Matthew Byers | Staff Writer
Can this zombie game horrify you for Halloween?
Everyone knows how big the zombie fad has gotten; with movies like Resident Evil, Dawn of the Dead, Walking Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Left 4 Dead, and even Call of Duty’s Nazi Zombies shows that people have a huge interest in the shambling flesh eaters. Now instead of running through fighting zombies that mutate further and further or bunkering up to survive wave after wave of the undead, what if you had to survive on a secluded island where every person you meet could potentially become an infected horror?
The first Dead Island released across platforms in 2011 brought an open zombie filled world for players to explore and stave off the undead. The game was fairly unique, not many games were open-world and encouraged exploration with themes of the undead. Games such as Resident Evil are fairly linear with numerous instances of back tracking, the whole “go left to get the red key to open the red door that’s on the right” were common scenarios.
In terms of story, the game fails. Your character wakes up in a five-star hotel that is suddenly over run with the undead seemingly overnight and you are one of the only people immune. This gives you the job of doing every quest for everyone in the game who can’t do anything in the ritzy resort and beach area. The group of survivors is running out of food and water? Go get some juice boxes and cans of beans for them from the local 7-11. Zombie corpses are stinking up the lot? Go get a can of gasoline from the same 7-11. The main story is about you getting off the island, but the game does it in such a roundabout way it’s almost better you don’t leave the island. The characters are also off-putting, they repeat the same quotes, often which don’t make any sense in context, and in the few cut-scenes the game has to offer, the characters sound like they read from a script rather than actually being reacting to whatever it is they are doing.
Gameplay is entirely first person based where you use everything from boat paddles to fists to scythes in your effort to escape the undead. The first think any player notices is how quick weapons decay; most starting gear (and it’s even worse for bladed weapons) can break after killing a dozen zombies. The game alleviates this problem through the level up system where you can choose to put points in increasing the durability of your items, which is entirely necessary if you want to keep your one good weapon that will become worthless in a couple of level-ups from breaking. To get weapons, you have to scavenge from desks, backpacks, and the occasional undead zombie. While this is the most common way, these sources often provided you with cash, fetch-quest items, or materials used to modify weapons to have conditions such as being on fire, poisonous, bleed, or electrify. If you want to find the good weapons, you either have to prey to the gods of gaming or invest in lock-picking points to be able to open high level gear chests which often don’t have good gear in them anyway.
In terms of graphics the game failed rather horribly. Everything is in a rather gaudy high-definition that is poorly rendered even on high definition televisions and computer monitors. While it’s great that the zombies look so undead, the environments look overly saturated and non-infected character models appear as if they are half undead themselves. The music, however, is entirely meant to be background noises; zombies moaning in the distance, birds calling out, the occasional sounds of gun fire; despite having a fairly well done rap song called “Who do you Voodoo?” (which serves as the theme song) the game is rather avoidant of any music which helps players feel the isolation.
The game has its flaws; between ugly graphics, dislikable characters, non-existent story, the same quests over and over, and almost no reason to wanting to save anyone or continue past area one (area two is a garbage dump of a crime-infested city), the game gets a six outta ten. The initial charm of playing is there, and it’s certainly better with co-op (which is one of the saving graces of the game), the game is bland. The sequel didn’t change much either, only adding a few new zombie types, rifles, and lots of water. An initial price of sixty dollars was more horrifying then the nastiest undead this game could throw at you, luckily it can easily be bought used from any game store for dirt cheap today.
