(Disclamer: This is all my opinion. If you would like to tell me yours, comment below and tell me your thoughts. Also, this is just on the base game. I have not played the Ryder White campaign DLC or the Bloodbath Arena DLC.)
Dead Island was released back in September 6th, 2011 (US) and was developed by Techland and published by Deep Silver. This game was announced back in 2006 at E3. Dead Island was put on hold until early 2011 when the re-announcement trailer came out of no where. This is one of the very few things in media that actually sparked an emotion from people. That got people really hyped for the game. It looked like this was to be the next great zombie game. Did it live up to the hype or was it just another zombie game on the list? Well let's find out. (The way my reviews go are that they're cut into different sections. The sections are made up of story, gameplay, graphics/sound, entertainment value, and the final verdict.)
Story: You play as one of the four characters; Xian Mei, Sam B, Logan Carter, or Purna. All of them have their own back stories in the character select screen. It's just to explain what they did before, at the beginning of the outbreak and where they are now. All the characters start out the same and end the same. Honestly, I don't see any difference between the characters as far as the base of the game goes.
The plot of the game is that the island of Banio is overrun by zombies. All of four of the characters are trying to get off the island. Yes I said all four. They do not appear in gameplay as npc's (Non playable character) but in the cut scenes, you see all of them together; Which for me begs the question, why aren't they in the gameplay as npc's? I don't want that but it makes sense in the context of the story. Anyway, our four main characters are trying to get off the island due to the zombies and an incoming typhoon. They get a call from someone in the prison just outside the island; That brings another question to mind, why would they build a maximum security prison (or a prison at all) just outside of a popular vacation spot? The person at the prison is later revealed to be Ryder White, a colonel on the Banoi Island Defense Force. He is at the prison because his wife, Emily, is a doctor that was employed there.
In layman's term, the survivors build an armored truck to drive to the other part of the island, then find a bunker and blow open the entrance to get to a tunnel that leads out into the jungle to the guide and the boat, and finally, go to the prison. All that is over the span of fifteen chapters and three acts.(Warning: If you don't want spoilers to the ending of the game, skip to where it says Here in parentheses) You get to the prison (do some rather pointless missions for the inmates) than you meet with White on the roof of the prison. White has his wife strapped to what looks like a moving dolly; She is infected and Ryder couldn't bring him self to kill his wife. One of the survivors, Jin, releases Emily and she bites him. Jin is shot off the roof and Ryder injects himself with the “cure” he had. The “cure” changes him into a wanna-be tyrant from Resident Evil. You kill him (Boss fight is explained in the gameplay section) and then you fly off in the helicopter; A very weak ending. (Here) Overall, the story is good enough but the ending is so disappointing that the score is going to be hurt drastically.
Gameplay: Your character can use a variety of weapons ranging from baseball bats and machetes to pistols and machine guns. The melee boils down to just spamming the right trigger, occasionally using the LB button to kick the enemy, and finishing them off; Rinse and repeat, The gameplay gets a little more interesting when weapons are introduced in the city part of the game. Guns feel well and after a little while, you can find them quite easily. You'll find new melee weapons that are better than the old; Same for the guns. After a while, I stopped using guns to much because you can only hold a certain amount of ammo. You can hold up to twelve weapons/med-kits and eighteen with a fully upgraded perk. Speaking of perks, every character has their own special perks and fury.
Fury is basically a short burst of power in a way. For example, Xian Mei's fury is increased speed and faster hitting. This was used a couple of times during my play through of the game. I never found to be that useful. The perks are another story; Without these, this game would be insanely difficult. Perks can increase hitting strength, how much stamina you use, increasing fury length, increasing chance of a critical hit, etc. The perks are a great part of Dead Island and the leveling up/perk tree system adds an RPG element to the game that I really like.
Also, weapon mods are a great addition to the game. Being able to mod any weapon I want is great. I love that I can (for some reason) duct tape glass to a baseball bat and beat the shit out of a zombie with it is awesome. You can also add these mods to your firearms. For example, the shock mod will make the bullets shock the zombies and adds more damage. I love the weapon mods and i
Like Left 4 Dead, there are special infected in the game. You have the Ram, a charging enemy (much like the Charger), the Floater (our Boomer equivalent in the game), the Suicider (Also, much like a Boomer but the Suicider causes damage when blown up.), and my favorite, the Butcher (a zombie with no hands but with two sharpened bones coming out of his arms). The Butcher is the only unique one in that list; Disappointing but they all work well in the game.
(Skip this section if you do not want to know about the boss fight at the end) The wanna-be tyrant charges at you with the speed of an infected and tries to hit you. He can knock you back but if you know how to dodge appropriately, this boss rather easy. On another note, he looks stupid. My reaction to when I saw the transformation was a resounding “Are you fucking kidding me?”. My friend and I were playing this game together and he decided to see how good his fury would work on him. He had Purna and if you don't know, Purna's fury is she gets a revolver that has dead accuracy, amazing damage, and unlimited ammo for the time that the fury is enabled. Purna's fury killed him; Literally right at the beginning of the boss fight. That is why I hate this boss and that is why he is so easy to kill.
Gameplay is fun for a while but can get tedious pretty quick. With a lot of weapons, weapon mods, perks, and zombies to kill, this game will keep you occupied for a while.
