DEAD ISLAND is not the game I thought it would be. Not even close. I think after the infamous teaser trailer, I pretty much got it in my head that the game would end up being a really "meaningful" zombie experience. All the themes of a really good zombie flick spread out over the canvas of an open world video game. Desperation, survival, and banding together to keep the horde at bay. A game with a great story, a lot of opportunities to explore, memorable characters. I don't know, I was really hoping for the moon.
But the opening moments of the game have you waking up from a bad night of partying and running around a zombified island resort at the behest of "The Voice," all the while collecting teddy bears, champagne, etc. All of this done for a group of quest-givers who seem to believe self-sufficiency is taboo. All the while, people are referring to you as if you were more than one person, as though the developers were outright opposed to making a game that allows for a seamless singleplayer experience. No, DEAD ISLAND is all over the place in terms of what it does well, what it is, and what it's trying to be.
Despite all of that, it does indeed do some things very well, but I'm gonna go over the bad stuff first.
Disappointingly, there's not much of a story here. In the beginning, what appears to be a struggle to escape the infected island of Banoi quickly tailspins into a convoluted mess of sidequests involving everything, from the aforementioned teddy bears to delivering supplies to arranging luggage into a giant "HELP" sign on the beachhead. There's a lot going on in this game and not a lot of it's connected to the whole escape-the-island plan. I'll be darned if your character won't be the most unfocused survivor on the island.
That's not to say that the sidequests aren't fun or interesting from time to time, but in an RPG (especially a zombie RPG) you can't help but find yourself wondering, "What would I do in this situation?" Would I make a run out to an abandoned gas station to bring back food for my fellow survivors? Probably. Would I fight off a zombie horde to reclaim a teddy bear? Probably/definitely not. It's a funny quest, and there's certainly room in this game for good humor, but there are many, many quests that seem so out of the realm of possibility that I had to stop myself a few times and question, "Why am I doing this?" Why do these quest-givers seem so indifferent about sending me out into Zombieland so many times for odd little reasons?
But then again, DEAD ISLAND is not trying to be FALLOUT or OBLIVION; unfortunately, it's trying to be BORDERLANDS. That is to say, the entire game is built around its co-op mode, to the point that all four selectable characters will pop up in all of the cutscenes regardless of who you choose to play. NPCs will constantly refer to you as though you're in a group and you may be constantly hit with notices that pop up when you're playing in the same area as someone else online. Now, I love BORDERLANDS, but it's tough to play games that generally feel less-than-whole if you don't have a buddy to play with right then and there. I would have greatly preferred the game to have a strong singleplayer element with co-op as an option.
You might also notice that if you do choose to play a solo game, DEAD ISLAND will not show you any mercy just because you don't have backup. I can't believe I'm saying this, but there were too many zombies in this game. Running around the different parts of Banoi quickly becomes a chore when different quests have you crisscrossing through veritable walls of the undead. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if the zombies didn't respawn as soon as you leave the area, but as it stands, you might just fight the same group of undead several times as you sprint from quest to guest-giver and back again.
Having zombies absolutely everywhere makes exploration seem unappealing, which is very, very disappointing, since developer Techland made sure there was no shortage of places to seek out and loot. But in my case, the thought of tackling additional walls of zombies on top of what I was already dealing with in the main storyline was very off-putting. (My stats say I killed over 1000 of one type of zombie during my first, semi-rushed playthrough.) I thought that maybe once I got up there in levels, going back and poking around all the places I missed wouldn't be such a bad idea, but that was quickly shot down. I'm not sure why this is becoming a trend among most RPGs these days, but I don't find it very fun when the enemies' level scales to your own. So going back to places where you'd just fought 4th level zombies, you will now find 20th or 30th level zombies, depending on your own level.
I can absolutely understand enemies getting more difficult to kill as the story goes on, but I can't for the life of me figure out why everything else has to progress with you. So we end up with an RPG where progression and improvement amounts to just barely keeping your head above the water.
So where does that leave us? Well, taking into account the many graphical glitches and the odd quest bug you're likely to run into, I would put the game at around 3.5 stars as an objective rating. Definitely do some research and see if this co-op-centric game is what you were expecting. But personally, despite all of that, I did have a really good time, because DEAD ISLAND is a very big step in the right direction in terms of the zombie game of my dreams.
Banoi, for all its social imperfections, is an absolutely gorgeous place. Walking outside for the first time edged very close to that OBLIVION or FALLOUT moment, when the whole world (island) is in front of you, and there are so many possibilities. Everything is just so competently designed. The beach resort feels like a place you'd want to visit, the town feels lived-in, and the inland jungle is easy to get lost in (literally and figuratively). It's all very top-notch, so much so that I was hoping for a lull in the attacks so I could do some decent exploring, but that kinda gets derailed by the "Infected" class of zombie, which spawns in packs only a few yards away from you, no matter where you are.
And even though the quests can run the gamut, there were many that were well thought-out and written, and some that completely capitalized on the post-apocalyptic setting. (Who wouldn't want to ride around in a reinforced armored car or run around abandoned shops?)
DEAD ISLAND was a rollercoaster ride of post-apocalyptic wish-fulfillment, amazing visuals, and wasted potential. What could've been the OBLIVION of zombie RPGs ended up being the BORDERLANDS of zombie RPGs, where the story and gameplay all show signs of being compromised in order to make co-op the absolute focus. But even with that working against it, this game is still one of the best zombie titles out there. It's not quite the zombie game I've always wanted, but it's certainly gotten closer than anything else on the market.