The first 4 hours on the resort are actually great, discovering the map and going back and fourth doing it's side quests while exploring can be rewarding at first, but the game mechanics can't sustain more than that and it starts to fall apart abruptly.
The game was clearly made for melee weapons, and they kinda work, but the gameplay with firearms is bizarrely bad and they still force you to use it. Crafting/upgrades/creation for weapons is awful and spending money for repair and for some weird damage upgrade isn't engaging at all. Besides that, the skill tree is made entirely of silly things (one point for 5% more stamina? really?), which creates a game that doesn't reward the player as it should.
It's clear those mechanics were left in this state in favour of the game focus on 4 player co-op and replayability factor, which fails even playing this way.
Dead Island's idea can work, but not in this way, focusing more on it's world building, exploration and mission design is the way, not some barebones RPG system, gunplay and repetitive missions for the aforementioned co-op.