To Live And Die In Banoi – A Dead Island Review

A while ago I wrote an article about the zombie genre, and why it needed revitalization. In it I voiced my concerns regarding Techland’s Dead Island, where I stated that it seemed to be too arcade-like rather than aiming for the more serious tone that the game’s teaser hinted at. Now I’ve finally had the opportunity to actually play it, and I’m afraid Dead Island is best described as a mixed bag.

–

First, introductions are in order. Dead Island, like so many other games in the genre before it, is about stomping, crushing, smashing, shooting, burning, kicking and mutilating zombies in various inventive ways. As usual, a mysterious new virus suddenly emerges and transforms its victims into flesh-eating freaks, this time in the tropical paradise of Banoi. Predictably, the player(s) must go through a number of repetetive and deadly ordeals to make it off the island in one piece.

In the beginning of the game, the player chooses one of four characters that each specializes in different forms of combat. However, in my experience, it didn’t actually matter that much in the game. For instance, I chose a blunt weapon expert ready to crack skulls, but found myself mostly using my nifty little machete, that happened to also channel electricity into the undead, creating some rather entertaining moments. But these moments are at the core of why Dead Island feels odd to play, as it seems to have dual personalities. On one side, it wishes to deliver that emotionally-laden storyline that will actually make the players care about the world and the plight of its inhabitants, instead of merely seeing them as XP-dispensers. And on the other side, it wants to be the game that four buddies can play together and have a blast, without feeling forced to think further than “kill zombies, acquire loot”. Of course, Techland’s marketing department has heavily emphasized the co-op part, but I still feel sort of cheated for the game not trying harder to achieve what the teaser promised. Techland had all the ground-work ready for such an experience, yet they chose not to pursue it. I guess those kind of zombies just sell better.

–

Dead Island is not completely devoid of these moments, though. Several instances, particularly in the first brilliant act, hint that there have been two distinct sides on the development team. One side that wished to nail the atmosphere and create a living (well, sort of) world, and one side that wished to make Borderlands with zombies. One of the instances in question I encountered very early in the game, when a young man was sitting in blood-red pool, surrounded by bodies, sobbing over one of them. He was muttering something about him being sorry about it and not knowing what to do, and was practically oblivious to my presence. A poignant and important moment, which sadly was diminished by me, moments later, being “rewarded” with a slow-motion scene of a zombie’s head literally exploding, after I directed a particularly powerful blow to its head. This is a complete contrast to the former moment, when it was made abundantly clear that the zombies I’m fighting were once people, and not just mindless husks. Naturally, if I wished to survive I would have to kill hundreds of the undead, and do so without flinching. But it seems odd to me that any survivor would take pleasure in the violence like that, for the whole world to slow down just so one can absorb the glory of the kill. From a purely cynical point of view you, as a survivor during a zombie apocalypse, must kill and move on. You don’t have time for such depravity.

Of course, judging from the marketing campaign it was already quite evident that Dead Island wouldn’t be taking the aforementioned approach to genre, so naturally I attempted to enjoy it for what it was, rather than what I wished it to be. And for a while, I truly enjoyed it. As much as I’ll fight for a game that takes the zombie genre to different, rarely explored places, I have to admit that there’s just something terribly delightful about burying a baseball bat in a zombie’s prefrontal cortex. It’s almost soothing. Do not expect that Dead Island lulls you into a daze, though. When you’re away from the safe houses you encounter in your travels, the snarls of the undead seem ever present, although their source is not always as clearly discerned, allowing you to be horribly surprised when they pat you on the back. Especially the howls of the infected – basically fast zombies – cause spine shivers, as they seem to particularly enjoy sprinting out of the bushes behind you, sinking their teeth into your back. Thankfully their skulls are rather brittle.

–

Unfortunately, Techland have made so many relatively small blunders when deciding how to build their game, that a thoroughly competent, perhaps even – dare I say it – good game has been reduced to the hellish pits of mediocrity. Firstly, the controls are extremely sluggish, and while this makes sense when you’re swinging a massive axe, it certainly detracts from the experience when your character appears to wait several seconds before swinging his bloody machete. And by then you’ll already be dead.

Secondly, the game is marred by a checkpoint system which very rarely works according to plan. Upon death, a certain amount of cash is drawn from your funds and you respawn by the latest checkpoint, free to return to combat again. But when reloading after having quit the game, I occasionally found myself in the middle of an undead horde, which had respawned after I had quit. This resulted in instant death. In general the checkpoint system just seems like a lazy remnant that has been kept over from the console version. I mean, Borderlands had a system that allowed the players, even in co-op sessions, to save their games whenever they wished, so why couldn’t Dead Island do that too? The checkpoint system didn’t need to have been a hindrance for enjoyment, but because of various minor technical blunders, such as odd hit detection, it quickly became an unnecessary annoyance. For a game that has been made with co-op in mind, farting around ought not be punished like that. Why should I get a fine for having fun? Again, the two design “wings”, if you will, appear again. One side wished to make a game that needed caution from the player, and the other wanted flying limbs and fast cars.

