NOTE: The following review is based on the Xbox 360 version of the game with one partner over Xbox LIVE.
So. Dead Island. Marketed in the wrong manner, majorly flawed in the simplest of ways, and yet still a damn good game.
I don?t think there is a single person here who does not know what Dead Island is - and if you don?t know exactly, then I guarantee you know OF it. Holiday resort ends up subject to a zombie epidemic, and it?s all very depressing. The trailer was so well put together, and so emotionally moving, we all had high hopes for the game. And it delivered. Sort of.
See, I thought I was going to be getting a story-focused, character-driven tragedy. Instead, I got the best co-operative zombie survival game I?ve ever played. But that?s the problem - that?s all it is. Combat relies almost entirely on finding and improvising everyday objects into weapons of mass destruction - two cans of deodorant and some duct tape becomes a very effective explosive?or you can hammer nails into your favourite baseball bat, or wrap it in barbed wire. Or wrap it in rags, soak it in gasoline and set it alight.
There is really no end to the things you can do. By the time I finished the game, I was swinging a baseball bat with a circular saw embedded in the top, a metal baton capable of electrifying zombies, and a stick covered in barbed wire. And a magnum revolver. Guns are all but useless against the undead, but they?re good for taking out the odd exploding ?suicider? or taking on the various hostile humans littering the island.
The combat is the best thing about the game - particularly melee. Gunplay is a little harder, given that characters are slow and rather clumsy?or, at least, Sam B is?but one advantage is that a headshot is an instant-kill. Accuracy pays off. Just as it should.
But?that?s really all there is. Enemies are varied - standard ?walkers? shamble slowly towards the player, and take a hell of a beating to put down, ?infected? are more of a pain, since they come sprinting, screaming into battle, and can hit you four or five times before you can even react. ?Thugs? stand between seven and eight feet tall, and throw players to the ground in a single hit, and can continue their fierce resistance even with both arms somewhere in the sand. As you discover new areas and move further into the main story, you?ll encounter the aforementioned ?suiciders?, the bloated, vomiting ?floaters? and the really annoying ?butchers?, agile, speedy things with their arms cut at the wrist, unleashing a flurry of attacks with their razor-sharp wrist-bones. As you can tell, there?s a lot to the combat here.
But I repeat. That?s all there is to the game.
You can drive between objectives - though cars are very cumbersome, and subject to serious under steer. I took a wrong turn, and by the time my brother caught up with me, I was lying somewhere in a bush and the car was balanced precariously on a fence by a cliff with fires raging in its engine. I don?t know how it happened. If you ask me in person, I?ll deny it.
So?our famous trailer advertised a tragic story. Let?s look at our story.
We have four characters. You can choose between the four, and in co-operative, you can even both choose the same character. I chose Sam B, the one-hit-wonder rapper of disappearing fame, desperate for another shot. And he?s a blunt weapons specialist. My brother chose Logan, the former NFL star, whose reckless actions led to the death of a young woman and his sporting career.
The other two options are Purna, a former police officer who lost her job for shooting a legally-immune child molester, and Xian Mei?who is undercover with Hong Kong police?or something.
So we have four characters, with backstories. But?here?s the thing. We hear each backstory from exposition on the character selection screen. Beyond that, there?s nothing. Going off the intro cutscene and in-game dialogue alone, I could just about gather that Sam B is a rapper and he?s been to New Orleans. He actually grew up there, but the only hint to that is ?It?s just like Nawlins? when hearing about the local gang that had taken over the police station. Logan makes no hint about having any kind of problems whatsoever, and the only thing that even gives a hint of his problematic past is the black cloth around his knee, and while drunk in the intro, he loudly points out ?Maybe you saw me in the playoffs.?
Xian Mei just?tells people to get out of the women?s bathroom, and Purna pushes the ?cameraman? over in the intro and says very little else.
These are not characters. These are player avatars. And don?t even get me started on the other non-player characters. The only two people who even vaguely interested me in that game were ?The Voice? and The Recordings Guy. The Voice guides you from the very beginning, using the island?s PA systems to advise and direct the player characters into helping him save his wife, and Guy is a guy who leaves recordings scattered about the island, beginning with his investigation into local drug barons, and detailing his adventures as Banoi, the island, plummets into anarchic chaos.
