Dead Island

Review from Sarge - Sunday, 09 October 2011 @ 12:29pm

There have almost been enough zombie video games over the last few years that it's almost becoming its own sub-genre. It's the sort of setting that I keep telling people that I'm over and really sick of, yet whenever another game/DLC pack comes out that has something to do with zombies, I'm still there. Although I think I might almost be done with zombie games - and judging by Dead Island, all the zombie-related ideas have been used up. That's not necessarily a harsh criticism, although it is. Allow me to explain...

From the get-go, Dead Island is quite a confusing game. When the game starts up, it shows you an intro video that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Did you ever see the video for the Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up? It's a little like that, where you see you, as the main character, at the tropical island resort, in the middle of a party and you've had a little bit too much to drink. You get sent to your room and the next day, you wake up miraculously without a hang-over to find that the whole island's gone to shit. Now, the confusing thing here is during the intro video, you have an interaction with every single playable character?

Each of the characters also have a little bit of a back-story, but beyond a brief explanation at the character select screen, there's never any reference to this throughout the game again. Dead Island never really seem to master the cut-scene thing very well either. There's a number of cut-scenes that, regardless of whether you're playing solo or 4-player co-op, will show all 4 characters.

The main characters themselves are fairly diverse enough, but still your standard fare: the big tough black guy, the cocky American, and the woman "with something to prove". I must mention at this point though, how pleasing it is to not only see strong female characters that aren't overly sexualised, but a strong female Aboriginal character (Koori, to be exact)! I can't think of any other game that had an aboriginal character as its main playable character?

On second thought, this is actually quite a poor sunscreen applicator
The setting of the game is supposedly Papua New Guinea, with the main city called, not Port Moresby, but just the City of Moresby. Given its geographic location, the majority of the NPCs that you find along the way, they all have Australian, Kiwi or Pacific Islander accents. Or at least, I think that's what they're going for. The voice-acting in Dead Island is absolutely woeful. The painfully awkward Aussie accents that aren't quite Aussie, not quite Kiwi accents - but whatever it is, it's clearly spoken by Americans. At one stage early in the game, doing some fetch quests for a character called Sinamoi, I actually had to mute the tv and just read the subtitles. As well as the horrible accents, a lot of the lines delivered seem to fall flat and they really do sound like they've been recorded after reading the script once before, which is a shame, as there are a few quite upsetting and sad moments, but with such a poor delivery, they just feel emotionless and I find myself not caring at all for any of the characters.

"So, what sort of game actually IS Dead Island, Sarge, you incredibly sexy and surprisingly well hung AG staffer?" I hear you ask. Well, I'm not entirely sure - I'm not sure Dead Island knows too. It's a little bit Borderlands, it's a little bit Dead Rising and a little bit Left For Dead, but with none of the storyline of either, and I think this is the biggest stumbling block to Dead Rising; it takes so long to get into it. The game just kind of ambles along - there's no sense of urgency or purpose. The only real storyline of the game is "HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT ALL THE FUCKING ZOMBIES!". After being baffled by the intro video, the only real direction you're given is when you're in a lift, and a voice on the intercom tells you he knows a way out, but he wants you to do him a favour first. *COUGH* BIOSHOCK *COUGH*. But, it's important to push on throughout the game, because it does become highly entertaining - it has that perfect element of "I'll just do this next quest, then I'll stop playing", only to find that 2 hours later, you're still going. As much as I'm not normally into RPG games, it truly was the RPG elements that kept me going - even if the game doesn't always explain what certain items do until it's too late. Speaking of timing too - this game is impressively long. Assuming you're taking your time to take a look around the island, and you're doing all the side-missions, there's roughly around 20-25 hours worth of gameplay.

The handling and controls of Dead Island are quite intuitive and the combat is easy to master. Each weapon has a totally different feel and you'll find that as you go on, you'll need to adjust your combat to suit the weapon and even each type of enemy. There's an amazing variety of weapons, as well as "mods" that you can use to make your basic weapon even more powerful, much like the Dead Rising games. As well as the simple "press A to kill" style of attack, you can switch it up for more of a challenge and choose analogue attacks, which use the thumbsticks more. This is a little more difficult, but if you can master it, it's a highly effective attack style that allows for more direct kill-styles. This is actually a very satisfying way to kill - as are all kills. A lot of the weapons have a real sense of effectiveness and slicing off limbs feels amazingly satisfying.

He looks scary, but I wouldn't worry too much - he's pretty 'armless
While it's possible to play this game on your own, co-op is really where it's at. When you start a game, it's quite easy for your friends, or even random strangers to drop in an out of your game - the game will even tell you when you're near another person who's at a similar point in the game that you are. You and your friends can can power through the main story quests, or you can do the side-quests - which, FYI, are a lot easier when you're with friends.

The game isn't without its faults, though. While none of the bugs that I've seen so far are game-breakers, they're just pretty damn annoying. There's a lot of clipping, a few broken animations, side-quests that aren't always accessible when they should be and judging by a few other online reviews, the list of minor issues is quite long. A lot of the other problems aren't just bugs, but are clearly purposefully made in a particular way that defies a bit of logic - items that respawn when you leave an area and go back to it, NPC's that talk to you like you're a group of people even when you're playing solo - and even when they are talking to you, rarely do any of the NPCs actually look at you - I know it's an odd thing to mention, but a lot of them actually do it, and it's quite off-putting after a while. I was half-expecting a "YOU'VE BEEN DEAD THE WHOLE TIME!" style twist at the end.

Pros

• the combat is very satisfying
  
• the weapon mods are great - without it being too over-the-top like Dead Rising
  
• it's a great co-op experience
  
• great RPG elements
  

Cons

• those bloody awful accents!
  
• the game still has a lot of bugs throughout
  
• the game borrows a little too heavily
  
• almost complete lack of storyline
  
• the final boss is embarrassingly lame and easy
  
• there's a few bugs that allow you to cheat the system (but I'm not going to tell you what they are)