Introduction
Dead Island is a zombie game. I mean who could have guessed that. The hype for it was big with its trailer giving people the idea that it was gonna have a really emotional narrative,it kind of does but its attempted execution isn’t great. Of course with hindsight we all know what the main draw is, it's a zombie bashing, slashing, shooting, exploding sandbox rpg game. It's borderlands with zombies. Wait, borderland has zombies. Okay it's borderlands with only zombies, wait nevermind you fight survivors and you use mostly melee weapons so it's not really anything like borderlands. Look, it's a bit of a Frankenstein's monster of idea’s like most zombie focused games, so just ignore all the stitches. We're not looking at the original version, rather the definitive edition which has some graphical updates, makes the game more vibrant and gets rid of the note and paper for getting quests for some reason.

Combat
The basic gameplay revolves around melee combat. From the most basic swings to more targeted dismemberment and breaking of enemy limbs to make them less of a threat.There is quite the variety of melee weapons each differing in speed and damage, for instance heavy weapons will swing slower and hit harder where as small weapons might not swing but instead just jab, most weapons are quite straightforward though. You can also kinda doge with the jump but it is a bit weird. Also all characters have access to a kick attack which not only serves to knock enemies off balance but is also a really good counter attack to any enemy charging at you, well almost any enemy. You can also throw weapons which deal a lot of damage though you must go and retrieve your weapon after the throw. All of this you have to balance with your stamina bar which drains when you run or attack, pretty much any action costs stamina. If your stamina bar depletes and your hit you get knocked down to the ground leaving you defenseless. So you're rewarded for patiently and surgically crippling enemy limbs and punished for wildly swinging. There is also a selection of firearms from pistols to revolvers to rifles, there alright against some zombies but you’ll mainly use them against any human threats you encounter. There are also status effects that some weapons will cause, mainly ones you’ve upgraded. These consist of things like bleed, fire, electricity and poison. There are no obvious enemy strengths and weaknesses though so adding special effects to weapons is purely to add more damage and the ability to cause enemies to be stunned for a short amount of time. Though some characters are better at dealing damage with specific status effects it still boils down to just extra damage.








Progression
You progress in two ways, leveling up and applying skills to the skill tree and acquiring new weapons and equipment. The skill tree and leveling up is pretty much like every other game released since far cry 3. You level up, you get a bit stronger and you get a skill point that you can then apply to a single skill on the skill tree. These skills can be anything to to straight up buffing the amount of health you have to doing more damage with a certain kind of status effect or just an entirely new attack. You level up by doing quests and killing enemies, each time you level up it takes more exp to level up. Now weapons will scale with your level, so as you get stronger so will weapons you’ll find laying around in the environment, but weapons also have rarity tiers, going like this, gray which are weapons that can’t be repaired, white the most basic of weapons, green uncommon weapons, blue rare weapons, purple are unique and orange is exceptional. This all means that some will pretty much always be better than others. You can also purchase upgrades for weapons making them do more damage and have more durability and also craft upgrades which give them new effects like setting enemies on fire or causing them to bleed.

Weapons
Weapons in themselves also have a number of nice details, they’ll get covered in blood, change appearance based on upgrades and will slowly degrade as you use them. They’ll go from being pristine and sharp to broken and blunt. There is a huge variety of weapons, ranging from knives, cleavers,machetes, swords, katana’s, bats, axes, clubs, hammers, wrenches and more. Each weapon has different variants, including special legendary ones, there are different kinds of machete’s for example with different models etc, like the military machete and the homemade machete for example, if I went though all them we’d be here all day. There’s also a selection of firearms which isn’t as broad, you’ve got pump action shotguns, pistols, assault rifles and revolvers each with their own respective variants. Still quite the selection for a primarily melee focused game

Characters
There are 4 playable characters in the game each with their own skill tree, ultimate and a couple of special abilities.





