Standing by a pool you are surrounded by zombies. Some shambling, some running at you. They make a gutteral groaning noise and then you are thrown into action. Not because you are ready to fight but because your foes have reached the length of the bloody oar you hold. One swipe across your field of view leads to the zombie dropping. But another is already on you. You kick it away and try an overhead strike with your blood cake oar. While doing this you are backing up, because you don't want to get surrounded or cornered. That can only mean death. The zombies are on their feet again, and as the first one begins to come toward you, you strike again, having your oar snap. You grab the broomstick near you and hurl it into the skull of the other zombie just as it is beginning to rise again. You are panting and covered in blood.
This is a relatively typical encounter in Dead Island...
When I heard about Dead Island for the first time, I was completely unimpressed. To me it was just another zombie game. Even seeing the much hyped trailer seemed to just be a form of misdirection rather than an actual advertisement for the game.
The impressive thing about Dead Island is not the story, or the graphics, or even the mechanical systems. It is visceral combat, mixed with the design of this open world. I'm usually not much of an open world game player. I enjoyed Red Dead Redemption and Infamous. But that's about the extent of it. I hated that L.A.Noire was open world and I've never touched a GTA for more than a few minutes. It's just not my thing.
Dead Island however, provides something I felt sorely lacking in just about every other video game except perhaps the original Bioshock. A sense of fear. What was around the next corner? How many zombies would there be? Would they be infected just regular zombies? What would happen next?
When Dead Island did this right, it did it VERY RIGHT! But there were plenty of problems, bugs, etc... That would keep the player from getting into the game in this visceral way. Dead Island isn't Dead Space. But it is head and shoulders above something like Left 4 Dead. But only as a single player experience. If you are with others, you feel powerful; unstoppable even. My very few sessions with others were fun; but all of the danger was removed from the game. Except maybe, losing my progress due to a game crashing bug.
I really liked putting points into my skill tree and seeing what happened. I was thrilled when I was able to build or upgrade weapons. Even if early on in the game this seems a bit limited.
While the initial commercial may have generated huge hype for this game. I can't say Deep Silver made any big mistakes with Dead Island except maybe in the area of not making a compelling story. Zombie stories are pretty much dime a dozen simplistic fair. So creating something unique here probably would have been difficult. But failing to include something compelling was probably more of a factor of time, budget, and design concerns than being uncreative. Perhaps they will have enough cash to do it right in Dead Island 2, I just hope there will be enough gamers left to take another chance on yet another zombie game.
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