Picking up a machete combining it with a battery and some wire and you’re ready to slice, dice, and electrocute the zombie plague that has broken out across the beautiful island resort of Banoi. After waking up from a drunken induced stupor from the night before, you find the hotel you’re staying at has gone into complete disarray. No one is around and every room is torn apart. As you stumble through the Hotel to an elevator you hear a voice come across the intercom and your journey begins.
The game is a blast to play collecting items and weapons is as fun as it was in borderland and hacking zombies into tiny pieces is ridiculously satisfiying. Dead Island is about four people who are somehow immune to a plague that is running rampant across the island turning almost everyone into zombies. As you level your character up skill points are acquired. These points can be placed into one of three skill trees. Each skill tree has their unique bonuses and skills so how you place them will be important to your style of play. I recommend reading through them all before you make your decision on what tree to start with. With a maximum level of 50 enemy’s scale to your level so you never feel overpowered that being said death’s only consequence is a %10 loss of your money as the game respawns you a few feet from where you died. The games story is not the most original but it did manage to keep my attention all though I could easily just explore the island for hours on end.
Throughout the game you will encounter survivors who one way or another need your help. There are a large amount of quests to do on the island ranging from retrieving a teddy bear to putting a man’s wife and daughter out of her misery. Techland has given us a huge open world to explore, though you can’t just get up and go where ever you want at the start as the different locations only unlock when you get to a certain point in the main storyline. However once you have unlocked the zones you can fast travel to and from them. Note that when you fast travel from zone to zone you are not missing anything as there is nothing between the zones; it is like they are separate levels. Each map is huge much larger then I had ever expected and there is a ton to explore and many items to collect along the way. Though zombies are lurking around every corner so explore at your own risk. The Quest tracking system will mostly keep you on a main road as long as you don’t stray from the path. I found that once you go off exploring the tracker will sometimes lead you to an impassable cliff or mountainside that you have to find your own way around.
There are several types of zombies throughout the island. Some have a unique ability that requires some strategy opposed to just hacking and slashing. The most satisfying thing about Dead Island’s zombies is how many ways you can kill and dismember them. While playing online with two other people we managed to electrocute, set on fire, and chop both arms off a single zombie before beheading him. That never gets old. As well as the zombies never gets less terrifying. I found myself avoiding larger groups of them when I could.
With Hundreds of weapons at your disposal dismembering zombies is as fun as you think it would be. Weapons have durability which means if you use it to much they could break. Good thing is with some cash you can repair the items back to new. Weapons can also be modified and upgraded, modified weapons can add elements like electricity, fire, and poison to name a few to the weapon to make it even more deadly. Upgrading weapons simply make them do more damage and last longer.
Subject: Dead Island Review so far