There sam-b the one hit rapper. He made a song called Who do you voodoo that went off the charts and that was the only hit song he ever made. Now he makes ends meet by doing concerts singing that exact same song pretty much anywhere he can. He’s good with blunt and two handed weapons, focusing on hitting like a truck more than anything else, knocking opponents down or sending them flying into the sky. He would be the tank of the group if you want to put rpg labels on it. His ultimate is literally just him punching shit out of anything that gets in his way


Xian Mei was a spy sent to watch wealthy westerns who visited the island which was not the impression I got at first, In fact given that they add poison damage to weapons and get healing skills I thought they were a doctor of some kind. Xian Mei is all about sharp weapons and is the damage/assassin type character, they’ve got the lowest hp of all of them but some of the best damage. In their ultimate you get to go wild with their blade, cutting and mutilating their enemies.

Purna Jackson was once a trained police officer now acting as a bodyguard for whatever vip hires her and now she is the leader of the group of 4 survivors. They’re a natural support and ranger specializing in firearms so they are not actually all that good in the early game as a lot of the buffs they get don’t apply to the weapons you can get early on, given firearms are only easily accessible by act 2. Their ultimate is unlimited use of their revolver for the duration of it, pretty overpowered if you're getting headshots or fighting human enemies.

Logan Carter was an American footballer. Because of this he is a natural at throwing shit at people and telepathically retrieving it. He’s a bit of a jack of all trades, not preferring blunt, sharp or firearms and can use all 3 rather effectively though his skill generally lean into one handed variants of weapons. He can boomerang thrown weapons back to him which is really overpowered once you have the skills at a high enough level. In his rage mode he random bullshit go’s a bunch of knives at enemies which is pretty neat


The tone problem
Dead island is very confused in its tone, or unrefined might be a better word. You’ve got all these wildly different people from a rapper and a Chinese spy who are not only immune to the infection but also gain super powers from it and then you have poorly lipped synced emotional scenes. The game really, really wants you to feel sad for characters you’ve just met or no little to nothing about. In the main story alone there’s too many characters being thrown at you who then die. The only character death that made me feel anything was Jin because their character has actually developed, grown and changed. The main 4 characters, while they don’t change, have entertaining enough personalities and interpersonal conflict that they also avoid these tone issues. Everyone else is just set dressing however, they look nice but when analyzed there isn’t a huge amount to them because you don’t spend long enough to get the time to understand who they are.

Music and atmosphere
The game doesn’t have a lot of memorable music. About the only thing that sticks in my brain is the main menu music. The music isn’t bad and it has its moments but it's not like say left 4 dead or halo where it lifts the game to a whole nother level which brings me to my next issue. The most impressive and well done music has to be the ambient tracks, especially the one that plays in the church. The action tracks are very generic action movie themes we've heard time and time again, it's not bad, just bland. The game does have some good atmosphere and especially atmospheric sounds when you stop to listen for it, but not when it needs it most. When you're walking for long stretches of time from a to be there is especially in the opening area, little to look at or listen for which is a shame. Because I want to be immersed in this world but don’t really get it. Probably the most atmospheric section is act 3 as it takes place mostly in a jungle and it invokes this really unique feeling of apocalypse. Only since total war warhammer have I been this afraid of what's in the trees.

Zombies and human enemies
Early on in the game you’ll only really encounter walkers being the slow moving zombies we all know and love, they can wack you, grab you and try to bit you, sometimes they’ll charge at you and on occasion will have melee weapons that they’ll try and hit you with, they can also throw them as well making them a bit more of a threat. Later in the game you’ll see ones with body armor making attacks to the head and body do less damage, ones that are poison that deal extra damage and ones that are on fire that are slowly having their health drained but they also deal extra damage.

Then there are Infected which are the fast zombies alla 28 days later, they can be quite the problem because of their frantic attacks and ability to close the distance but a good kick will send them off balance, or you could throw a weapon at them, they're pretty weak, they can also use and throw melee weapons like walkers though you don’t see this until later so always be on the look at when you hear them scream they can kill you quick. They also come in armored, poison and fire variants.

