Some of you will know that I have been pretty excited about Dead Islandfor a while now. A lush tropical island infested with the un-dead; most people who know me will know that this game seems to fit me very well indeed. But upon receiving the game, did it live up to my expectations? Click 'Read More' to find out...
Well, the important thing to say here is that the game is slow to start. You spend a few minutes in the hotel but you’re very quickly transported to the beach, which you then have to travel along. I won’t lie; at this point it wasn’t really doing very much for me especially since the only weapons around seemed to be rusty pipes and wooden paddles.
Up to this point I had been playing alone. Then my friend got the game and suggested we used the online connection to play together (with headsets of course). So he came into my game and before I knew it we were speeding through missions as a powerful duo. Believe me, even if you pick up this game with the intent to play it alone, please don’t miss out on the co-op feature; at least try it out!
This really opened everything up for me particularly as we managed to get some of those more appealing weapons such as guns and machetes. One of my highlights was defending a building as zombies ran at me and decapitating them one by one with an upgraded blade as they approached.
I have seen some other reviews by now and a few people did complain about the city area considering that one of the game’s biggest selling points is it’s tropical setting. However I never found this to be a problem, as in my opinion the city doesn’t over-stay it’s welcome at all, I thought it worked well between the beach section and the jungle
section.
But there was one thing I found annoying; if you are playing with an account with online you can’t turn off the feature of random people entering your game. I’m sure this won’t annoy most people but sometimes I personally want to play on my own or with a friend instead of boring strangers and get accolades for my online account.
Moving on, there is a wide range of weapon MODS (my favourite is the Shock MOD for machete) and new skills for your character to choose and improve throughout the play-through. There could have been more variety in vehicles and I must mention that it is very frustrating early on before you have a car to see hundreds of broken down ones in the road. The game is an accolade gold mine so prepare for many new trophies and achievements (there are quite a few for co-op). And if you pay close attention you will spot a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference to the black knight (the ‘tis but a flesh wound’ accolade for cutting off enough zombie limbs), a Hobbit/Lord of the Rings reference (the ‘there and back again’ accolade for discovering all island locations), and of course a Lost reference (the mention of Oceanic Airlines on a radio quite early on in the game).
Overall despite the slow start, Dead Islandis a very unique and at times quite thrilling adventure. The missions aren’t too repetitive and the game-play is solid. The graphics are acceptable but for a ‘free-roam’ game I sometimes got frustrated when I was “Leaving the playable area”. Anyway DeadIsland is definitely innovative and well worth the monies it costs. I give it an overall score of…85/100! Some areas could be better but a great experience for a game that is essentially just for having fun.
Thanks for reading.
~Sam
Up to this point I had been playing alone. Then my friend got the game and suggested we used the online connection to play together (with headsets of course). So he came into my game and before I knew it we were speeding through missions as a powerful duo. Believe me, even if you pick up this game with the intent to play it alone, please don’t miss out on the co-op feature; at least try it out!
This really opened everything up for me particularly as we managed to get some of those more appealing weapons such as guns and machetes. One of my highlights was defending a building as zombies ran at me and decapitating them one by one with an upgraded blade as they approached.
I have seen some other reviews by now and a few people did complain about the city area considering that one of the game’s biggest selling points is it’s tropical setting. However I never found this to be a problem, as in my opinion the city doesn’t over-stay it’s welcome at all, I thought it worked well between the beach section and the jungle
section.
But there was one thing I found annoying; if you are playing with an account with online you can’t turn off the feature of random people entering your game. I’m sure this won’t annoy most people but sometimes I personally want to play on my own or with a friend instead of boring strangers and get accolades for my online account.
Moving on, there is a wide range of weapon MODS (my favourite is the Shock MOD for machete) and new skills for your character to choose and improve throughout the play-through. There could have been more variety in vehicles and I must mention that it is very frustrating early on before you have a car to see hundreds of broken down ones in the road. The game is an accolade gold mine so prepare for many new trophies and achievements (there are quite a few for co-op). And if you pay close attention you will spot a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference to the black knight (the ‘tis but a flesh wound’ accolade for cutting off enough zombie limbs), a Hobbit/Lord of the Rings reference (the ‘there and back again’ accolade for discovering all island locations), and of course a Lost reference (the mention of Oceanic Airlines on a radio quite early on in the game).
Overall despite the slow start, Dead Islandis a very unique and at times quite thrilling adventure. The missions aren’t too repetitive and the game-play is solid. The graphics are acceptable but for a ‘free-roam’ game I sometimes got frustrated when I was “Leaving the playable area”. Anyway DeadIsland is definitely innovative and well worth the monies it costs. I give it an overall score of…85/100! Some areas could be better but a great experience for a game that is essentially just for having fun.
Thanks for reading.
~Sam
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