An Hour of: Dead Island

Now this really is a delayed review, originally intended for the same month ‘Dead Island’ was originally released, I got distracted by other things and the review never went up. But, seeing as how I’m bringing up a few reviews which were delayed because of the Muppets, I might as well throw the ‘Dead Island’ review in, the game where you’re stuck on an island resort which has been overrun by zombies. Essentially that was the premise that caught my eye. Stuck, trapped, isolated, remote and cut off from the rest of civilisation, seemingly awaiting the inevitable, being consumed by the zombie horde. And all this taking place on an island resort, the setting is brilliant!

So I bought the special edition, which came with the exclusive weapon called the ripper and Blood Bath, an exclusive arena in which you face off against endless zombies as well as a new weapon. So, I put in the code for the ripper, no problem. I put in the code for blood bath, invalid.

Wait, what? Let’s try again. Invalid still? What’s going on? Well after five minutes putting different codes in I gave up and loaded up the game. I have since learned that blood bath isn’t available until the 19^th of September. It was still unavailable that date too. I then found out it was delayed whilst the game makers sort out some bugs with the main game, which is actually a pretty decent thing to do. While they should have sorted out the bugs before the game came out, it is a respectable decision that the developers sort out bugs before releasing any new content.

Blood bath has since been made available, and it’s pretty cool. It’s essentially Horde mode from the Gears of War franchise, where you face off against zombies which gradually get stronger. I think it would’ve been better to have an option where you could join a co-op party, rather than just hang around and wait, but it’s still fun.

Anyway, the game loads up and we get a cut-scene introduction of the night before. We don’t play, but it’s from a first-person perspective from the view of a random drunk. We essentially get a mini-introduction to the four main characters who we can play. First we see Logan, a former football star (to us non-American people, it’s rugby) who acts all pompous and says “Do you know who I am?”, before being simply pushed aside. Next we come across Sam B, the Vanilla Ice of this game singing his one hit wonder ‘Who do you voodoo bitch?’.

We also meet Xian Mei, the hotel receptionist who is helping a woman who is on the floor bleeding heavily, before telling me that I’m in the ladies bathroom. Uh, listen lady, you have a guest bleeding to death right in front of you, I think that’s more important than which bathroom I’m in! We also see Purna, our fourth and final hero, she was the person who helped me back to my feet before pushing me back down again. Bitch.

So when we finally select a new game we get to pick one of these four characters. I decided to go with Xian Mei, mainly because in all the articles I read about this game, she was the more prominent character and she’s an expert in blades. That sounds cool.

We then wake up all groggy, which sort of goes with the introduction cut-scene but can’t be related since my character was presumably working, and therefore shouldn’t have been drinking. I guess for the other three characters it would work since all three are seen either drinking or enjoying themselves. Or maybe it’s different if you work at an island resort, I don’t know.

Anyway, I decided to check out the room for a minute or two, only finding a med pack in the bathroom. I then go out into the corridor, seeing the box in the top left corner telling me where to go. However, seeing a room to my left, I ignore the directions and enter that room, and I come across a couple lying dead on the floor. I then see an icon on the chest of drawers, see I can open it, proceed to open it, see there’s money in it and promptly take it.

 

Now, this game is an open world free roam, and it has been described by some as an RPG, so I was thinking when I went into this choosing Xieng Mei, that I’ll be the sympathetic and caring character. Less than five minutes into this game and I am stealing from the dead. Nice.

So I go along, checking bags and suitcases along the way collecting money, belts and batteries, and I also come across a feature that is unknown in zombie game; knocking down doors. Yeah, normally it’s just ‘this door is locked, don’t even try to shoot it down, it won’t work’, there’s a mechanism to knock down doors. Granted it’s only for certain doors, but it’s still pretty neat.

I then come across some elevators. Thinking that I will be going down in the elevators, I decide to go onto the balcony, getting a cut-scene of two people falling from above. This made me think that I could’ve missed that cut-scene whilst checking for more inventory items and cash, and then I find that the elevators aren’t working and I would’ve gone onto the balcony anyway. It’s this point where I’m finally told how to run, so I don’t have to walk around anymore.

Picking up more cash and inventory stuff, I come across more elevators, where I am told to open the hatch and jump in, which I do. The elevator the promptly falls down the shaft.

The end. Hope you enjoyed your £42 special edition of this game.

Oh okay that wasn’t it. Then again since I was falling a great height at an extremely high speed, I really should be dead when it promptly stops. It’s this point we get our first (well, second glimpse of the zombies; they first appear in the introduction cut-scene), where they try to run at you before the elevator falls an extra floor.

We then hear a voice over the security system, checking on us and making sure we’re okay. He then tells us that we need to get a weapon from the maintenance room. So once we’re out of the elevator we walk down a corridor. In the dark. Taking a page out of the ‘Left 4 Dead’ book, we can only see with a flashlight and flicking lights, but it still successfully sets a creepy tone, especially since the first-person perspective makes us feel like we’re truly there. The voice on the security system then tells us that there’s Infected up ahead, and that I should run for the storage room. Completely forgetting that I was originally going to the maintenance room and not seeing that the direction has turn 180 degrees, I feel that since this is my first encounter, I can easily deal with the zomb...

CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! CRAP!

And I’m dead. Wow that was scarier than I thought it would be.

So second try, this time I see the new direction. I then turn round and run the opposite direction, watching a cut-scene of my character reaching a stairway and closing the door behind me. The character then turns round and is promptly knocked out by a zombie punching me in the face.

