14 DAY TRIAL // Dead Island was announced many years ago but only thanks to a touching cinematic trailer did it manage to differentiate itself from the array of other zombie games that have flooded the genre in recent years.
Now, Techland, its developer, and Deep Silver, its publisher, have delivered the final version of Dead Island, after a few problems on the PC, so it's time to see if this new zombie shooter warrants the attention lavished on it up until now.
Is Dead Island something more than just a zombie shooter on a tropical island or should it be put out of its suffering with a headshot? Let's have a quick look.
Dead Island impressed quite a lot of gamers with its aforementioned cinematic trailer, and right from the beginning it's trying to replicate it with a pretty long sequence in which it depicts the atmosphere on the island before the zombie outbreak, with people partying like there's no tomorrow.
At the start of the actual game, you get to choose between four characters, each with their own specialization, like firearms, blades or blunt objects, and then you start the actual story.
You're a guy (or gal) that's seemingly unaffected by the zombie virus, so a guy known only as The Voice guides you to meet up with other survivors and start plotting your escape from the zombie-infested island.
From there on, you experience some pretty basic shooter gameplay, although you do have quite a few role playing elements, including a diversified skill tree or a weapon inventory that details specific attributes of the things you are currently carrying around.
Fighting the actual zombies is a pretty messy affair, on account of all the blood spatter and the agility of the undead. You can use things like broom sticks or canoe paddles and clobber them to death, but each swing drains your stamina. As such, most of the times you might want to just kick the zombies to death, as this action doesn't have any impact on your stamina and is relatively effective on small groups of zombies.
There's also a pretty varied quest system, detailing what you have to do on pieces of paper, which lends itself to the tropical island adventures you're now forced to go through.
Dead Island is a pretty interesting game, at least at first, although I'm not so sure about the actual combat which is a bit hit and miss, both figuratively and literally, at least with the blunt weapons.
For a look at Dead Island in action, check out the video below.