Thugs are more or less a mini boss zombies, they're very slow but very strong. Every hit from them knocks the player down. Their weakness is their arms, if they’re cut off or broken they are reduced to headbutts which do far less damage and have far less range and it also looks hilarious, they go from a real danger to chickens that try to peck you. So the general strategy with them is to cut off or break their arms and then stay far enough away not to get hit by headbutts. Don’t bother kicking thugs either, they are far too big to care. They also come in armored, poison and fire variants.






Rams are giant zombies in straight jackets that can charge at the player. They take basically no damage from frontal attacks, but are weak from behind. The best way to deal damage in their back is to wait for them to charge, doge it, and then attack them while they catch their breath. Be careful if you attack them without letting them charge as they are also capable of powerful kicks. They also have fantastic animations, it really does feel like they’re a constrained beast that would give anything to rip you to pieces with its bare hands.

Floaters are giant sewer bloated infected with semi translucent skin capable of vomiting heated water from their stomach. They can also spue a concentrated stream of vomit at close range much like the boomer from left 4 dead. They’re weakness is close range combat as they are pretty much helpless, especially if you have a fast swinging weapon as this puts them in a stun lock making them unable to fight back.

Suiciders are slow moving highly volatile swollen infected capable of detonating when you get too close or on death. They also seem to be the only infected capable of speech, attempting to ask for health or beg for death. Best way to combat them is from range, whether it's throwing something or shooting them, best not get too close.

The butcher is by far the most mad and intimidating zombie, its arm’s have been ripped off and sharpened into daggers. It can run like infected and looks completely nuts with long flowing gray hair and a rotted face. They will quickly kill the player with a flurry of melee attacks if not counter with a kick, they are also really durable unlike infected which can be killed with a couple wacks so they really test your ability to balance stamina. They can also heal themselves if not being attacked for a short while, meaning if you don’t put them down quickly they’ll keep coming. The one disappointing thing about them is you only see them in act 3, they disappear in act 4 for some reason.

There are various zombie mini bosses throughout the game, the first few you encounter are whenever a new infected is introduced, other than the walker, infected and thug, you’ll encounter a souped up one that has more health, is a little bit bigger and deals more damage. You will also see special named thugs in main and side missions that are a bit stronger and also act as mini bosses. There are also a few mini bosses that are the size of thugs but attack like infected, i’ll call them infected thugs. There’s only a few bosses that are like that, one you fight in the jungle another is the final boss but will get to that.

Human enemies consist mainly of thugs and bandits that you encounter in act 2 and 3 but you also face soldiers in act 4. They’re armed mostly with pistols and some later on with assault rifles, headshots with guns will pretty much always one shot them, not much of a threat if you have a gun.


There are some Human mini bosses that appear in the game, some with melee weapons but all the ones you’ll see in the main campaign have guns. They are like normal human enemies except they don't die from a single headshot and have more health. The melee ones are stronger but are technically infected and butcher reskins in how they behave despite not being zombies.

Traversal and repetition
Before I start with the story I have to talk about one of the game's major issues. The beginning feels really bland. You only fight the slow moving zombies, the infected and the occasional thug early on which is fine, except it lasts the whole first act which if you're doing some of the side missions like I was could last 2-3 hours. This makes the early combat exceptionally bland as it's either slow, fast or slow but strong zombies that all look very similar. Then there’s the fact that to get to destinations you either have to walk or drive and you might not always be near a car so you're gonna have to end walking some of the way. What do you do while walking, you fight the same three enemy types as you travel from A to B. The same 3 enemy types you fight in main and side missions. When people say they hate zombie games this is what they think of, slow uninteresting and repetitive combat. The game is actually really good when you get past the first act but it takes some time to get there. It feels like they wanted to leave some of the more exciting stuff for later and really could have benefited from just more enemy types early on.

