Review - Dead Island

Dead Island

At a glance:

Pros: Great Multi player co-op experience. Visceral melee based combat.

Cons: Inexcusable bugs and glitches make the above noted multi-player experience at times unplayable.

Final Judgement: Hope for a patch, otherwise pass it by.

Available for: XBOX, PS3, PC


I really don’t get the Zombie craze of the last few years, but then again, I don’t get a lot of things.  For example, Lady Antabellum. What is it? Is it one person? Or are they a dark cabal possessing a hive mind which identifies as one unit. Makes you wonder… really does…  I’m sorry, where was I going? Zombies? Right. The Zombie craze, don`t get it.

I`ve read Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide and yes it was entertaining.  I also played Resident Evil and Dead Rising which were both great games.  I even once belonged to a club in University that was apparently a paramilitary organization devoted to containing Zombie outbreaks.  But I think we were more about bilking money out of the student society to throw beer social movie nights then putting down undead uprisings.

Through all that, I have to say, I have never seen the allure of living in a world where rotting corpses are trying to rip you limb from limb and turn your head into a happy meal. I mean in this particular apocalyptic scenario, what is the most you have to look forward to? A)  Getting chomped by one of these shambling decomposing monstrosities and turning into one or B) Die of starvation in your basement shivering and utterly alone.

Does the horrific reality of this just escape some people? There are people I work with that you can’t even say George Romero around without them immediately  cornering you and telling you, to the nauseatingly smallest detail, their Grand Unified Zombie Survival Plan  Including the best places to locate twinkees and ideal vacation destinations for weathering the scourge. I mean today I was walking through my office and I saw a calendar featuring Zombie hunting tips and equipment suggestions for the burgeoning Zombie death dealer.

On the topic of of vacation spots and zombie scourges let’s have a look at this week’s offering: Dead Island by Techland and Deep Silver.

In Dead Island you play as one of four main characters each with a lengthy in- depth back story which is expertly narrated by the character for which the story applies. For the sake of time though, allow me to condense their deep back stories and cerebral motivations for you:

Our heroes.

·         Xian Mei - A Chinese Spy/Concierge – she hopes to prove to the Chinese Government women  kick ass.

·         Sam B - A one hit wonder Gangsta Rapper with poor grammar – he hopes to write another hit and get more money so he can buy new spinners for his escalade.  

·         Purna -A former Police Officer turned Body Guard who hates rich people but spends all her time protecting them. She hopes to… I don’t actually know. She isn’t too clear on her motivations.

And my personal favourite:

·         Logan - A former NFL football star that reminds me a lot of Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down.  He hopes to get drunk on the island and score some strange with loose women.

"Hello Ladies"

Quite the motley crew… Unfortunately, the back story is more or less the extent of the characters development and motivation throughout the game, but more on that later.
The four characters find themselves on the Island of Banoi off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Our protagonists are at the Palms Resort where they are working. Or in Logan’s case, getting drunk and talking about how when he was 19 his ass changed the face of professional football, because he has an arm like a fucking cannon.

In the opening sequence of the game you awake in the Palms Hotel, with the sounds of screams and alarms echoing down the hallways. As your character staggers out of bed, you begin stumbling through the hallways attempting to piece together why the hotel looks like the remnants of a free pizza booth at a comic book convention.

After a short control introduction sequence you get chased by a pair of zombies down a hallway before getting clotheslined by yet another zombie and pass out. You then awake in a straw hut on the beach being besieged by undead, apparently no worse for wear, which is how the game introduces you to the fact that you appear to be immune to whatever force or illness is turning the otherwise fun loving inhabitants of Banoi into brain connoisseurs. They never really say how you didn’t get ripped apart by the Zombies, which were closing in around you as you blacked out.  Nor do they explain how your rescuer Sinamoi managed to be capable of saving your ass whilst for the rest of the game he seems incapable of helping himself, let alone anyone else.  All in all, its interesting stuff let me tell ya.

"look old chap, maybe this 'fornlx' fellow can help you, God knows I can't."

 From then on out the game creators kick you out into a more or less open world.  This allows you to roam, provided you don’t try to go to certain areas until the appropriate point in the plot. The roaming capability is a good feature as you have to ability to choose to freely complete or ignore quests as you see fit.  

The story is fairly forgettable, aside from the sweet background stories; the selection of character means nothing. The intro sequence is not tailored to the character you choose; rather it’s the same no matter what.  You always wake up in the same hotel and have the same experiences. Throughout the game the characters have minimal interaction and they have no real growth. Even if you are playing solo with no one else around, the game still shows all four characters in cut scenes, where they all  just stand around and grunt, that is until the cut scene ends at which point they all vanish in to the either, leaving you once again alone.

Kenn- I mean, Logan, with his crew... which are only with him... in spirit.

Aside from the starting area of the Palms Resort, the other parts of the island of Banoi are nowhere near as aesthetically pleasing or interesting. For example, the Second Act features a ruined city and its expansive sewer system. The City is exactly like every other ruined city you see in Call of Duty, Fallout and more or less Space Marine.  The game also trades the lush, bright color palate of the Palms resort for washed out browns and sepia tones of the urban sprawl.

