Dead Island garnered a lot of attention with a trailer released earlier in the year, which showed the zombie transformation of a little girl. Lots of canned emotion happening there, and the question stood if the actual game could deliver. After all, there wasn’t exactly a lack of zombie-themed titles out there…

The introduction scene is nothing short of classy. A stylish video shows the typical night life on the island of Banoi, with a bit of foreshadowing of what’s to come. It also gives glimpses at all four playable characters, through the eyes of a fifth, unknown person. Of course, at that point in time, you don’t really know that yet, unless you’ve read the manual and paid attention.

The video ends with the unknown person falling into their bed, and leads straight to character selection. Once you’ve done that, a short prologue tells you what’s happening. Well, parts of it anyway. Something is turning the tourists into bloodthirsty, zombie-like creatures. Charming.

We gotta get off of the island…

When the game starts, it immediately stirs memories. A faceless voice contacts you you through a (radio/intercom) and gives you directions. Get out of your hotel room, go downstairs, find a weapon… Now where have we had that before? But it doesn’t matter – it’s pulled off pretty well and you get to run from things you don’t even see. Who wouldn’t like that?

The game quickly reveals its size, a lush, wide open world with lots of things to do (and kill). You can follow the main story line, which will inevitably set you on a quest to find a way off the island. A handful of non-infected survivors have barricaded themselves in a hut on the beach, and they ask you for help.

Why you? Turns out that for some as yet unexplained reason, you’re immune against whatever is creating the zombies. So of course you’re prime material to go out there and face the music.

While you’re out there, you might also just explore the island and find all the hidden goodies, weapons and items. It’s completely up to you. Whichever way you go, you’ll encounter a number of people who are hiding in one or the other place, have evaded infection and want you to do things for them.

Between Fed-Ex quests, escorts and can-you-go-there-and-do-this-for-me missions, there’s enough variety to keep you busy for a good while.

Arson, murder and vehicular zombieslaughter

Initially, the combat model is very satisfying. Use blunt or bladed weapons to beat the crap out of your attackers, down them with a well-timed (and unblockable) kick, or run them over with a vehicle. Use Molotov cocktails to burn them to a crisp, and at some stage you’ll even get firearms to blow their heads off. Fighting builds up your fury, resulting in a very deadly special action when released.

This is all good fun for some time, but fatigue will set in once the game sends you on longer missions and throws bigger groups of enemies your way. Then it just becomes repetitive.

Fighting is the only meaningful way of interacting with the game environment, and it’s heavily geared towards melee combat. The difficulty curve climbs gradually, and dying is not a big deal – generally you’ll get back in the game close to where you died, only losing a bit of money, and your enemies neither respawn nor regenerate.

Which means that after a bunch of hours of game time, all you have to keep you going is the story and the exploration aspect. Oh, and building your own weapons.

Throughout the game you’ll discover or receive blueprints for stronger weapons, which all require certain base materials. The only way to get these is from traders or through exploring. That’s when money comes in handy. You also need cash to upgrade and repair your weapons, which seems a bit nonsensical to me – you’re basically giving cash to the work bench. Weapons deteriorate quickly in combat, making them useless after a while until they’re fixed.

Dead Island is based on the Chrome 5 graphics engine. While not exactly the most impressive piece of tech out there, it looks good enough to provide a feeling of depth and immersion – and copious amounts of blood and gore.

Unfortunately, version 1.1.1 on the PS3 still has a few technical problems. Most glaring and irritating are the loading stutters and the harsh texture pop-in that happens every so often. Another console patch was in the works but not available by the time I finished this review.

I found two habits of the game to be very annoying. For one, when you die, you respawn close to where you died – but not always in an area known to you. A death could actually teleport you into an area you have not explored yet, resulting in some confusion.

The other annoyance was that if you hit the right trigger – your weapon selector on the PS3 – ever so slightly, your character will put away his weapon and fight with his fists. Highly irritating when you’re in the middle of a bunch of enemies just waiting for an opening…

The voice acting is generally sound; not fantastic but not too cheesy either. A few dialogues address a female character with male pronouns, and in some side quests the quest giver seems to be addressing more than one person – clearly someone forgot to record a version for single-player rather than the four-player Co-op mode.

The repetitive lines your character utters while fighting bad guys do get a bit annoying after a while.

Conclusion

Dead Island is a solid, but not outstanding game. The whole ‘zompocalypse’ sandbox concept is very appealing, as is the combat and weapons model.

On the upside there are the large environment, character progression and the sheer variety of weapons.

This is contrasted by the technical issues, the repetitive combat and a general lack of credible physics.

Hardcore gamers will lament the overall lack of real challenges; casual players will probably love the fact that the game is rather unpunishing.

It’s a classic case of your mileage may vary, but I say you have nothing to lose checking this game out. There are worse things you could be playing for the same money.

Dead Island review (PS3) << Comments and views