Dead Island for XBox 360, 24 hrs in

It should be noted that I’ve only had this game for 24 hours.  I love the zombie genre and anything to do with surviving a zombie apocalypse should be fun right?  My first 24 hour impression of the game is not great nor is it that bad.  I’d like to touch on a few key points of the game:

character selection

You have 4 characters (that I know of) to select from.   I’m not sure if this is the European influence or what but it reeks of political correctness.  Seriously! You get your typical 4 character types: An overall well rounded character (the ex-football Texan), the blades & martial arts expert (that looks more like a Japanese schoolgirl than a Hong Kong Cop), the disgruntled ex-military/ex-cop firearms expert (who is the most appealing from a character standpoint) and then lastly the melee/tank character (an ex-rapper from New Orleans with a down and out back story….yawn).  All the character stats suck.  All the character backstories suck.  I choose the ex-rapper simply because he was targeted to benefit most from smash-type weapons which based on what I heard was prevalent throughout the game

weapons, cash and mods

I haven’t gotten too far into the game, but the weapons modification system borrows directly from Capcom’s Dead Rising weapon system.  You find basic weapons and “ingredients”.  You then acquire via missions, blueprints for making custom weapons which must be assembled at tool benches around the island.  Out of the gate, the weapons are pretty fun.  I especially like the wooden paddles and the scythes.  It’s really fun to watch the weapons degrade after bashing them against zombie skulls, though I feel some life expectancy on metal based weapons are rather short (e.g. the Metal Pipe).  Modifying your weapons requires cash that is found ALL over, either on zombie corpses or abandoned luggage.  Money is required to modify your weapons and purchase mod recipe ingredients.

zombies

So far I have encountered only 3 types: the slow walkers that tend to overwhelm you in increasing numbers, the fast and freakishly violent 28 days later type infected and lastly the slow but all powerful thug.  I may be in the earlier stages of the game (only about 2-4 hours in) but I feel that the infected type should play a larger part in the main zombie combat.  That was what was so fun about Left 4 Dead was the “oh shit let’s get out of here” feeling when you saw and heard the crazed, fast infected hurling towards you.  The thug is hard to beat because he can flail his arms about and knock your character on his butt.  I only hope that there is a drastic increase in difficulty with the yet to be seen specialty classes.

combat

It’s mostly melee.  I haven’t encountered any firearms but from what I have read, they aren’t the highlight of the game.  Melee combat is pretty darn fun.  I especially like the way you can target limps and heads based on the type of weapon.  Limps are less affected by knives but more affected by shovels and paddles.  And you can break limbs or sever them completely.  My favorite thus far is a kick to the gut followed by swift decapitation with the scythe.  One annoying feature is that in certain “special” kills like the scythe decapitation, you get a bullettime effect that doesn’t seem to help you in out manuevering other zombies.  It’s just plain ol’ slow motion for the sake of gratuitous violence.  There is a rage mode as well that is unique to each character.  The rapper just dons his brass knuckles and beats the shit out of zombies.  yawn…..

game progression

So far, and I don’t see an end in sight, this game consists of mundane tasks of get this, go there, tell this person something, kill some zombies, get my necklace, grab some gas to burn some corpses, etc., etc., etc.  Pretty standard crap missions throughout.  I haven’t encountered any “boss” type missions thus far.  There other suckage comes in the fact that you can’t do things stealthily.  For instance, a task to turn on a gas pump generator would have been more fun, trying to sneak past a thug zombie.   But instead, you have to basically slug it out every time.

world

so far this island is huge and HIGHLY detailed. And there are SOME destructible aspects.  But after a while, it’s just a beach, rocks, trees, etc.  It’s a beach resort folks, so no ice zone or crazy stuff like that.  The character details are pretty slick however I do see some rendering artifacts when character dialogs kick in.  For instance, it seems that every bikini-clad chick looks like she partied hard not for the last week, but for the last decade.  I’m not one to get my kicks through female video characters, but I think that if you go to the effort to render characters in bikinis with ridiculously huge boobs to appeal to your majority-male audience, then why not go to the extra effort to make her face attractive?  I also dislike not being able to slay the living.  So far every NPC i have encountered who pisses me off, I cannot bash their skulls in with a shovel

in closing

I am SOOOOOOO glad I found this used at Game Stop.  I have 7 days to feel it out, but my first impressions are usually right and I have a feeling that this will be going back for a credit.