Dead Island Review

I recently picked up Dead Island for pretty cheap to play with some friends from work.  Most of them are Call of Duty loyalists but one night we decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to give Dead Island the old college try.   I was apprehensive, and a little bias going into it - Dead Island came out when I still worked video game retail and I remember all the disappointing personal reviews I heard, how many traded-in/returned copies we had, and frankly, I already had an amazing zombie game in my life, Left 4 Dead. Could anything really replace L4D in my heart? (Spoiler Alert - it doesn't).  Admittedly, I'm not finished with the game, as we're playing in a group through the story, but I have dumped about 15 hours into it over the last week and gotten a pretty good view of where things are going.

Dead Island really separates itself from Left 4 Dead with it's "realism".  I put that in quotes because it still takes creative liberties with gameplay, but it is more grounded: Zombies will physically restrain you, you have a stamina meter that needs to be recharged after doing just about anything, and your flashlight depletes energy, causing you to need to pick and choose your "dark" moments.  Weapons will degrade the more you use them, so repairing and upgrading them is a constant thought in the back of your head. The realistic side of things didn't click with me at first, but it's more a learning curve than anything.

Visuals aren't bad.  Not great, but not bad.  The zombie lose limbs and skin, show visible fire damage, etc.  As a result of this "layered" damage system, the regular humans look weird.  Its not intentional, but it reminds me of stop-motion animation where you can actually see the fingerprints of the animator on the puppets.  It's almost like they were made out of clay by a really talented giant.  Fortunately this really isn't noticeable in the combat because of all the profuse blood flow.  Also, I have yet to see it get dark outside... inside combat gets creepy, but it's always sunny on the beach.

The combat is clearly where the developers put all their eggs.  Taking place on a resort island, they had the decency to realize that it wouldn't make much sense to put a weapon room and stockpiles of ammunition in every closet.  Weapons are found - rakes, poles, baseball bats... morning stars (see what I mean about creative liberties?)  These can be improved with items found throughout the world at workbenches, located in the safehouse areas.  The combat is tactile and fairly real.  First person melee combat always makes me feel weird, but Dead Island overcomes it fairly well.  Hit detection seems solid.  The better your character, the more accurate they become with targeting.  Not unlike aiming in a FPS, you need to "aim" your swing and the cross hairs represent that.  A solid crack with your flaming baseball bat can sometimes create a very satisfying headshot.  (I have heard that later in the game firearms get more common.  I'm interested to see how the story develops to justify this, but one of the characters is a firearms expert, so I hope the guns show up soon.)

Speaking of the story, don't bother.  It's only a means to drive the gameplay.  The characters are half thought through.  The writers attempt to add feeling and emotion to the scenario to compliment the more "realistic" side of a zombie apocalypse, but it's all overdone and laughable.  In order for true emotion to occur, the player needs to "be" their character, and to me, my character is only a list of stats. The player is the classic silent protagonist, so even simple conversations are weird.  It doesn't matter though... you'll skip through all the dialogue to get to the quest info screen and decide if it's worth your time to retrieve someone's necklace from a hut for $500 and a car battery.  Did I mention that the reason you get do do all these mundane chores for everyone is because you have an immunity to the zombie virus?  How convenient.

Really the only thing that surprised my about Dead Island so far, is how much of an RPG it is at the base levels.  The leveling up is done through skill trees, rules for critical hits and elemental damage apply to combat, and the meaningless quest grinding is pushing JRPG levels here.  It implements all these elements well, and does a fairly decent job of burying them amidst gameplay, but its still there, rearing its ugly head at unwanted times - my weapons aren't strong enough, but as soon as I find new ones, repair them, level them up, add some fire and nails, I've leveled up again! The game scales up the baddie difficulty and my weapons are back to being subpar.

Theres this thing about RPGs that I've never understood.  If everything scales to my level, why not just keep me at one level? What's the point of making everything cost more if the game is just going to give me more money after every battle.  Proportionally, everything costs the same, its just bigger numbers.  (My level 1 weapon does 1 damage to a level 1 zombie rewarding me with $1 = My level 10 weapon does 10 damage to a level 10 zombie rewarding me $10)  Is this just a really misguided math lesson? The game doesn't event try to find a happy middle ground when two different leveled characters are in the same game - a level 5 zombie will look and play like a level 15 zombie to a level 15 character.

At the end of the day I like Dead Island, but it doesn't do anything any better than the games where it stole its main concepts from.  Borderlands (which came out 2 years prior) nailed the looting system.  Left 4 Dead captured the cooperative aspect better.  I'd like to say the weapon construction is unique, but that is only a functional gameplay aspect if you are good at looting the gear you need to do it.  I don't actually get to design any of the weapons - they're just made out of things I find.  My desire to play the game really only comes from seeing what new weapons the game designers thought of... that and the blood lust of smashing zombie heads open.

I'll enjoy my time with it, then see if I can't my work buddies to cave and pick up Left 4 Dead.