Then there?s Jin, a mechanic?s daughter who latches onto the heroes quite early on, and does not stop getting in the fucking way throughout. She?s a young, pretty girl with a good heart.
But by God, she?s stupid.
I guarantee, by the end of Dead Island, you?ll have wanted her dead. She is just?agh. Just thinking about her now, makes me so angry! She constantly endangers the survivors, constantly makes stupid decisions and spends most of her time putting herself at risk for no damn reason.
And the best part? Sam B and Logan are well aware of this. Purna and Xian Mei have nothing but pity for the girl, and every time Sam B looks like he?s about to backhand her for putting the party in danger for the seventeenth time, Purna gives him a dirty look and makes him sit outside.
I feel you, Sam B. I feel you, man.
Anyway, that little?tirade?aside, I truly feel that this game would have been so much better had the player made their own characters. The dialogue throughout the game could have been managed by a selection of voices - take Saint?s Row for example. Have a few ?generic? character models to take on the roles of the heroes without players (Note, they don?t appear in-game. Only in cut scenes.) and stop trying to make me care about these total non-characters. I wanted to sympathise with them. I really did. But they were really?there was just nobody to sympathise with.
This was not helped by the seemingly incompetent animators. While level design was excellently varied - the Resort areas were bright and sunny, with a dark monsoon slowly approaching from across the beautiful, crystally blue waters, while the City was bleak, the monsoon soaking the streets, and the buildings are quite frankly not built to code. Cluttered, claustrophobic, and brilliantly so. The Jungle after that was deceptively open, and I mean that in the best of ways - it felt and looked like you could go anywhere, but your path was clearly laid out in front of you. It was all so good.
So why on Earth do the characters move so unrealistically? Whenever Sam B talks, his entire upper body jerks about like he was having an epileptic fit mid-rap. I get he?s meant to have that rapper persona, but he?s built like a tank. He should not be moving that fast, nor did the situation call for it. Stop doing it.
Logan has this constant dumb look on his face, though I suppose that?s down to being a spoiled sports star who hasn?t had to think at all in his life. That bit?s probably intentional.
What CAN?T be intentional is the game?s insistence on failing to render environments or characters until I?m well within the area. Being a Bethesda fan, I?m used to the odd unrendered environment - I?m no stranger to that bizarre, flat mix of colours suddenly gaining detail.
But this?this is embarrassing. I?m fighting a horde of zombies, and by the time I?ve finished, the environment has only just started to render. I mean, once it?s there, it?s all pretty good, no visible seams or graphical glitches?just unrealistic player character models. Don?t watch your team-mates fight. Not if you want any sense of immersion. Just don?t do it.
The final, and in my opinion worst, offender is movement during cut-scenes. Jin performs a very emotional and difficult task, one which involves a revolver. No, not on herself?no matter how much I would have wished it. This scene would have been much more effective, had she not been holding the revolver with the tips of her fingers, shaking all over the place and her face just looking plainly unrealistic.
Oh. And my game crashed four or five times and I had to restart. I don?t know if it?s the game?s fault - but it was in front of the same character in the same place each time. And my brother had the same problem a couple of times elsewhere.
Our consoles rarely freeze up, and it hasn?t done it since, so I?m just following where the evidence leads.
So to summarise. Dead Island IS a good game. A good zombie survival game, at any rate. Its combat is brilliant, its setting beautifully oxymoronic and its ?background? characters being the highlight of the plot.
However, the game should not have made it past quality control in this state. And the writers should have made more effort to give us characters beyond introductory exposition.
Pretty soon, I?ll be reviewing the just-released downloadable content: Ryder White?s Campaign. Maybe at some point I?ll download the Bloodbath Arena DLC and let you know how that one is.
And one final note before I go.
The plot just got plain silly roundabout the time a naked man named Ope started performing a voodoo dance over a tribal girl.