Story
Our story begins with our chosen character waking up in a hotel after partying a bit too hard. It takes about 5 minutes for shit to start going wrong and you fall down an elevator and meet “the radio man” and then have to start running for your life seconds later. After getting the zombie chomp you wake up in a shack. Side note, how’d these survivors get us to the shake, more specifically how’d they get Sam B here, like did they carry him or have we gotten some teleportation powers from the zombie bite. Like how do a couple survivors carry a man that big throw hordes of zombies and get here safely, VIDEO GAMES NEED TO STOP TREATING BEING KNOCKED OUT AS A WRITING TOOL TO GET THE PROTAGONIST WHERE YOU WAN-. You go outside and help a lifeguard fight the zombies introducing you to the combat system and after that you have access to co-op which doesn’t matter because none of my friends have this on pc and I didn’t have time to bully them to get it for this review. Now that we’ve finished the prologue the radio man says we’re immune and promises he can get us out of here. Then we are released into the area where act 1 takes place. It's a resort, filled with beaches, hotel rooms and zombies in bikinis. The game here is very slow to actually start, you go to secure the lifeguard station which then becomes one of the 2 main hubs of the area. The other is a lighthouse where a group of survivors who didn’t want to listen to the promises of a strange radio man are now, hoping to use the lighthouse to signal for help. After that the first couple missions feel very much like side missions, because they are essentially doing odd jobs for people.

The only quest here that is of note is the one where you have to pick up gasoline to burn corpses because it makes no sense, you see the pile of bodies back there, well now it's on the beach burning, somehow. Oh and he’s crying, he didn’t know these people, he dragged their dismembered corpses outside and then down to the beach with no sign of distress but the moment they were on fire it became somber. You might think, maybe it's a sort of last rights thing, because they're burning and being cremated, but no. He wanted to burn the corpses so they didn’t attract more zombies, so why is he crying? Maybe he got ash in his eyes, I don't know.

Side missions
Speaking of side missions, this is one of the best aspects of the game because there’s so many and the dialogue, while not written great, is charming. People around the island need beer, water, or their teddy bear that is with a deranged survivor who tries to bludgeon you on sight. The side missions are great. One thing that was a bit annoying is there are no choices or anything like that which isn’t a problem except for this one mission where a guy pays you to lie to his friends and say he’s dead, I would like the option to at least set him on fire because you don’t need a dialogue wheel for that and we all know EA isn’t gonna give up the rights they have to there wheel. We’ve been spoiled with the side missions here, it wasn’t enough to keep me playing after finishing the story but they were good fun for breaking things up. If I was playing with other people I might have felt more compelled to go back and finish them. You also eventually get sent on supply run where you have to drive around the map which is a pain in the ass and what is this?


The arena
The arena is a side mode, where you fight progressively harder waves of zombies, which is to be expected given the name. The reason given for this is its a test of skill the remaining military uses which doesn’t make much sense but hey I’m always up for a good survival mode. However as far as survival modes go its pretty average, if you have a few mates I can see it being a blast especially on harder maps but solo, it bowls down to running around around and trying to whittle down the horde









Story continued
Eventually you get sent to the hotel to get a van so you can go into town. This is where the story picks up, you get the van to a garage where this mechanic and his daughter Jin kit it out with armor plating. The mechanic Earl, who’s name I had to look up on a wiki because we have known him for the better part of 10 minutes, is bitten and wants us to take his daughter Jin with us in exchange for helping turn the van into a death machine. Jin serves as portable storage for weapons and different things. There was also a helicopter pilot named Nikolai but I’m writing a review here not a synopsis. What is important is he also offers to get you off the island, this doesn’t come up again until you do a side quest which is weird. Like shouldn’t that become the main goal, seems easier than going to a prison to help a general.

