I Played Dead Island and it was Actually Pretty Damn Fun
Techland’s latest retail release, Dead Island, has seemingly surfaced a lot of mixed reception. Some folks say they adore it, while others feel it lacks polish and substance. Arguably, both stances have merit. The game is buggy, screen tearing is egregious, and playing solo is a bore; however, the four-player cooperative kill and loot gameplay holds a level of excitement similar to that of any other dungeon crawling, hack-and-slashing title. It’s actually pretty damn fun!
I’ve had a blast playing through Dead Island on PC with three of my friends. I couldn’t care less about the storyline or even the individual quest objectives; I’m focusing the bare-minimum necessary to complete them. I’ve simply had a lot of fun running through the streets, sewers, and buildings of the resort-land, slaughtering hordes of undead baddies with a range of weaponry.
The island paradise itself surprises me with its beauty; Dead Island is actually a really pretty game if you can ignore its faults. The ambient bloom can strain your eyes. No florescent light I’ve ever seen glows like they do here; it’s quite ridiculous. Yet the overall graphical fidelity of this title, when you consider its development team and what they have created over the years, really pulls through.
The bright daylight sky beams down a blue hue in contrast to the sandy beaches and other environments. The water, while lacking material effect, still reflects a certain sense of realistic integrity if you happen to get knocked backwards into it – opening your first-person perspective to a wonderful scene of subdued noises and blurred vision.
As Dead Island is a zombie game you should expect a certain level of blood and gore, right? Thankfully, Techland thought ahead and packed the game full of an insane amount of blood, gore, and dismemberment. Honestly, sometimes it’s a little too much to take and others I’m just laughing at its absurdity.
For example, there is a certain enemy type, called Thug, who cannot be knocked down onto the ground. They are just towering behemoths that withstand any amount of flying jump kicks you or your compatriots can throw at them. You can, however, slice off both of their arms, which leaves their attack range at a disadvantage. It’s both tactical and hilarious.
The melee combat proves to be quite visceral. It’s heavy, slow, and more methodical than your average virtually interactive, mayhem-filled adventure. I’m currently wielding a beastly axe, which swings like you figure an axe would. The range is longer than some of the knives I’ve used and its speed feels significantly slower. Foes sprinting towards me take a well-timed attack to maim, though its execution is completely satisfying every time they burst into a bloody mess.
Dead Island features a wealthy of armaments to use, such as knives, swords, axes, machetes, wrenches, baseball bats, kayak paddles, scythes, maces, and more. You can also modify these weapons, if you have the right miscellaneous components, to give them extended attributes like fire or electricity.
I was a little worried when I learned you could strap wires to an object and suddenly it could electrify the horde. I felt like it might turn out to be a too “Dead Rising”-ish. Although, it doesn’t feel quite as absurd as Capcom’s zombie romp – and the electricity, fire, or poison mods can actually hurt you or your teammates if they happen to touch them.
Dead Island is a role-playing game, sort of. It has traditional RPG elements like experience points, levels, and skill trees and all that nonsense seems to actually fit into the game’s core quite well. Coupled with all the quests it has, Dead Island can feasibly take you and three of your comrades up to 30 hours to complete.
If you have some friends – hopefully you do – and can find Dead Island on the cheap, I’d suggest giving it a whirl. Keep this ‘simply-plain-fun’ title in the back of your mind for the post-holiday downtime in early-to-mid 2012.
Dead Island. As you said, fun to play with friends, but total shit to play alone.
Yeah, it was definitely less fun without some good coop friends.
Completely Agree
This game would be incredible boring if it weren't for the hilarity that comes from playing with my friends and i actually enjoy finding bugs. As an example i was preparing the bomb to blow up the bunker and my friend threw a chest at me while i was doing that the result was me flying sideways and down the cliff or in general the game play of running up and ninja kicking a Zombie. These factors and nothing else make this game playable and fun.
Definitely! The bugs my friends and I found actually made the collective enjoyment more so due to their absurdity and absolute hilarity.