Ryder White's Campaign (Dead Island Spoilers) - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.343662-DLC-Shambles-Dead-Island-Ryder-Whites-Campaign-Dead-Island-Spoilers
So. Dead Island. Marketed in the wrong manner, majorly flawed in the simplest of ways, and yet still a damn good game.
I don?t think there is a single person here who does not know what Dead Island is - and if you don?t know exactly, then I guarantee you know OF it. Holiday resort ends up subject to a zombie epidemic, and it?s all very depressing. The trailer was so well put together, and so emotionally moving, we all had high hopes for the game. And it delivered. Sort of.
See, I thought I was going to be getting a story-focused, character-driven tragedy. Instead, I got the best co-operative zombie survival game I?ve ever played. But that?s the problem - that?s all it is. Combat relies almost entirely on finding and improvising everyday objects into weapons of mass destruction - two cans of deodorant and some duct tape becomes a very effective explosive?or you can hammer nails into your favourite baseball bat, or wrap it in barbed wire. Or wrap it in rags, soak it in gasoline and set it alight.
There is really no end to the things you can do. By the time I finished the game, I was swinging a baseball bat with a circular saw embedded in the top, a metal baton capable of electrifying zombies, and a stick covered in barbed wire. And a magnum revolver. Guns are all but useless against the undead, but they?re good for taking out the odd exploding ?suicider? or taking on the various hostile humans littering the island.
The combat is the best thing about the game - particularly melee. Gunplay is a little harder, given that characters are slow and rather clumsy?or, at least, Sam B is?but one advantage is that a headshot is an instant-kill. Accuracy pays off. Just as it should.
But?that?s really all there is. Enemies are varied - standard ?walkers? shamble slowly towards the player, and take a hell of a beating to put down, ?infected? are more of a pain, since they come sprinting, screaming into battle, and can hit you four or five times before you can even react. ?Thugs? stand between seven and eight feet tall, and throw players to the ground in a single hit, and can continue their fierce resistance even with both arms somewhere in the sand. As you discover new areas and move further into the main story, you?ll encounter the aforementioned ?suiciders?, the bloated, vomiting ?floaters? and the really annoying ?butchers?, agile, speedy things with their arms cut at the wrist, unleashing a flurry of attacks with their razor-sharp wrist-bones. As you can tell, there?s a lot to the combat here.
But I repeat. That?s all there is to the game.
You can drive between objectives - though cars are very cumbersome, and subject to serious under steer. I took a wrong turn, and by the time my brother caught up with me, I was lying somewhere in a bush and the car was balanced precariously on a fence by a cliff with fires raging in its engine. I don?t know how it happened. If you ask me in person, I?ll deny it.
So?our famous trailer advertised a tragic story. Let?s look at our story.
We have four characters. You can choose between the four, and in co-operative, you can even both choose the same character. I chose Sam B, the one-hit-wonder rapper of disappearing fame, desperate for another shot. And he?s a blunt weapons specialist. My brother chose Logan, the former NFL star, whose reckless actions led to the death of a young woman and his sporting career.
The other two options are Purna, a former police officer who lost her job for shooting a legally-immune child molester, and Xian Mei?who is undercover with Hong Kong police?or something.
So we have four characters, with backstories. But?here?s the thing. We hear each backstory from exposition on the character selection screen. Beyond that, there?s nothing. Going off the intro cutscene and in-game dialogue alone, I could just about gather that Sam B is a rapper and he?s been to New Orleans. He actually grew up there, but the only hint to that is ?It?s just like Nawlins? when hearing about the local gang that had taken over the police station. Logan makes no hint about having any kind of problems whatsoever, and the only thing that even gives a hint of his problematic past is the black cloth around his knee, and while drunk in the intro, he loudly points out ?Maybe you saw me in the playoffs.?
Xian Mei just?tells people to get out of the women?s bathroom, and Purna pushes the ?cameraman? over in the intro and says very little else.
These are not characters. These are player avatars. And don?t even get me started on the other non-player characters. The only two people who even vaguely interested me in that game were ?The Voice? and The Recordings Guy. The Voice guides you from the very beginning, using the island?s PA systems to advise and direct the player characters into helping him save his wife, and Guy is a guy who leaves recordings scattered about the island, beginning with his investigation into local drug barons, and detailing his adventures as Banoi, the island, plummets into anarchic chaos.