The game has a lot in common with Dead Rising, almost too much. Now beyond the obvious, it’s also melee oriented.  You improvise and upgrade weapons throughout the game and also gain experience which can be used to unlock new skills and abilities. Normally about now I would start screaming at the game and chastise it for the lack of innovation or original thought but I’m not going to. Why? Because I’m cool like that, and even though the game milks Dead Rising for almost every game mechanic it has… it’s okay because all of these “borrowed” mechanics are done very well, especially the melee.

In a first person game, melee is difficult to pull off. More often than not first player combat consists of waving your stick/sword/knife/wrench/crowbar either vertically or horizontally.  The swing is followed by a “Thwack” noise and a gout of blood, which signalling a hit. The enemy then staggers back looking, really, no worse for wear. That’s about it; you don’t really feel like you just crushed your foe in the temple.  It does feel either like you just shot them with a really short ranged gun or they are really repulsed by your characters questionable hygiene.  

Dead Island, however, being clever incorporated a context sensitive attack where your swing and attack is customized to where you are aiming and what type of weapon you are using.  For example, aim a baseball bat at zombie’s legs and you swing horizontally at the knee or shin. When a zombie falls to the ground, you switch to overhead bashing attacks. Equip a knife and your character makes jabbing motions. Aimed hits to legs and arms will cause the limbs to break, twisting and bending at unnatural angles. Bodies in the course of combat can be dismembered and decapitated; heads get smashed like over ripe pumpkins.  This leads to a visceral and convincing melee experience and damn near lets you taste the brain matter. It keeps the combat fresh and lends to the enjoyment of a game that, at its core, is essentially the repeated beat downs of the same charging zombie.

Ok look, its not like the crowbar can make him look any worse.

On the topic of beat downs, which are a team sport, Dead Island is, at its core, a game best played with friends.  However, this is where the game both stands on its own two feet while collapsing under crippling bugs and glitches.

I loved playing Dead Island in multi-player mode and I’m not the multiplayer type of guy. I played for a short time on Xbox and enjoyed the random drop-in so much I actually went out and bought a second copy of the game for PS3, as most of my friends are Playstation owners.

Beat downs ahoy!

You know playing with people cooperatively is about as good as it gets with Dead Island. I found myself thoroughly entertained.  Even after a lengthy Zombie stomping session I was still into it enough to find my voice going up an octave or two, trying to warn my associate of the impending doom sneaking up behind him while he was occupied. There is also something deeply satisfying and intensely entertaining when you and your friends corner a lone zombie knock it to the ground and then play a round of California kick ball with its meaty bits. It really makes up for the many times you get ripped to confetti because you wandered too far from the group.  Turnabout is fair play, after all.

So, you’re having lots of fun playing and find yourself getting sucked into the game and enjoying your time on Banoi.  Then like an attack of irritable bowel syndrome at an all you can eat buffet your good time is destroyed in a torrent of programming feces damned by some of the most crippling bugs I have ever witnessed. Had I encountered these glitches while playing my xbox version I would not have purchased a second copy of the game.  However, you just don’t see these system bugs in the game when you’re playing a single player campaign.

Two examples of such bugs that should really have been addressed at the QA stage of development:

1)      The reappearing juice crates

My friends and I were riding in the back of a pickup truck, transporting crates of juice boxes to a camp of survivors, when I noticed the juice crates would clip out the back of the truck and go flying down the road for about fifty feet.  The crates would then reappear in the truck bed only to immediately clip, once again, out the back of the truck. When we got to our destination, I found it impossible to pick up said crates, even though they appeared to be there in the truck bed.  We had to restart the mission and go juice hunting all over again.

2)      Truck bug of doom

At one point we went on a daring raid into the Palms Hotel to recover an armoured bank truck. After a long a perilous mission we arrived in the parking garage and commandeered the vehicle. I jumped behind the wheel and my compatriots piled into the passenger seats. The game system then promptly crashed on them.  They had to restart and get back in the truck.  Again the game crashed. A search of the internet explained to us that this happens for passengers approximately 75% of the time players enter the truck. Three quarters of the time! What’s more, this truck of the damned is central to the plot. You must use the truck to advance the story and even travel to certain destinations.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

I ask you, what kind of monster ships a game with such glaring problems? These had to have been seen in play testing.  The game structure is fundamentally broken and really inexcusable.  

I’m really quite torn by Dead Island and more than anything, disappointed. Ganging up with your buddies and taking on the infinite undead hordes with cobbled together weapons and gadgets is just plain old stupid fun. The combat is visceral and exciting.  The graphics are pretty darn good as well.  However, the bugs just ruin the game for you. It doesn’t matter how much the multiplayer makes you think of smiles and unicorn giggles when it works, if every time you try to get in your kick ass A-Team-esque armoured truck the game stops responding. It doesn’t take many resets before you throw your hands up in frustration and walk away.