Some of you may know from my posts that I've been playing Dead Island recently. Actually, over the past 3 days I have played over 23 hours of Dead Island. I'm in need of a break, but before that how about a review? Here's my short review (some might say rant )
of the Survival-Horror-Zombie-Apocalypse-FPS-RPG, for 360/PS3/PC. I will be talking about the 360 version.
First things first, let's get the bad stuff out of the way. I just want to say that the "checkpoint/autosave" function is rather shitty. There have been many occurrences of me respawning into the middle of a group of zombies. Where I've been subsequently torn apart.
Might I mention, that every time you die, you lose ~7-10% of your money. You can save some money by "restarting" from the last checkpoint. Which has whisked me away to places I've never even been before. How can I have a checkpoint somewhere that I've never been? All of this is quite frustrating to say the least. Another thing is that when you make a sales transaction with a trader; your cursor will move to a random spot in your item list. This happens every time you sell an item. The worst thing is that if you can't sell multiple items at a time.
These gripes, while annoying, are quite minor overall. The atmosphere is excellent. You really feel like you're fighting for your very life, with danger lurking around every corner. A huge emphasis on multiplayer co-op teamwork. Some areas are near-impossible to
maneuver through without the help of a teammate or two. There's no split-screen co-op, although it does support system link up 4 players. With four characters/classes to choose from, equipped with 3 skill trees each. There's a lot of room for character customization. A large assortment of modifications creates depth to the score of weapons at your disposal, enhancing their inherent deadliness. On top of possibly adding elemental characteristics to your attacks, to make your weapons kick even more zombie ass.
With massive areas to explore at you leisure, you will be hard-pressed to explore every nook and cranny of this game. The best part, it's a completely open environment. While there is a somewhat "linear" main-story you are free to explore and do as many
side-quests as you wish. Did I say sides-quests? There's a fuck-ton of them! Almost every survivor will have something to ask of you. So there's plenty of variety to be had. The open environment, mixed with a lengthy story (so-far), makes for a lot of replay value. My current personal gameplay clocks in at ~23 hours right now, with not even 40% of the main story complete. I would definitely have to say that Deep Silver's Dead Island packs a ton of content, and in my opinion is definitely worth the money.
I will end this review by leaving you with the official launch trailer, as well as some gameplay footage.
Enjoy.
Last edited by Beelzebub; 6th-September-2011 at 08:06.
Sweet review, a little disappointed by what you mentioned about the item transactions, I feel like that could have been easily avoided, but it's not a deal breaker.
I'm excited for it, I have been since like 2008.
Last edited by TheRealSpiders; 6th-September-2011 at 03:54.
Glad to hear it didn't bomb massively. The item thing really is annoying, although other games have had far worse problems with transactions I suppose. Thanks for the review!
The game dosen't look all that bad at all. Of course I probably won't pick it up on release date. I'll most likley wait until it drops in price. Still though it has gotten good reviews.
A Short Dead Island Review...
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