Swinging other weapons, especially heavy ones, drains your stamina bar, as does sprinting. Kicks, in fact, become the unlikely centrepiece of your arsenal, in virtue of being nigh-on uninterruptible and at zero cost to stamina. As it is, mastery comes from closely watching enemy attack animations, jumping out of the way where possible, and punting zombies back with a well-timed kick in the face. It's grimly satisfying to slice off a zombie's arm with a single, well-aimed swipe, but the system would benefit from a more refined way to block and dodge. That the combat is only mildly clunky comes as a surprise-there aren't many successes in the field of first-person brawling. Injuries are dynamic and gruesomely vivid, encouraging you to lop off limbs and heads. When you take those weapons into a fight, prepare for gore enough to fill swimming pools. It's a shame weapons degrade irritatingly fast over time a prized weapon you've upgraded and modded to the max might not last too long once you break the cover of a quest hub, leaving you to improvise with scavenged oars and hat stands. You can't craft them from scratch, but you can upgrade and modify them at workbenches found in hubs to create, for example, nail-spiked bats and machetes that deliver paralysing electric shocks. You find basic weapons, such as knives, scythes, and baseball bats, lying around. Though there are guns to be had, they arrive relatively late melee and throwing weapons are the order of the day, with emphasis on slicing and bludgeoning the enemy. The weapon system resembles that of another zombie game, too-this time Dead Rising 2. Still, it's hard to begrudge a game for being derivative in a genre as derivative as zombie horror you could even call it a loving homage, if the bosses were better rip-offs-none are as intimidating as a tank or as creepy as a witch. Among them is a charger type, a spitter type, and a boomer type. Its boss enemies look like leftovers from a Left 4 Dead casting session, approximating the various special infected in that game. Dead Island lifts liberally from Valve's zombie shooters in other places, too, and beyond the obvious resemblances. If the petrol-gathering mission sounded a lot like Left 4 Dead 2's Scavenge mode, that's because it is. So yes, Left 4 Dead: the undead elephant in the room. Dead Island is the kind of game out of which anecdote-generating scenarios naturally, pleasingly emerge-not unlike its zombie-bashing co-op forerunner, Left 4 Dead. You might have to pile out to defend the vehicle and its cargo while said driver works desperately to get it unstuck. On the journey back to base, your driver might get your ride jammed up between wrecked cars. Here you might park up in the forecourt then fend off waves of the walking dead while your buddies fill up petrol cans and toss them in the back of the truck. Some of the best times Dead Island has to offer are those spent cruising in a truck with three friends in cooperative mode, zombies shedding experience points as they bounce off the bonnet.ĭead Island also shines in missions that have you risk life and limb in a sortie to a petrol station, and are best experienced in co-op. More fun, though, is hopping into one of the game's multi-seater vehicles, mowing down the undead as you speed along the island's roads. Zombies can sometimes be avoided: you can often run around them, amassing a slavering, jogging zombie horde in your wake. The bulk of your time on Banoi is spent exploring and questing, roaming from hub to hub, foraging items to build weapons or complete missions. There's nothing perfect about what Dead Island does, but it does so much, and does it well enough to give you a good time. All the flaws and missteps amount to a game that is frequently ropey but, thanks to its ambition and scale, nearly always entertaining. The prevalence of drab quests in sewers in the second act is likewise off-putting. Combat is unrefined, and never more so than in the humdrum sections that pit you against shooting human enemies barely smarter than their undead equivalents. The characters are weak, and the story is a flimsy hook on which to hang the action. Its failings are many but minor, for the most part. There are also satisfyingly vicious weapons to be improvised, upgraded, and creatively modded, and a robust online system supports the four-player co-op in which the game is best enjoyed. Similarly prominent are RPG staples such as talent trees and numbers, always the numbers: levels, weapon stats, damage, and experience point scores popping out of enemies as you hack away. Its RPG nature is clear in the prominence of quests, doled out by harrowed survivors in the makeshift shelters that form quest hubs. By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot'sĭead Island's expansive sandbox setting spreads inland, beyond the Royal Palms Resort into city and jungle environments.
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