Reviews - Dead Island

[HEXUS]

An island paradise becomes a living hell when a zombie outbreak quickly spreads...

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[Rob_B]

I've put just over 30hrs into this (PC), very little CO-OP as it dropped constantly so I gave up in the end.

Don't get me wrong its a good game, well worth the £30 I paid but it gets really repetitive, the sewer levels are boring and the bugs...oh the bugs! Even simple things like why do you stand up if you pick up an item while crouching? Madness!

As I said, its good, not what I expected before it was released and not as free roaming (by that I mean there isn't much to explore) as something like Fallout but stil a decent addition to your games catalogue.

[shaithis]

30hours? Without co-op?

You got your moneys worth!

Even playing with 3 mates, I find it extremely repetitive to the point where I really can't be bothered doing any of the side quests at all.

I found the bugs to be (for the most part) unobtrusive....my major technical issue is the whole "fish eye" effect I have going on.....

[Rob_B]

30hours? Without co-op?

You got your moneys worth!

Even playing with 3 mates, I find it extremely repetitive to the point where I really can't be bothered doing any of the side quests at all.

I found the bugs to be (for the most part) unobtrusive....my major technical issue is the whole "fish eye" effect I have going on.....

Yeah, maybe two or 3 hours of co-op overall, played with a few ppl from HEXUS but could never go more than 20mins without losing connection. Think I lasted so long as I was playing and going through the motions rather than actually enjoying it.

I completed it then started again but gave up on the second run through after a couple of hours as I got bored. Decided to hang around the beginning waiting for co-op joins and tried to give n00bs some decent weapons (giving a level 2 n00b a 250+ blade elicits much joy!), the flakyness of the connections just made me give up though.

[BEANFro Elite]

I also ended up playing it on my own after EVERY single attempt at joining or having people join me failed or dropped soon after joining.

I have also NEVER seen a game with so many bugs and I've played BF2 1.0 .

That aside (like they were small issues I mentioned above), the game lacked variety, samey objectives, no day / night cycles which is just criminal, the lack of any true survival elements all made the game largely a dull, flat experience.

TheAnimus and I both agreed that the scope of potential for this game was exquistely broad and if done right, Dead Island could have been an absolutely jaw-droppingly epic title and there are plenty of occasions where there were elements of pure genius which were immediately stifled by poor execution or bugs.

In my opinion, using the Chrome 5 engine was a shockingly bad decision, I personally feel that the Unreal 3 engine would have been a MUCH better choice, but to improve gameplay, they could have blended the survival and environmental elements of STALKER, I felt that STALKER 1 and Pripyat are among the most atmospheric and immersive games of recent times.

If the devs had read "The Zombie Survival Guide" by Max Brooks, the players should have been made a lot less powerful and forced a more obvious ethic on teamwork as seen in zombie panic, cut most of the soundtrack and used a semi-realtime soundscape of the zombies instead and environmental sounds, if they made the walkers behave more like zombies so they'd be attracted by any noises that you make or lights that you emit from the use of your flashlight which would make night time sequences all the more hazardous, in which case a sound and light meter could have been implemented which could also help you to avoid being detected by zombies altogether.

Dilemmas such as, "Should I walk to an objective so as to not attract the attention of the zombies or should I stock up on weapons and drive close to the objective and expect to fight off a horde?" would have been brilliant, with similar scenareos associated with the use of firearms over melée weapons.

Small things like NPCs closing doors behind you after you've left to complete a quest would have added an extra sense that you were in a world where people are actually scared of things and are vulnerable.

Building barricades with objects that are nearby would also have added to make for a more immersive experience.

I could go on for ages about what could have been added but the sheer volume of fedex missions really grated me down towards the end, and I very nearly came close to abandoning it, and unsurprisingly I'm largely disappointed by Dead Island but only because of the amount of potential it had.