Graphics/Sound: First the negatives. The lip-syncing in cut-scenes and in game is terrible; Especially in cut-scenes. Also, character models look stiff and plasticity in cut-scenes. Thankfully, the zombies look great. Movement from the infected can be a little quirky some times but other than that zombies move smoothly. The environments are look good and character models in game look good as well. For some reason they messed them up in cut-scenes. One thing I would like to add is that there is also some texture pop in issues.
The sound design is great as well as the voice acting. Well, maybe not great, but good. The lip-syncing doesn't bring done the quality of the voice acting but it just bothers me. Another thing, most voice actors give at least a little emotion when they speak but the faces of the character models doesn't move much and seems inhuman. Character models overall look fine but it's just in the cut-scenes and in the dialogue segments in gameplay that make them look plasticity. Environments look good, zombies look great, and the sound design/voice acting sounds good. Good graphics and sounds overall.
Replay Value: there is no point in playing the game again for the story. When you play it once, you know exactly what is going to happen so their isn't a point. If you just want to relieve some stress and just kill some zombies, this game is perfect for that. I'm not one of those kind of people to just want to go back and play it again to kill zombies. For me, there is no re-playability.
Final Verdict: Dead Island was a huge disappointment for me. I thought this was going to be the next great zombie. Sadly, it wasn't. With the domain of Dead World being bought by Techland and Deep Silver, I hope they do a better job next time.
Dead Island gets a six out of ten. 6/10
On my review scale is an above average game.
We might be in the age of remasters, but it doesn't look like the Dead Island 2 devs believe remaking the original game is the right move for the series.
but remakes require far less effort for these companies and they can still charge $70 for them!
Feel like everyone makes fun of Skyrim re-releasing like 18 times yet applaud these remasters elsewhere. Would much prefer NEW games
Making sequels really is the way to go. Otherwise we'll be stuck playing only the first entry, forever!!!
Josiah Motley of KnowTechie writes: "I love video game trailers. While I don’t believe they are an integral part of a game’s success (especially these days), there’s something about a well-produced trailer that really just reminds me why I like video games."
How so? Because it focused on a family that you see dying? (innocent question, haven't gotten a chance to play any Dead Island game yet)
More the tone of it - the tone of the trailer suggested something personal and dramatic, but the game was very much reminiscent of Left 4 Dead in that you were just there to kill zombies and nothing more
You play as a singular character there is no family involved at all in the game. Still a stand out trailer that I remember clearly from years ago.
Did you not like the game?
I remember going in expecting a L4D style of game, but the excessive camera swaying honestly made me feel ill, and it's rare for a game to do that to me, still don't understand why the need for anything other than maybe a subtle slight camera movement when doing melee attacks etc. Other than that i didn't really find the game that good. In all honesty i had more enjoyment out of DNF, and i know many people crap on that game.
It’s the music. It’s perfect. I agree with this for sure, it is well choreographed….unfortunately the game didn’t live up to the trailer.
Maybe not, but it was still a good game. I liked how they expanded things with Dying Light, but Dead Island was a great first attempt! I really liked all the Easter eggs and homages to other horror franchises sprinkled throughout. Sure it was a little cheesy and over there top, but it was a good happy medium between Far Cry and Fallout with zombies.
Have you ever seen any of the MGS 3 or MGS 4 trailers? Those blow this out of the water for me.
They require prior knowledge of the franchise, tho. You show this trailer to anyone, and I mean ANYONE, and they can understand what's going on and relate to the family dynamic almost immediately. No need to know who is Snake, or Fox Hound, or Raiden, or Metal Gear...
Kevin F. from Link Cable Gaming writes: "Many of the best Xbox 360 games are playable on the Xbox One and Series X|S consoles. Some even with some enhanced visuals and performance. Unfortunately, not every game from the Xbox 360 library has received this glorious feat of being able to be played on more modern Microsoft consoles."
The Spider-man games will never happen. The xbox 360 Marvel Ultimate Alliance games have a better chance of happening than Spider-man titles but won't happen. The Xbox One Ultimate Alliance games delisted years ago
Yeah... you can totally forget about those entries that got delisted because of licensing issues. Those are not happening.
Almost all of the games people want to play are BC, and that's a hell of a lot better than having none available.
Almost all the games people want to play? Not true. Majority picks screw over the minority who have games collecting dust. Metal is right. Fans make it seem that it's all. 39/997 games from OG Xbox is NOT all. 568/2154 from 360 is NOT all. But you guys play it up like it is.
And from my count, there are 4,000+ PS4 BC games on PS5 that I see. And almost every VR game. Series X has no Kinect games or Kinect 2. But you played that up too. No more dancing.
As for the article, some of the BC games make sense. The others with Spider-Man aren't happening.
The game is dull at best... It looks great and had so much promise, but fetch quests? Really? It's no fun to play for more than an hour or so.
i dont think it was fun at all and at most i felt like there were only 5 zombies at a time
i enjoyed it a great deal and i've said before you need to play it for longer then a few hours to see how good it really is. In fact i don't platinum games i don't like but i did this one. The games co-op is cool as hell once they got it fixed.
I played the game for more than a couples of hours. In fact, I played the game for more than fifteen hours in total. I said this in the review and I'll say it again, the game isn't bad. It was just severally disappointing. Dead Island just didn't live up to the expectations. The game was all around boring, dull, and for lack of a better term, lifeless. That's all my opinion though; I'm glad you enjoyed the game and hope you like the sequel, when it comes out of course.
Lol, there lays the problem "expectations".