Dead Island was one of those games where you saw the trailer, loved the trailer, and then feared for the production of the game. If you recall, the trailer was outstanding and I was completely blown away by the emotional strings that it pulled yet at the same time enticed. At first I was saying, “Oh great, another Left 4 Dead” but as I read more and more about the game it came to be that it was a free roaming RPG rather than a zombie hack ‘n slash. So without further adieu, I bring to you my entirely unbiased review of Dead Island.
The game starts out at the resort and it’s already a quick paced game, within the first 10 minutes you’re being chased by zombies and having to run away from them. I loved that. I also loved the fact that I could rummage through left over suitcases and find a copious amount of money and other necessities that I would need later on in the game. I had no idea what to expect when I put in the disc so when I discovered that I could travel virtually everywhere and anywhere I was overjoyed to say at the least.
The length of the game was surprising, mind you it’s not Skyrim (with an estimated 300 hours of gameplay) but it was still decently long. I spent around 60 hours on the main quest without dabbling much in the side quests, which there are a lot of. Most of the side quests that I did encounter were mostly retrieval quests (grabbing this for this person from this location).
As for the weaponry, that was the most fun aspect of the game for me. There are weapons strewn all over the maps, you can pick up anything from a rusty wrench to a debilitating sickle but the fun doesn’t stop there. You can scavenge nails, blades, duct tape, oleander, soap, etc. and use those ingredients to mod your weapons. Yes, you can mod your weapons. I pre ordered the game so I received The Ripper mod automatically which is essentially a baseball bat with a saw blade at the end of it that pretty much gives you auto decapitation if you time the blows right. Some other mods that you can look forward to are: nail’d mod, shock mod, deo-bombs, and molotovs. The weapons do deteriorate fairly quickly but there is a way that you can help conserve their life, which is what I’m going to get into right now.
Most RPG’s have some sort of level tree or skill tree, as does Dead Island. There are a certain amount of major skills and then they branch down to other skills that can aid your character in various ways such as: strength, rage, stamina, weapon deterioration and reloading time. For example, the more skill points that I use on weapon deterioration, the longer my modded weapons are going to last. The problem that I see with most skill trees is that it’s fairly simple to level up quickly and max out your character before you even finish the game. Luckily with Dead Island that wasn’t the case, I actually finished the game with more room to improve my character.
Now onto the graphics…The graphics were reasonable, I don’t believe that they were much to write home about but the way that they used them, well, that was the incredible part. When fighting a zombie, you have a stamina bar that depletes the more that you swing or the more that you run away from the fight. As the stamina bar wears down, there is a higher chance that you can get knocked down by your enemy (which was extremely frustrating) and there is also a higher chance that a zombie will literally grab the camera. Yes, I said grab the camera…and they will shake it too. The water on the resort looked extremely realistic and I have to admit it made me want to go swimming more than a couple of times.
There has been a lot of controversy surrounding this game regarding the bugs and how it affects the playability. I know that a lot of PS3 users have been experiencing delayed actions and issues with some quest characters but I honestly haven’t experienced any bugs in the game that have made it unplayable. All issues (if any) haven’t affected my gameplay and with that being said, I cannot shed any light on any problems. The only thing that I have yet to try is the co-op but there have been rumours that the co-op won’t even work properly until the patch comes out so you guys will have to wait for that.
Needless to say, Dead Island is going to be a game that I’m going to pick up and play again to achieve all of the challenges and to gain all of the trophies…I’m also stoked on the Bloodbath Arena which I was also granted with due to my pre order. The main question being, should you buy it? My answer for you is YES. The plot is amazing and it was an extremely fun game to play but stay tuned for patch information if that’s what’s swaying your opinion.
