Dead Inside

[DexterNorgam]

Yea, If you allowed yourself to see more of what was around you in detail, there were underlying currents of story and such, but honestly the tedium of the various fetch quests and killing the same zombies over and over as I retreaded the same areas of the map made me care less and less about looking around for the lore items in the game. The pacing of the game, particularly prior to the jungle levels, just bored me so much that I couldn't be arsed to take EXTRA time in those areas to soak up all this extra sophistication.

I'm sure my ADD played a hand in that too, but I found the pacing to be terrible. I really wanted to like that game, because I loved L4D (1 not so much 2) and the Dead Rising games, but the best thing about Dead Island was that it played its part in my 7 dollar purchase of Forza 4 which I'm enjoying greatly.

 

[squid5580]

Any emotional artistry is lost the moment you find yourself scouring the resort looking for some grown woman's fucking teddy bear. That one unneeded (and quite stupid) side quest invalidates any deeper meaning they were trying to create.

 

[Bostur]

Social commentary is a staple of the zombie genre. Praising Dead Island for having it, is like praising a shooting game for having guns. The game does have a few brilliant moments most notably in the design of the early levels, but in large the storytelling is as stereotypical as it can be. When I started the game I was pleasantly surprised at the biographies of the characters and thought this could be interesting. Unfortunately the game never really build upon the motivation and background of the characters, during the game they are just 'shooty lady' and 'punchy man'. The few cutscenes doesn't help the characterization at all, completely destroying any depth that the players themselves might have put into the characters.

A typical Dead Island conversation would go something like this:

- What do you say guys should we help people by killing some more zombies?
- F... that I've had enough of this.
- What else are we going to do?
- Ok lets kill some zombies then.

The game clearly attempts to establish some conflict between the characters, but it never becomes believable. Any characterization can be condensed to words like caring, selfless, lazy. They have no emotion and no motivation, they are simply pixelised cardboard cutouts. Had the game attempted to build upon these sterotypes the characters could have served as comic reliefs. Instead the game tries to be deep when there is absolutely no depth to be had.


The gameplay itself is decent, with some glaring flaws that fortunately never really have enough impact to break it. It never manages to raise itself above the muck of averageness either.
The best thing about it is the open world design in the first chapter, unfortunately even this quality fades as the forthcoming levels become normal shooter fare with dull linear corridors.

 

[Lex Darko]

I'm sorry but I am incapable of believing that a company as insensitive as Techland which actually made an achievement out of killing black people (Call of Juarez: the Cartel, Bad Guy) could produce a game narrative as nuanced and sophisticated as described in this article.

Now if this article was about From Software's Souls series and its themes of betrayal, and good intentions leading to horrible outcomes I could see that; but from my point of view Dead Island is DOA as far as a quality narrative is concerned.