Dead Island Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on September 14th, 2011

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Dead Island's weapon mods, quest system, and skill trees work well together to provide an experience that's slightly more than just "kill many zombies," but the game suffers from an overall lack of polish. You'll get stuck on the architecture - so will the zombies. Depending on where you die, you may respawn in the middle of a clutch of zombies, virtually guaranteeing a cycle of spawn, attack wildly, die. Quest givers will repeatedly try to give you quests that you've already accepted. The pathfinding will veer off drunkenly or sometimes just point you toward the wrong area entirely. There aren't nearly enough character models amongst the zombies, and it's not unusual for twins or triplets to attack you at once.

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If you ever wished Dead Rising didn't have a time limit - or just enjoy the idea of hacking and shooting your way from one end of paradise to the other - definitely give this a try.

If you're interested in this game, you have to ask yourself how many bugs and graphical issues you're willing to put up with. There should be patches soon, but at the time of this review, there had been only one that still had my game crashing. If you're tolerant, there's an extremely fun game with tons of content waiting for you. With extreme replay value, a huge world, and fun combat, this game is totally worth paying full-price for. Just beware the bugs. They can bite you!

It's a wonderful concept and the core gameplay is executed beautifully, but it really doesn't do anything new or interesting. You get weapons, you shoot zombies, blah blah blah story you skip through, and you do it again with a friend. A laundry list of silliness like lack of a soundtrack and the durability system (no seriously, it is THAT bad) have no place in a zombie survival game, and in the end, make Dead Island nothing more than a mediocre co-op killer. These games are still a ton of fun, but it's nothing I would run out and buy at full price, especially when the product still needs patches every few days!

Techland and Deep Silver took a big chance by putting out an original IP in the genre of zombie games. Luckily for the two teams, despite the bugs and the forgettable story, they have something special here. Dead Island has its fair share of problems and is by no standards perfect, but it is worth your time to check out. Grabbing some friends and going zombie hunting is a great time; and so is becoming the ultimate survivor playing by yourself. If you can look past the generic story and characters, and enjoy the game for what it's trying to do with its unique design you will find a paradise in Dead Island.

Too bad, Dead Island is full of glitches and bugs. A large patch on day one still has not resolved all the glitches and it is this that keeps Dead Island from becoming a truly amazing game. However, don't let these bugs deter you from playing Dead Island. This is a truly great game with its expansive map for you to explore, great gameplay, visuals and score.

I won't lie to you Dead Island is not without its issues. The game is quite buggy (froze and crashed on me multiple times), suffers from a ton of glitches and takes some time to grow on you but once it does, you won't want to leave the island of Banoi till you figure out the cause of the outbreak. And even then, you'll be back for more. The game's weighed down by a clunky control scheme, shoddy inventory system and weird gameplay choices like the fact that I can continuously kick zombies without breaking a sweat but every other act from sprinting to jumping to swinging my weapon takes a chunk of my stamina bar. It's also not the best looking game on the planet and for some reason death penalty in this game is painfully lenient but trust me, once you find your rhythm, the game is an all out blast fusing zombies, first person action and role playing elements effortlessly into one entertaining package.

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