Then you head off to the town which has to be my favorite location in the game. It introduces the ram and floaters, there are lots of flaming and poisonous enemies, it just all ramps up from here and it's great. There’s a bunch of religious survivors in a church who are all dealing with what some might percive as the the end of the fucking world differently, including a nun who is the leader of this group.
You get introduced to hostile survivors who once made up the gangs on the island who have set themselves up in the old police station and this is the point where you start getting guns which is nice. Also across the blown up bridge is where the remaining police and richer families as well as the mayor are just chilling not wanting to help anyone.
After acquiring food Jin decides against everyone else's judgment to give food to the gangsters, what follows is a rescue mission and after killing all of the gang and finding Jin this cutscene plays. This is the only scene that made me feel something and I was actually shocked they go there, the way Purna and Xani Mei send the guys out of the room, It's one of those things which is yeah a all male guy gang of violent survivors would do something like that but I didn’t think the “who do your voodoo bitch” game would go there.













Story spoilers
From here on out its spoiler territory, head to the timestamp on screen if you want to avoid these spoilers, you have been warned. They're gone? Good, they get to miss the spongiest boss in the game and no it isn’t Afran. So after saving Jin you finally make contact with the radio guy who reveals himself to be a colonel by the name of Ryder White who is in the prison island across the bay, the one surrounded by mines which houses some of the world's most infamous terrorists. This isn’t sketchy at all. So he sends you on a wild goose chase, fires to get yourselves a boat and finds Mowen who’s some kind of gang leader who apparently knows how to get to the island. You eventually find the boat as it's in the hands of Mowens rival Afran. Bullet spongy boss fight ensues when you kill him and have the boat and Mowen doesn’t know how to get to the island, but he does know where this plague came from, in a lab deep in the jungle. Fuck it, whats the worst that could happen right? Ryder seems pretty eager for you to go there because it turns out his wife is infected and he wants to save her, go figure. You go to the lab and no they didn’t make the virus, they test cosmetics on animals, the reason it's in the middle of nowhere is because the last lab was firebombed by an animal rights association. Doctor Robert West is trying to figure out where on earth the virus has come from. He believes it's a mutated form of kuru which is a very real disease that affects some of the native Papua New Guinea's. It was believed to be caused by the tradition of cannibalism, often by consumption of the brain making it more common in women and children than men as men often are the muscles. I’ll let our good doctor finish explaining. So he gets us to give him a sample and also wants us to get a sample from the natives. So we ritualistically fight a bunch of them including a boss fight against their greatest warrior who is just a giant infected. We bring back the blood and now we need to go hunting for mummies. We employ the help of one of their shamans and when we arrive in the tomb there’s a girl there who the shaman tries to kill so we promptly kill him. We bring back the samples from the mummies and the girl who’s name is Yerema who Robert wants to keep their test if she’s infected. Ryder really needs you to get to the prison soon and it turns out that is indeed possible because Mowen was lying and knew exactly how to get to the island this whole time. So we get fuel for the boat and go back to Jin’s fathers workshop to collect metal rods to help move the mines out of the way. While there Jin kills her zombified father. You might be thinking this is it, this is when we make it to the prison, nope, turns out zombies have gotten into the lab. You go there and everyone except Yerema is dead, she locked herself in a cage because Robert wanted more and more of her blood. He did manage to create a vaccine however.