Then there?s Jin, a mechanic?s daughter who latches onto the heroes quite early on, and does not stop getting in the fucking way throughout. She?s a young, pretty girl with a good heart.
But by God, she?s stupid.
I guarantee, by the end of Dead Island, you?ll have wanted her dead. She is just?agh. Just thinking about her now, makes me so angry! She constantly endangers the survivors, constantly makes stupid decisions and spends most of her time putting herself at risk for no damn reason.
And the best part? Sam B and Logan are well aware of this. Purna and Xian Mei have nothing but pity for the girl, and every time Sam B looks like he?s about to backhand her for putting the party in danger for the seventeenth time, Purna gives him a dirty look and makes him sit outside.
I feel you, Sam B. I feel you, man.
Anyway, that little?tirade?aside, I truly feel that this game would have been so much better had the player made their own characters. The dialogue throughout the game could have been managed by a selection of voices - take Saint?s Row for example. Have a few ?generic? character models to take on the roles of the heroes without players (Note, they don?t appear in-game. Only in cut scenes.) and stop trying to make me care about these total non-characters. I wanted to sympathise with them. I really did. But they were really?there was just nobody to sympathise with.
This was not helped by the seemingly incompetent animators. While level design was excellently varied - the Resort areas were bright and sunny, with a dark monsoon slowly approaching from across the beautiful, crystally blue waters, while the City was bleak, the monsoon soaking the streets, and the buildings are quite frankly not built to code. Cluttered, claustrophobic, and brilliantly so. The Jungle after that was deceptively open, and I mean that in the best of ways - it felt and looked like you could go anywhere, but your path was clearly laid out in front of you. It was all so good.
So why on Earth do the characters move so unrealistically? Whenever Sam B talks, his entire upper body jerks about like he was having an epileptic fit mid-rap. I get he?s meant to have that rapper persona, but he?s built like a tank. He should not be moving that fast, nor did the situation call for it. Stop doing it.
Logan has this constant dumb look on his face, though I suppose that?s down to being a spoiled sports star who hasn?t had to think at all in his life. That bit?s probably intentional.
What CAN?T be intentional is the game?s insistence on failing to render environments or characters until I?m well within the area. Being a Bethesda fan, I?m used to the odd unrendered environment - I?m no stranger to that bizarre, flat mix of colours suddenly gaining detail.
But this?this is embarrassing. I?m fighting a horde of zombies, and by the time I?ve finished, the environment has only just started to render. I mean, once it?s there, it?s all pretty good, no visible seams or graphical glitches?just unrealistic player character models. Don?t watch your team-mates fight. Not if you want any sense of immersion. Just don?t do it.
The final, and in my opinion worst, offender is movement during cut-scenes. Jin performs a very emotional and difficult task, one which involves a revolver. No, not on herself?no matter how much I would have wished it. This scene would have been much more effective, had she not been holding the revolver with the tips of her fingers, shaking all over the place and her face just looking plainly unrealistic.
Oh. And my game crashed four or five times and I had to restart. I don?t know if it?s the game?s fault - but it was in front of the same character in the same place each time. And my brother had the same problem a couple of times elsewhere.
Our consoles rarely freeze up, and it hasn?t done it since, so I?m just following where the evidence leads.
So to summarise. Dead Island IS a good game. A good zombie survival game, at any rate. Its combat is brilliant, its setting beautifully oxymoronic and its ?background? characters being the highlight of the plot.
However, the game should not have made it past quality control in this state. And the writers should have made more effort to give us characters beyond introductory exposition.
Pretty soon, I?ll be reviewing the just-released downloadable content: Ryder White?s Campaign. Maybe at some point I?ll download the Bloodbath Arena DLC and let you know how that one is.
And one final note before I go.
The plot just got plain silly roundabout the time a naked man named Ope started performing a voodoo dance over a tribal girl.
Ryder White's Campaign (Dead Island Spoilers) - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.343662-DLC-Shambles-Dead-Island-Ryder-Whites-Campaign-Dead-Island-Spoilers