levelling up; as you kill zombies you will gain experience and once you reach the set target your character will level up, allowing you to choose skills like Fury – which is a sort of Berserk rage that when activated will allow you to unleash a very powerful attack on the zombies, which comes in handy, particularly when up against some of the more powerful enemies. There are skills other than Rage, allowing you to increase damage or learn how to pick a lock for example, however from my play through Rage is certainly essential.

As well as being able to level up, Dead Island also gives you the ability to use a workbench to upgrade weapons and create new one’s using a mixture of items which you gain or find lying around the island; yes it’s very Dead Rising 2, but these weapons will help you no end, so in that respect we will happily let it off with that one. If you would like to create weapons then you will need to find the plans which are spread throughout the island, which generally sees you having to take care of some nasty creature who is standing in your way. Once you do get hold of the plans, you will be able to make use of flaming baseball bats, electric cleavers and the curious Magic Rod, amongst other interesting concoctions.

Getting around in Dead Island is done in one of two ways, you can drive around in the numerous vehicles which are spread around, or you can walk (or in my case run). Driving is particular fun as you can speed over zombies, cutting through them all and making your path a lot easier. You can also use your vehicle as a weapon to take down zombies in the way of your task, for example… In one level I had to shut down fire hydrants, however there was all manner of zombies in my path, including one of those pesky Thugs, therefore I simply mowed them all down with my truck, clearing the way for me to get out and shut down the hydrant.

This sounds great so far doesn’t it? Well you haven’t even heard the best bit…. Drop-in/Drop-out co-op. Yes that’s right. While playing, anyone who is near your location can drop into your game via Xbox LIVE and when they are bored, drop out again. I have to say that the ability to do this saved my character’s skin on more than one occasion. For example… In one level, which was marked as very hard, I had to get to the Hotel parking lot in order to find a truck, thankfully at this point someone had dropped into my game and therefore I had help as we cut our way through hundreds of zombies and did what we needed to in order to progress further in the game. I have a feeling that without help this level would have taken me twice as long as it did, probably because my partner helped me out on more than one occasion during his stay.

Although Dead Island is generally a great game, it does have a few issues. When wandering around the island you will reach a certain point and will then be told with massive writing on the screen “Leaving Playable Area,” and if you do continue past this point you will simply be placed back within the boundary. It’s a shame that these invisible barriers exist, or at least haven’t been implemented in a better way. The game also has a few issues in the graphics department, with pop-up, screen tearing and a few other issues such as billboards being pixelated at one moment then showing ads the next.

To add to the above issues, during my playthrough, quite late in the game, I also had an issue of a check point not loading, this resulted in me having to go back on myself, at which point it decided to load and I was able to continue on my tracks, while prior to the beginning of chapter III the game crashed completely. Finally, when you reach certain points in the game a cutscene will show, the problem is that all four of the games characters will be shown in these cutscenes, even if you are playing on your own with no co-op partner (the other three characters do not accompany you are NPC’S during the game). Given the large scale of the game these issues may not be considered major and can probably be patched out, however they are still present so are worth noting and have certainly had an influence on my final score.

Away from the games problems, Dead Island is a decent looking and atmospheric game, there are some postcard picture moments and all the action is smooth and well thought out. Every second you spend in this game will see your heart in your mouth as you continue to look over your shoulder, you never feel safe and are therefore always on edge, mainly due to zombie screams you frequently hear in the background and the creepy music which accompanies these horrid monsters being in the vicinity.

The main question everyone will be asking is “does Dead Island live up to its trailer?” and without doubt the answer is yes. The thing about Dead Island is that it takes games such as Fallout, Left4Dead and Dead Rising and welds them together into one massive, unmissable adventure. Sure it’s not perfect, but it’s still a bloody great game and one that you won’t regret spending your cash on for one zombie filled minute.

Rating: Good
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Dead Island is due to release on September 6 and September 9 in the USA and UK respectively. You can pre-order a copy here (Xbox 360), here (PS3) or here (PC).

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