“Dead Island”
3 out of 5 Pitchforks
PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Released: Sept. 6
Months ago, the internet was set ablaze over the initial trailer for Techland’s new game “Dead Island.” It was an eerie video that depicted in reverse order the last moments of a family as zombies bore down on them. The promise of an open world zombie game seemed too good to be true to many gamers, and as it turns out, it was.
“Dead Island” is set on a small resort island off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The story is a pretty basic zombie affair — you wake up in a hotel room to screams, only to walk out the front door to find the tropical island has been infested with zombies.
The setting of “Dead Island” is the game’s biggest asset. By setting the game on a gorgeous tropical island, the game creates an overall horrifying world. It also allows the game to use a lot of color. So many games nowadays get bogged down in using many different shades of gray; it’s nice to see a game that uses the whole spectrum of color.
“Dead Island” tries to do something a little different than most games. It focuses less on using guns and explosives and more on weapons like boat oars and kitchen knives to fend off the hordes. This is fine when facing off against the zombies one-on-one, but as the game progresses, it is easy to find yourself overmatched and overwhelmed. “Dead Island” often forces you to run away to survive instead of killing everything in your path.
As great as the feeling of survival may be, the fact that there is almost no penalty for death really takes away from it. If you die, instead of being forced to start over from your last save point, the game waits a few seconds and revives you with a little less money.
Overall, “Dead Island” is a fun game with a few questionable design choices. There are small issues here and there, such as textures not loading quickly enough, quest markers not loading at all and some objectives unable to be completed without reloading the game.
Alone, these would typically be small problems, but they are accompanied by several major glitches. It’s truly a shame that the game is such a technical mess.
Despite its shortcomings, “Dead Island” has its moments. Many of the issues experienced in the first version of the game will likely be fixed in future updates, but gamers who don't play online won’t have access to these updates. All of these issues point to a game that was rushed to release.
“Dead Island” had a ton of potential and given a little more time could have been a great game, but in its current state it's simply too tough to get through.
Reach the reporter at tkuipers@asu.edu
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