 

My character would then wake up, apparently having been saved whilst having been knocked out. I wake up however to someone who wants to knock my block off with a big stick, unsure if I am infected. Though if I was infected I would be trying to eat you jackass! Not wondering what the Hell happened!

Going round seeing if I can speak to anyone, I eventually come across Jasmine and Wayne, who are arguing about going outside to help John, who is struggling against the zombies. Of course in order to advance my character has to go out and help, despite the fact that I think that my character wouldn’t do that by herself. I’m starting to think this isn’t the RPG people were talking about.

Well, okay in all fairness we can choose what missions we can do, as well as select what skills we can learn as the character we’ve selected levels up. But we don’t really get a choice in any of the missions like other RPGs like Dragon Age or Mass Effect provide. The skills we learn however are quite thought out. Nearly all of them have three stages, which makes that skill stronger, like tackle which, when at the top level, can knock down enemies, or certain other skills which makes certain weapons stronger and more efficient.

Being told I needed a weapon before heading out, the screen tells me to press left trigger to attack, so I pressed it, kicking Wayne in the balls. However, he doesn’t feel it. Do not mess with Wayne man! He has balls of steel!

I would then walk around the hut looking for a weapon for the next few minutes, before finally finding one right behind where I was talking to Wayne. Typical. The cut-scene would then have me going outside, seeing John Sinamoi fighting three or four zombies, but before I can help my character turns round and is punched in the face by another zombie. Wow I’m useless. Is this going to keep happening to my character?

This time I recover quickly, though I have lost my weapon so I end up having a slap fight with the zombie. After punching it to the floor and kicking its skull in, I find my weapon and help Sinamoi defeat the other zombies. We would then go to another cutscene where we first see Sinamoi being a badass while saving the character, and then we hear a voice on the radio telling us that in order to escape the island, everyone needs to get to him. However the radio cuts dead before we’re told where.

Sinamoi realises that their current location isn’t safe anymore and decides to relocate to the lifeguard station. But in order to get into it you need a security card; guess who gets it. So yeah, we then go outside, killing more zombies and saving a guy trapped in a car (Which begs the question why doesn’t he drive off?), getting the card and returning back to Sinamoi, before setting off again to clear the lifeguard station. A few more dead zombies later, we get to the lifeguard station, open the shutters and get a cutscene where we see another zombie beating a corpse. Now I don’t see why this zombie’s so special, he looks like the other zombies, I’m sure I can deal with him just fi...

Holy crap he’s twice as big as me.

So yeah, I then have to pummel this guy with weapons, some of which break. This zombie turns out to be the first special zombie we come across, called a thug, which I’ll talk about in a minute. After five minutes of essentially circling the thug and beating him with sticks to the tune of ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, I finally defeat him and clear out the lifeguard station.

It’s essentially here that I then stopped playing for a month, playing it again on Halloween, where I got the 28 Days Later reference achievement (Pretty nifty), before leaving it again. It wasn’t because I didn’t like the game, it was more because I got really annoyed at the Blood Bath fiasco, and the fact that I started playing Gears of War 3 again.

It wasn’t until last month that I essentially restarted the game as Sam B with the analog combat controls (Which was actually really effective and something which I prefer now) and actually got into the game a bit more. The gameplay is good, the story is great, the graphics are decent. I guess any bugs were sorted out before this point because I didn’t get any bugs or glitches whilst playing this. The co-op could have been better, since most of the time other players just went and did their own thing rather than focus on the missions. If you want to do your own thing, don’t join a co-op game!

Now let’s get back to those special infected. First there’s the Thug, who is essentially a giant zombie who packs a big punch. We then have the Suicider, which is essentially a blob on legs which can be killed just by tackling into it. However you’ll have to run away quickly, because if you’re anywhere near it when it blows up, you will die no matter what your health. We then have the Ram, an infected psychopath which was tied up in a straight jacket. It’s called a Ram mainly because that’s what it does, it rams you; does exactly what it says on the tin. Our fourth special infected is the Floater, which is essentially ‘Dead Island’s version of the Boomer from ‘Left 4 Dead’ (Though it doesn’t call zombies upon you). And last but not least, we have the Butcher, what is described as the most dangerous zombie in the game as it uses its mutilated razor sharp arms to slice and dice its foes with “lightning-quick attacks” (According to the Dead Island Wiki).

The thing is, the Ram and the Thug are probably the most dangerous for me, the Ram because it can take a while to deal damage to it, especially as most of the time your weapons cause insect bites (Unless you have a car, in which case you can kill the Ram with relative ease), while the Thug in the early parts of the game are pretty tricky. As mentioned the Suicider can be killed in one hit, the Floater is more annoying than difficult, and I was able to kill the Butcher with relative ease. But the special infected here do make a nice challenge and make some great antagonists.

The game also copies the weapon combos from Dead Rising 2, though it goes into a lot more detail. Want to strap a circular saw to a stick? You need some duct tape, a battery and some nails. Oh, and the saw and stick. Dead Rising 2 may done it before, but the weapons you can create in this game are truly fantastic/hilarious/awesome, such as a sword made of fire.

But anyway, the point is it’s a great game. I’ve since gotten to the jungle which feels a bit rushed, though the later stages of the city are really good. I should get back to playing it but hey, I should be getting Mass Effect 3 in a day or two.