Review: Dead Island

When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will go on vacation.

She's probably gonna want to turn around...

Dead Island, the latest addition to the somewhat crowded and ever-growing zombie family, is one of those rare games that’s a little hard to classify since it tries to do an awful lot, combining a variety of elements from different genres, while trying to bring its own new mechanics to the table. Comparisons can be drawn to Borderlands, Condemned, Left 4 Dead, and more, but while Dead Island certainly contains ideas and systems taken from other games, as a whole it feels like a fresh and unique addition to the wonderful world of slaying the undead.


The story, like an awful lot of zombie fiction, is about as barebones as you can get. There‘s been a zombie outbreak on the tropical island of Banoi. You play as one of four survivors who happen to be immune to the virus, each having their own back-story, combat specialities, and unique skill trees. You then proceed to make your way across the island, helping people out and slaughtering a lot of zombies along the way, with the obvious ultimate aim being to get the hell out of there. There’s some brief semblance of exposition along the way, mostly in the form of cut-scenes involving a mysterious voice on the radio that seems to be trying to aid your escape. The plot is most definitely not the game’s strong suit, but it does all tie together at the end, so that, should you care enough to pay attention to what‘s going on, you’ll get some sense of closure from the finale. Even if the story isn’t your thing, you won’t be short of motivation while playing Dead Island, the thrill of trying to stay alive, level up, and find more loot within this tropical nightmare will keep you playing for many hours.


A lot of hype was generated over the early teaser trailer for Dead Island, showing a family of holiday-makers being overwhelmed by a horde of zombies, a father brutally attacked by his own daughter, combined with some beautifully haunting background music, the trailer packed a punch. While the game could never have been expected to live up to that sort of hype, it still manages to do a great job of capturing the powerful emotions associated with the desperate scenario these survivors find themselves in. You’ll walk into safe houses and hear people sobbing and screaming, stumble on a group of partying teens relying on booze to see them through the nightmare, find a lonely desperate man who sadly asks you to put his family to rest after they became part of the horde. Some people have turned to religion, some will task you with finding their treasured possessions just to retain some normality in their lives, most just want to go home. Some great voice acting and sound design is used throughout the game to build this oppressive atmosphere, and while outside in the streets the action may all be about hacking limbs and loot-hunting, any time you go inside and talk to these people you can’t help but realise the sadness and utter despair of their situation. 

Moments like this go some way to realising the emotion of the trailer

This is a game about survival. In fact, it very much captures that feeling of survival horror that you might have forgotten in recent times. Unless you’re amongst groups of survivors or inside an armoured truck, you never feel safe on Banoi. No matter how well-armed you are, if you aren’t concentrating, at any moment or around any corner a crowd of infected could rush you and bring you down in seconds. Dead Island makes you pay attention, it puts you constantly on your toes, it forces you to really think like a survivor, it won’t punish you too harshly for dying, but it makes you care enough to want to avoid death at all costs, the game essentially captures the very essence of what makes a good survival horror experience, combined with the desperation and tension associated with how we imagine a zombie apocalypse might be.


Banoi is divided into three huge main areas, the beautiful resort with its sandy beaches, poolside bars, and the grand hotel where the story begins. Then there’s the city, dilapidated and claustrophobic, with a surprise waiting around every street corner. Finally, the dense jungle, eerily quiet, with an endless canopy of towering trees looming over you, letting in little rays of sunlight here and there. Techland do a fantastic job of making each area not only look wildly different, but feel and play very differently too. At the resort you’ll have wide, open spaces with which to conduct your battles, but once you enter the much more densely-populated city and find yourself amongst narrow allies and dead ends, with new zombie types being thrown at you, the fight to survive becomes much more difficult. 


Speaking of fighting, since you’ll be doing such a lot of it, it was imperative for Dead Island to have an enjoyable combat system, and fortunately it does. There are guns to find but the focus here is primarily on melee weapons, of which there are an awful lot. At first you’ll find yourself having to make use of paddles and kitchen knives, but very quickly you’ll be able to pound away at zombie heads with maces and sledgehammers, or slice off limbs with katanas and scythes, the variety of weapons keeps the combat interesting, and, similarly to Borderlands and in the style of an MMO, all loot will have its own statistics and colour-coding to denote usefulness and rarity. The drive to seek out new weapons and find more loot is as powerful as it’s ever been, and I found myself going to great lengths in my exploration just to find new weapon chests. You’ll also be able to improve any weapon you pick up at one of the game’s many workbenches, here you can upgrade, repair, and modify your implements of destruction. Repairs and upgrades are simply a matter of spending money, but modifications require specific items that you’ll find scattered about the environment; batteries, duct tape, the usual sort of stuff. These mods can add elemental effects to your weapons, adding more layers to the already rich combat customisation.

Combining swords and batteries has never been so much fun!

