Welcome to Dead Island, from a distance Banoi looks like a holiday makers dream come too. The luxurious palm trees, beach resorts and clear sparkling water seem like a step away from heaven. But in the shadows, zombies are lurking, devouring on the residence by the seaside. Well on with the tour.
At first Dead Island seems like your typical zombie survival horror game. It’s played with an essence of fps (first person shooter) elements but it mainly favours gruesome melee combat above all things. Dead Island’s sandbox environments vary from jungles, sewers and a city. It has its standard RPG(Role playing game) features such as quests in the form of makeshift shelters that form quest hubs and surprisingly talent trees and plenty of numbers which involve levels, weapon stats, damage and of course experience points.
The majority of the game is spend exploring and quest going from quest hub to hub, crafting valuable weapons and completing side quests. Hordes of zombies can alternately be mowed down as you jump into some of the game’s multi-seater vehicles with a group of friends, speeding along the island’s roads.
The weapon system is very similar to dead rising 2 such as the customisation feature with the ability to create nail-spiked bats to machetes that deliver quite a shock which are done by using “blueprints” which are either found or giving as a quest reward. The weapons do degrade at a worryingly rapid rate so you after a couple of hordes you are left to improvise with a hat stand and pole sticks.
The games dynamic injury system is where this game shines, they are gruesomely vivid and encouraging to chop some limbs and heads in the process. As the mastery comes from watching the zombie’s movement, they can be quickly dealt with, with a quick slash to the head and watching it roll helplessly across into the pool of blood. Weapons can also be thrown if slashing isn’t your thing, so you can furiously throw your inventory at the oncoming horde as you backpedal your way to safety (they can be recovered from the corpses).
While Dead Island doesn’t excel as a shooter guns do show up later on in the game as a breath of fresh air with the change of pace in combat. While it is nice to use a different set of weapons you occasionally face smugglers, guards and punks which then turn the game into a fire fight around every back alley and abandoned building.
There are many minor errors in the game such as undefined visuals and the voice acting isn’t really up to standards and the story isn’t a change changer either but for the most part, but all its features make up for that, as a sandbox game based on killing zombies with friends the game has many possibilities with 20 + hours of content if done right you’ll have a bloody good time.
