The same rules apply to my game "reviews" as do my book and movie "reviews".
These are merely an articulation of the thoughts and feelings elicited
by the game and still require an economy sized salt shaker handy when
reading.
The first time I heard about Dead Island was because a
trailer for the game had been released which caused half the people who watched
it to shit themselves over how awesome it was. It featured a Tarantino-esque
use of disjointed storytelling, detailing the tragic end to one family’s
vacation by starting at the beginning
and
the end, then meeting in the middle.
You
can watch it here.
Personally, I thought it was great. I mean, if they could
tell such an effective story in a three minute trailer, think of what they
could do with a full length game. But, for every Yin there must be a Yang, and
this particular Yang consisted of another group of people shitting themselves,
but it wasn’t joy that voided their bowels, it was outrage. You see, the
trailer recounts how a young girl is bitten, infected, zombified, and
subsequently hurled out of a fifth floor hotel window by her own father. Which is pretty brutal stuff. Awesome, but
brutal.
This opened a can of worms, who then all shouted in unison, “How
can you kill a child in a game? That’s
disgusting!” To which I replied, “With a mouse click of cour—holy shit talking
worms!” I’m going to be honest here; if it’s a zombie
I’m killing it. No questions asked. At that point physical maturity ceases to
matter. Confronted with the moral conundrum of a zombie fetus, I reach for the
coat hanger. Every. Time.
So, now that we’ve established that I am a horrible human
being (who is going to hell), let’s talk about the gameplay shall we?
Let’s get a couple things out of the way right up front:
1) If you were expecting a L4D clone, you will be disappointed.
2) If you were expecting a traditional FPS, you will be
disappointed.
Dead Island is neither of these things. It’s more of an
amalgamation of an FPS, RPG, and Adventure game. Kinda like if Diablo roofied
L4D’s drink and then invited Dead Rising, GTA, and Just Cause 2 over for some
sweet DVDA action.
You have four character classes to choose from: a throwing
weapons expert, an edged weapons expert, a firearms expert, and a blunt weapons
expert. Each gives you an advantage with the weapons they are experienced with—obviously—and their skill tree provides
ways to further increase those advantages as your character levels. I have only played with Xian, the knife expert,
and she has a skill tree specific to edged weapons. I assume that each character’s skill tree is
set up to increase their skill level with their inherent weapon expertise.
After an initial cut scene and a prologue adventure that
serves as a tutorial, you finally get into the real meat of the game. It
quickly becomes apparent that in Dead Island “FPS” stands for “First Person
Swinger” as the game is heavily dependent on melee attacks. I am currently on the fourth mission and I
still haven’t seen a gun.
Weapons are found and, at least in the beginning, wear out
rather quickly. You might be lucky to get through ten or so zombies before your
boat oar or metal pipe runs out of “durability” and becomes useless. This is
something you need to keep an eye on as once the durability meter reaches zero you
will still be able to hit enemies with the weapon, but it won’t do any damage. I learned this the hard way after beating on
a zombie with a pipe for half an hour before I realized the reason it wasn’t dying
was because my weapon was used up.
The RPG elements consist mainly of XP generated from kills
and completed quests, which level you up, and in turn earn you skill points to
spend upgrading your character. The skill tree has three branches: one focuses
on a berserker style attack which you can unleash once your “rage” meter is
full, another focuses on increasing your skills with the type of character you have
chosen (edged, throwing, blunt, etc…), and the last focuses on defensive skills
such as increasing the effectiveness of med packs and the like.
I managed to get a few hours of play in last night before my
nightly-vodka-induced-coma (otherwise known as “sleep”) set in, and I admit to having
quite a bit of fun. The graphics are good, not breathtaking, but not Shelley
Duvall ugly either. The quest system works, as far as I can tell, and I am
looking forward to putting my first frankenweapon together. All I need is the circular saw blade to
finish my “Ripper”, which was a bonus for pre-order.
I did, however, run into two glitches—I think—in my first two hours of playing. At one point my flashlight
stopped working. I then clipped through the floor of the map and fell deep into
the netherworld where, presumably, Satan’s horned cock was waiting for me (I
quickly ctrl+alt+del’ed, as I have no desire to preview the violation waiting
for me upon my inevitable post-mortem descent into Hell).
The other—which I’m not sure was a glitch, but seriously
pissed me off—happened when I tried to play a random coop. Every so often—if you
set your game to “internet”—you will receive a message saying “HornyPedo is
near your part in the story. Press ‘J’ to join their game.” After about the
fifth time, I figured, what the hell, and tried to join a random person that
popped up. The result was, the connection never got made, and when I got back
to my game everything in my inventory
was gone, including all of my money! The game had saved my position, but not my
stuff, which kinda made me say a whole lot of bad words all at once in a high
octave. I quickly recovered though, and continued on my merry zombie-bashing
way (but haven’t clicked the dreaded “J” button since).
All in all, I enjoyed my first foray into the tropical
nightmare of Dead Island, and am champing—look
it up—at the bit to get back to questing all over the resort’s shady
beaches; where the ocean froths red from all the spilled tourist blood. I have
yet to kill any zombie-children, but more disturbing than that, I have learned
that when attacked by a zombie in a bikini, I will totally check out its tits
before I cave its skull in with a tire iron.
Hell, and the mighty horned
cock of Satan, wait for me.