The fighting itself is one of the game’s strongest points. Two control schemes are available, by default you’ll hit a button and swing whatever you’re holding, having some loose control over which part of the body you’ll attack. Bones will break, limbs will slice off, and the overall damage model on the zombies is incredibly good. This isn’t something I’ll say often with such enthusiasm, but the flesh-tearing technology in this game is outstanding. Without going into too much grisly detail, you’ll see some very gory and realistic damage effects from your attacks. The other control scheme is the one I used throughout much of the game, and is surprisingly hidden away in the options menu. This analog control scheme allows you to use the right stick to control the direction of your swings. Pull the stick back to ready your weapon, and flick it in any direction you like to attack. The system takes a little getting used to at first, but works very well once mastered, allowing you to strike with precision, breaking legs and cutting off heads at will. Whichever control scheme you choose, the fighting in this game is immensely satisfying, combined with the loot-hunting and levelling, you have so many reasons to get out in the world and kill some walking dead. That’s right, there’s levelling too, with each character having their own skill trees to sink points into. The trees are more than diverse enough to make everyone feel and play differently, and offer a decent level of character customisation. If you want to focus on staying alive and picking locks, the survival tree is for you, should you wish to do more damage with your specialist weapon set, there‘s a tree for that too. Each character also has their own ‘Rage’ ability to wipe out hordes in seconds, very useful for when you get overwhelmed, these abilities, again, have their own skill tree, allowing you to spec your character to your style of play.

He just wants a cuddle

The world of Dead Island is huge and you’ll want to explore as much as you can, not only does the game encourage you to stray from the beaten path, it rewards you most handsomely for doing so. Whilst navigating some sewers during a particularly creepy side mission, I took a little detour, discovering a ladder leading to a makeshift shrine where I discovered and collected a secret skull. Initially believing it to be nothing more than a collectible, it turned out to be the key to unlocking a secret weapon, the details of which I shall not divulge, suffice to say it quickly became one of my favourite tools for dispatching a crowd of zombies. Neat little secrets like this are commonplace in Dead Island, and you’ll have a hard time not stumbling onto some of them regardless of how you play. I.D cards, recordings, hidden weapon chests and mods, you’ll even spot a few little easter eggs and nods to the likes of Lost and Friday the 13th, and come upon extra side quests and survivors should you choose to explore areas thoroughly enough. 


Speaking of which, the numerous side quests, while mostly being little more than thinly-veiled fetch and escort missions, manage to stay fresh and interesting throughout and I rarely found myself getting bored. The zombie apocalypse setting allows Techland to play with the typical side quest formula in some pretty unique ways, you‘ll rarely be doing much more than running from point A to point B and back again, or clearing out a house of zombies, but the way each mission is presented, and the various ways you can go about them thanks to the open-world nature of the game, provide added impetus to take on these side missions, not to mention they will often reward you with a bounty of XP and new weapons. 

The movies lied! One shot to the head doesn't work!

An open world is only as good as the things you can find in it, and Banoi is simply crammed with goodies. And zombies. An awful lot of zombies as a matter of fact, in all shapes and sizes. Techland took the age-old dilemma of “Should our zombies be fast or slow?” and said “Both!”, you’ll not only be accosted by slow-movers and fast-runners, but a whole host of other specialised zombie types, all of which exhibit some quite fantastically repulsive designs, like the fearsome Butchers who will attack you with their own sharpened forearm bones. Variety is such a big part of this game, and it’s great that not only can you find such variation in weapons, quests and locales, but in the enemies themselves too. All of the zombie types require the use of different combat strategies to effectively take them out, and this is just one more way in which the combat and overall experience of Dead Island stays fresh throughout the entire game.

He doesn't want a cuddle

Unfortunately, not everything in Dead Island is quite as rich as the combat or beautiful as the landscape, there are a significant number of issues, bugs, glitches, confounding design choices, and general “Why is this happening?” moments that most players are bound to encounter at some point. However, during my time with the game, around forty hours of play, I did not once experience anything game-breaking or anything that made me want to quit playing. The bugs I did encounter ranged from comical to frustrating. Weapons vanishing after being thrown, the mini-map consistently requesting I walk through walls to reach my objective, and character’s eyes rolling back in their heads were just a few of the hiccups throughout my zombie-slaying adventure. Despite the lengthy list of technical problems, I happily played on and would encourage others to do the same, which goes to show just how enjoyable Dead Island can be, even with its drawbacks. 


Where this enjoyment is most readily apparent is in the multiplayer, Dead Island can be played co-operatively with up to four players and this is where I feel it excels. Alone, the island can feel a little overwhelming and scary, but when accompanied by a couple of buddies to watch your back and steal all the good loot, the game quite simply becomes a lot less atmospheric, but a lot more fun. As with the likes of Borderlands and Left 4 Dead, you can’t help but feel Dead Island was designed with co-operative play in mind, even the skill trees contain abilities that only really make sense with multiple players. The co-op works well and is nicely integrated, even popping up every now and then to let you know if there are any joinable players around the same part of the story as you. This doesn’t mean that the singleplayer should be avoided, the game can be just as good by oneself, but, if you have the opportunity to play co-operatively, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Hey look, zombies

There are an awful lot of zombie games around and Dead Island somehow manages to feel like all of them and none of them. There are parts to the game that literally feel as if they were plucked directly from other titles, yet the new ideas Techland have developed serve to make Dead Island an experience unlike any other. Left 4 Dead took us on bite size journeys through a zombie-infested America, where the goal was always to get to the next safe house. Dead Rising was all about having as much fun as you could by killing the undead in hilarious ways. Dead Island tries to let us experience the emotion, drama, tension, and sheer horror of the fight for survival in an open world overrun with the walking dead. While it is certainly punching a little above it’s weight, and suffers from a myriad of technical issues that hamper it from ever fully realising its potential, Dead Island is an experience all zombie fans should enjoy and Techland must be commended for setting themselves such lofty standards and very nearly reaching them.

For the purposes of this review, the Xbox 360 version of the game was played.