I have just finished playing Dead Island. I would not recommend it and I am going to tell you why.
The main reason for doing this is because the game got almost universally positive reviews with the notable exception of Edge who I will now be using exclusively for game reviews.
I felt like I should pre-warn anyone who is thinking of buying the game so they can make an informed decision, especially as the game looked so promising in the trailer which is a beautiful piece of cinematography but which bares minimal relation to the game itself.
Me and Dead Island didn’t get off to a good start. This is mainly due to a bug (now fixed) in the PS3 version which meant that checkpoints didn’t always save. I ended up playing the first 8% of the game three times in total.
There is no real in-game tutorial and so if you want to know what the controls are then you would need to read the manual. Who does that in this day and age? I was three quarters of the way through the game before I accidentally learnt that my character was actually able to run. Compared to Assassin’s Creed which I started playing this evening and which seems to be explicitly forcing me to learn every single control, Dead Island seems poor.
I can’t help comparing it to other games either, and almost every time it comes up short. Want a more fun zombie-smash-em-up? Play Dead Rising. Want a better RPG? Play Oblivion. Want a better shooter? Play just about any other game with guns.
The guns… ah the guns. Guns in Dead Island are basically rubbish. I wanted to shoot shotgun bullets through zombies and see giant holes in their bodies. I never got to even hold the shotgun because by the time I got there, I hadn’t levelled up enough. I hadn’t levelled up enough because I got bored and started racing through the game as fast as I could hoping to get my stinking mitts on a shotgun. Lesson learnt.
The weapons expert however, very rarely got to play with any. I guess probably just as much as any of the other characters although I can’t stomach playing through the game again to find out. Guns only came into play when you encountered human enemies who had them. You then had to kill them, take their ammo or guns in order to use them against the other human enemies. If you were lucky you might have a few bullets left over afterwards to shoot a zombie or two.
There was a Fury system whereby if you got angry enough – I’d be pretty angry that there were zombies there anyway – then you could activate your special power which in my case (I don’t know if it’s different for other characters) was a gun that was automatically aim and enemies and do substantial damage. So if you could save it up for a bit bad guy, you could get past him without any real challenge. I never did figure out why the fury meter didn’t seem to be in any way related to when you could actually use the power.
The melee system initially seems well thought out. After a few attacks with a weapon, you will have to take a breather to regain your stamina. That’s pretty logical. However, your other attack is to kick zombies. When you run out of stamina and zombies are continuing to attack you, you will end up kicking them to death because for some reason, kicking doesn’t use any stamina. I’m not sure the games designers have played football but I can tell you for a fact, kicking can be a little bit tiring. When you’ve got an array of exciting weapons in the game, the fact that you spend half your time booting a zombie in the face is a bit frustrating.
The aiming system is also lacking. It’s very difficult to select which part of a zombie to attack, even when you have a them on the floor. So your amazing machete that you’ve just picked up will end up hacking away at a zombie’s arm rather than attempting to slice clean through their neck as any sensible zombie hunter would attempt to do.
It was also very annoying that you could create awesome weapons like turning a machete into a shock machete, manage to shock a zombie (which happened randomly and I never fathomed why) and watch them have a fit for about 10 seconds only for them to come back at you. If you have a weapon that awesome, the zombies should die. I don’t care if they’ve still got health left. You’ve done something fucking cool and they should be gone. End of.
The map itself is just too big. You keep going back and forth on yourself. They have a fast travel and vehicle system which wouldn’t have been needed if they didn’t put everything so far away in the first place. Eventually, I ended up just running past zombies to get to where I was going rather than fighting them which should be the most enjoyable part of the game but provided me with a minimal amount of fun.
The fact that you could by and large run past enemies, coupled with the poor health system which would not penalise you for dying but instead spawn you extremely nearby with full health meant that you could essentially charge through the game without having to take part in any fights.
As you would respawn with no consequences when dying, there was very little need to have energy drinks and food around to replenish your health or medical kits to take with you. I think I ended up using med kits three times, and one of those was by accident.
You may ask why I finished the game when I didn’t really enjoy it? There’s a few reasons. It did actually look awesome, especially on the occasions when you managed to slice a zombie’s head clean off. As previously mentioned, I was hoping to eventually come across a shotgun, and finally, I’ve developed slight OCD about video games and from now on will probably have to complete every one that I play.
It may well be that this is the type of game I am not built for and that thousands of others are genuniely loving the game, in which case I am pleased for them. However, I for one will not be playing it again and shall be trading it in or selling it at the ealiest possible opportunity.