Dead Island came out last week and it did end up having a pretty tough launch with some bugs and some controversy that held it back from scoring higher on some charts. Developed by Quicksilver and published by Techland, they do a good job of making the zombies feel more like a threat rather then a nuisance. This lets you expect some more terrifying moments and more satisfying victories over the scourge. So lets find out if this game deserves your money or should just be left marooned.
The storyline in this game is pretty straight forward with added sidequests here and there. There are four characters you can choose from each one having a different back story but the story remains the same. The only change would be what type of weapon you end up using the most. Anyway you start out waking up to see that there are these zombies everywhere and you feel like you might be the only one left to survive. Then a voice calls out and guides you but you end up getting knocked out by the zombies. Next time you wake up you are in a little hut where you find out you are immune to the disease. Now after saving a lifeguard you are then to clear the way to a more defensible lifeguard tower. Once you do this task the game starts to open up more with there being sidequests you can do in order to get additional experience or money. Though the main story will keep you involved the side missions can feel a little repetitive when they are consistently fetch quests. The story is enjoyable and it has a good pacing to it introducing new types of zombies as you go along. This does keep things fresh as new areas of the island get explored it really does feel open though your limited to the island.
GAMEPLAY:
The gameplay is where this game is a good bit of old fashioned zombie smashing. They do not necessarily reinvent the genre but they do make it more satisfying. The way the melee combat works is very simple at the beginning but the later you get the more important timing is. With the level of the zombies scaling with you it makes things harder and harder as you go along. In the beginning you might feel like there are not enough to kill and you want to take them all on but later in the game you will try and avoid most of them because a good sized group can take you out pretty fast. This can keep things scary when you turn around and there is a zombie there and you could not hear it approaching. There are also some gun mechanics but the melee is where you can tell a lot of the focus of the game is which does make sense being your on an island, there cannot really be a entire cache of weapons on a resort island. There is also the co-op aspect where you can travel the world and join peoples games if they are in the same area as you in their own game. This lets you either choose to play with someone who is in the same area as you or simply just let others join you if you choose. Now this game can't be all good there are some drawbacks. Such as graphics don't feel optimized for example on the PC there are some spots that never render and the draw distance is not very good and this can hurt the immersion. Another issue would be the lack of SLI support in the game forcing you to do some work around in order to get the desired out put. There is also the degrading of weapons feature that does feel a little imbalanced with only a couple hits will break a weapon and you need to repair it if you want it to be any good. This can get annoying when you are no where near a repair bench but instead about to fight a room of zombies.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
So what works in this game is probably the satisfaction of killing the zombies. With the added mechanic of breaking their legs or arms making placement of blows more important depending on what you are fighting. Also the amount of stuff you can do does feel plentiful but with the drawback that most quests are escorts or fetch tasks. The stuff that does not work would be the weapon degrading, this game would be a lot of fun without that mechanic but leaving in the combining of weapons in order to make some unique custom ones is a fun time sink. The only problem with that part though would be the difficulty of getting recipes. It would be cool if it would let you try and make your own combos such as duct taping a knife to the end of your bat (not the best example but you get the idea).
So all together I would say this game is probably not worth paying $60, it could of used the DLC coming out later this month at launch to encourage more co-op and learning how to work together. It is $40 on amazon as a digital download which is a really good deal and if you have a PC. It is worth it if your looking for another zombie killing game. As for console player just try and get a good deal on E-Bay or something like that because it could use some more refining before it is really worth it. I did have a lot of fun playing this game it is long and you will spend some time on it. The replay ability is pretty high adding some more value making the $40 price look very good. Anyway aside from some minor complaints this does do a good job of making zombie killing fun again.
Thank you
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