–

Thirdly, the game is mostly constructed in a linear way. Now, linearity is not much of a problem, quite on the contrary for a game that wishes to tell a tight story, but with the emphasis Dead Island tries to put on pure goofing around with machetes and pointy sticks, beating down the undead hordes, it seems like the game would have benefited from a far more non-linear structure that allowed exploration. That’s not to say that the game isn’t expansive. Banoi is a very large island, but it never feels like you’re allowed to go off completely on your own, due in part to the game’s acts taking place in specific game areas. While in these game areas, you’re free to explore as you see fit, but the game often puts constraints on how you’re allowed to travel, sometimes outright placing invisible walls.

The game is mostly non-linear in the first act of the game, one reason why the game is brilliant as I deemed it earlier, and there are multiple routes and paths to explore, some that don’t even lead anywhere in particular. But as the game progresses, the linearity increases, and especially in the last two acts the game several times, through the appliance of unexplainable locked gates and the likes, forces the player to take the path the designers intended for them.

–

Another point where this dastardly designer intervention becomes evident is in the escort missions that some dimwit at Techland decided should be crammed into the game by the bucket-load. Mostly they are merely annoying, sometimes agonizing, but in one particular main quest mission the game decides to show that it has absolutely no faith in the players’ ability to find their own path. One might be overwhelmed by all the choices! That particular mission involves having to escort a native woman along an undead-infested jungle path to a hidden lab. Thing is, there was a driveable car nearby, and a road that could take us directly to the lab, although we’d have to run over some zombies, but who doesn’t like a bit of zombie blood on the windshield? But no, I could not exert any idea of mine over this stubborn woman, and was forced by the game to take the long, arduous path. And tragically, there were no actual revelations made during the journey that the designers could not have inserted elsewhere.

–

In addition, there are just some things that feel completely out of place in the game, most notably the special zombies, which the player is never given any information about. Why exactly do giant fat zombies float around in the water, spitting acid at me? Why are half a dozen straitjacket-wearing giant zombies placed evenly all around the city of Moresby? Personally, I quite like it when a game does not smear every little detail about the background of the game in your face, but I would have liked at least some background to why these oddly similar-looking beings have appeared instead of regular infected. As it is now, it just seems like the developers thought they needed to insert some cooler enemies to make the combat more entertaining, rather than ensuring it actually made sense in the Dead Island universe.

–

Also, there’s a weird incongruity in how the missions are presented. There’s almost a persistent urgent tone when other survivors ask you to do things, but there are never any consequences if I do not do them. I could run around Banoi for hundreds, thousands of hours without doing anything for the survivors. And yet they’d still be fine. I think Techland tried to avoid repeating the same mistake Dead Rising made with their timed missions, which usually became far too stressful to be enjoyable. But Dead Island creates another problem. Why should I feel anything for some survivors who are not really in need? Who’ll get on just fine no matter if I help them or not.

–

And oddly no one ever mentions that these are zombies, despite the absurd amount of films and litterature about them that have been produced. I mean, does anyone really not know that you’re supposed to aim for the head? Come on!

–

Also, a word of advice for you, dear reader. Do not buy Dead Island for the single-player experience. It’s a shallow, dull and far too long experience that outstays its welcome and discards all the positive things about it after just a few hours. But do buy it for the co-op. Despite all the negative things I have said about the game, the few moments of co-op play I experienced were quite entertaining, and when playing it together with some fun people, slaughtering the undead, I’m sure many of the flaws can be negated. But it still annoys me somewhat that Techland doesn’t seem to have put any particular effort into the single-player. Everything seems to be aimed at co-op play, which I enjoy myself, but I’m just of the firm belief that some things must be experienced alone lest their importance is diminished.

In essence, Dead Island is a game that doesn’t know which leg it wants to stand on. I think the first act embodied what is wrong with Dead Island and all that could have been so good. The first act managed to be enjoyable as the novelty of the combat, albeit sluggish, the eerie atmosphere, somewhat open approach to the world construction and merciless destruction of this holiday paradise all manage to suck you in. All of these things are either slowly peeled away in the following chapters, or become so mundane that it becomes a chore. If the game had tried to build an emotional attachment to the denizens of Banoi, then it might have been endurable.

But hey, unlike Borderlands, Dead Island actually has an ending. That’s gotta count for something, right?

Tweet