Prison spoilers

So now finally we go to the prison to meet Ryder White and immediately lose contact. We then do half a dozen different chores for the inmates which lasts way too long. Mainly revolving around getting weapons, you even get help but this guy named kevin. Meanwhile Jin is losing her mind being surrounded by all the prisoners adding a second lair of urgency. Finally when you're just about to get weapons, Ryder White contacts you and has organized a way for you to come up and meet him. He even managed to get Jin and Yerema there as well, though Mowen died on the way there. So you all go up the elevator and then get gassed. You get woken up by Kevin and as it turns out Ryder took the vaccine. Kevin says he’s got a chopper on the roof and once he’s out of here he’ll nuke the island. What follows is a hallway upon hallway filled with countless enemies. You could fight through but I just ran through. Once you reach the roof you have a small shoot out and fight a small zombie horde and then. This is the only character death that's genuinely sad, the music helps but we also got to know the character and their death directly ties into their character development, they came full circle. Good Job dead island you wrote a complaint character, you get a gold star. Anyway Ryder White uses the vaccine and mutants into the spongiest enemy in the game. I really don’t know what to expect as all the bosses in this game consist of basic enemies and health turned up, which is fine but towards the end they just become impossible to kill, it might be more bearable in co-op but then again, health scales with the amount of players so it could be worse. Either way, you kill him and fly finally leaves.

Story conclusion
What a mixed game I mean it's fun in the middle but it's such a slow start and the end just drags out so long. The game could have been just as good if not better if it was a couple hours shorter. But wait, where not done yet, there’s still a dlc to talk about.












Ryder white dlc
Going into the dlc I thought it would be short and rather uninteresting and as far as gameplay it more or less was. Not saying it was bad, just more of the same, that being said there were a few things I liked. For one Ryder not being infected has no no skill tree to worry about. His ultimate is bullet time which is really fun and you get really good weapons from the beginning. But then there was one other thing that surprised me about the dlc, it has a really good story and answers questions I didn’t really think were gonna be answered. So for one this dlc goes parallel to everything happening in the main story, which is surprising but also brought me up the question. How the hell did Ryder white start getting a super zombie survivor squad to do his bidding and make a cure. Well I’ll tell you why and it shocked me. So half way through the campaign after blowing up the bridge Ryder gets in a chopper and heads to the prison to get his wife who’s been bitten. A certain someone has been practicing for this time, their name is Kevin, at least that's the name they gave you and doctor white. Turns out he’s Charon. I globally wanted terrorists and hackers for hire. He was the voice on the radio impersonating Ryder white which makes so much sense, why would a colonel be in a military prison. It also explains why he just appeared and helped us. He also genuinely planned to leave with Ryder and help his wife, he knew what he needed to slow down the infection, he instructed our scientist friend to make the vaccine oh and when Robert refused to send the girl who was the source of this to him with the vaccine to him he released the zombies in the building and then called us. He planned to knock us out from the very beginning to just get what he needs, he also knew the virus would have progressed too far by now so the vaccine wouldn’t work. Ryder hadn’t lost it when he got his wife up there, she was okay prior to that and he figured with the vaccine he has they might be able to develop some kind of cure and save her. When he released Charon from messing with him he was fully prepared to kill him and leave his wife until he revealed there was a way to save her. I’m gonna assume the reason he made sure time wise that she’d be, you know, fully infected was so he’d have an excuse to bring Yerema as she was the source of the cure and the plague in the first place. It also explained why the random native went to kill her, he knew she’s a ticking time bomb. All this leaves me to say one thing, WHY WAS NONE OF THIS IN THE MAIN STORY. Like not even vaguely hinted at, everything makes so much sense now, even why it felt like we were being strung along and sent from one place to another but only after playing a dlc that not everyone is gonna play. Still it has set itself up for quite the interesting sequel in dead island riptide as I didn’t think they’d be connected beyond, oh no zombies again but no, Charon is planning something.






Game conclusion
Dead Island is very much a mixed bag of a game, it had a ton of good ideas, the location chosen is great, the origins of the zombies is interesting. The story has its moments but had such a mixed direction that it's hard to get immersed. The gameplay when everything gets going and as new zombie types are introduced is really good, dodging Rams and acid spits while in the middle of the horde is really intense but early on without some of the more interesting enemies the combat falls flat. The arena mode was half baked and I wish there was more to do then just side missions. Overall though, especially with a couple friends dead island is an easy recommendation. Also watch out for the drift.