Dead Island (2011)

This game is a first-person action RPG set on a tropical island overrun by zombies. The game mixes melee combat, exploration, and light RPG elements like leveling and weapon crafting, and while this may look interesting, it is not a big appeal to me, so I admit that the core mechanics of this game start off very interesting, but I quickly get tired of it. Weapons break way too easy and the progress system is too slow to follow the combat complexity and difficulty spikes.

Its open-world environment and co-op mode offer fun and chaotic moments, especially when played with friends. However, it's held back by technical issues, inconsistent tone, repetitive missions, and clunky combat. Despite its flaws, it found a niche audience and became a cult favorite for fans of zombie survival games. I admit that I didn't played this one up until the credits roll because it was simply not that interesting to me, maybe because I played the whole thing solo, so my advise is to play this in co-op mode.

As for its narrative, it struggles to maintain momentum, the introduction is intriguing, and the opening hours suggest a more serious, survival-focused story, but the writing and character development rarely live up to that promise. Quests often feel disconnected from the main plot, and many NPCs come across as flat or forgettable, making it hard to stay invested in the world beyond its surface-level premise.

Visually, the tropical setting is both a strength and a weakness. The sunny beaches and resort areas offer a refreshing contrast to the usual dark, decaying zombie environments, but this contrast sometimes clashes with the horror theme the game tries to establish. While the island looks appealing, the reused locations and limited enemy variety reinforce the sense of repetition. Overall, this title has some interesting ideas and moments of fun, but they are spread thin across an experience that feels longer and more tedious than it needs to be.

I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure

Game number 35 was Dead Island. This is a zombie-survival game where you need to help people while looting weapons and items in order to survive. There are some RPG elements here and you get to level up from killing zombies and completing quests.

Dead Island is the typical zombie story. You are on an island resort when the zombie apocalypse starts. You need to figure out how to survive and escape the island so that you stay safe. I always really liked this game… not because of the story or the gameplay but because of the setting. The island is beautiful and awesome to go around. You start out in the resort area but eventually get to explore the local city and jungle as well. It honestly felt like a real location to me and I loved that aspect of the game.

The combat is okay at best. It goes for the Skyrim style of hack and slashing in a first-person view. I don’t know what Skyrim did right… but the combat here feels slow and clunky most of the time and I don’t really think it’s great. You will eventually get guns and that is a slight improvement… but still not amazing.

Soooooooooo………. I actually was not able to beat this game. When I was a kid I did actually go through and play the whole thing, but I encountered a game-breaking glitch about 6 hours into the game and had to either reset or just say that I had enough. I did the latter. When going from the resort area to the city, my character was glitched underground and I couldn’t find a way to get him out. He would repeatedly spawn down there and resetting the Xbox didn’t do anything. After about an hour of fiddling around, I eventually pulled the plug on the character and decided the game was done… This has definitely impacted my score.

If you actually get to play through Dead Island then it's a decently fun time and one of the better zombie games of the early 2010’s… but beware of bugs. I would probably give this game a 7/10 normally… but it's now only a 5. (5/10)

I spent 5 hours, 23 minutes, and 13 seconds playing Dead Island.

I have spent a total of 359 hours and 45 minutes on the Road To 360 challenge so far.

Next Game: Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure

I’ll be honest. While most players seem to be tired of the zombie survival trope, I still find these games to be highly entertaining. One part of it is because I love post-apocalyptic scenarios, and the other is because I love well-executed survival gameplay. Zombies fit nicely into this genre, and out of all the undead-type games I’ve played over the past couple years, Deadlight - mostly due to technical issues - was the only one I actively disliked. If these types of games are and make use of well-implemented systems, chances are I’ll be partial to them.

Because of this I’ve been thinking a lot about diving into Dying Light, but decided to give Dead Island a go first, just to take a closer look at DL’s ‘origin story’. I know this game was somewhat controversial due to the high expectations generated by its awesome reveal trailer, but as a patient gamer, I knew better than to expect anything similar, so my hopes were well adjusted. As expected, Dead Island clicked with me from the start. Among the usual genre stuff it does something I actually found quite unique, which is the juxtaposition between the devastating zombie-ridden apocalypse and its idyllic tropical island scenario. This isn't the only map you'll visit, but the barrage of blood, corpses and monsters against a sunny paradise backdrop, all brought together by a sometimes ominous, sometimes soothing soundtrack, works remarkably well in the way of standing out in tone and mood.

From then on, you get your expected things when it comes to the genre. Melee combat is the bread and butter of Dead Island, and the game does a really good job of giving you a ton of different weapons to interact with. Admittedly combat feels a bit floaty and could do with more refinement, but a big exception to this, and one I gravitated towards almost immediately, is its ranged combat. Virtually everything can be thrown at enemies, but of course bladed weapons such as knives, cleavers, axes, machetes or even katanas work best here. Though this feels a bit flimsy mechanically here and there, it works in tandem with a satisfying dismemberment system to bring about solid combat enjoyment despite its flaws. You do gain access to actual guns later on - which in fact splits the experience into two gameplay parts that in a way feel inorganic and fragmented -, but gunplay too feels a bit floaty (if entirely serviceable) overall, so I tended to avoid using them when I could.

Directly tied to what I said above is the weapon system, something I’m very fond of if done properly. Dead Island sits somewhere in the middle with how competently it handles it. You can’t craft anything, but you can mod all weapons and you need to repair them as well. The repairing itself is a neat concept and done in a way that never tires the player, but mods is where the system truly shines. Not only does modding a weapon make it look much cooler, it also comes with a nice range of effects - shock, fire, poison, etc - that you can play around with depending on the enemy you’re facing, even if enemy variety isn’t all that great (though big waves of the Infected variant never stop being tension inducing). Add to this a bunch of throwable options (grenades, molotovs and so on) and you’re never lacking for engagement alternatives.

However, this whole system is seriously hindered by one of my two main pet peeves with this game, its looting philosophy. Almost every bit of loot respawns way, way too quickly, and you already get a lot of it to begin with. I hate this in games, and in case of Dead Island, it has two major drawbacks. The fist is that it makes navigation harder, especially since level design is a bit samey, and with loot constantly respawning it’s sometimes hard to figure out if you’ve been through that particular place already, especially in maps that are this big. The second is that, due to this, most loot feels meaningless and unremarkable, with the biggest disappointment being precisely in the weapon category. You do get some legendary items here and there, but the overwhelming majority of weapons you get as you level up are basically recycled versions of previous models with higher stats, so rarely does anything in the game feel special. It’s a sort of stripped down looter shooter approach that didn't resonate with me at all, and I wish they had handled this specific aspect differently, since I did enjoy the RPG aspect that related to character progression.

The other main problem Dead Island has in my opinion, which actually ties into the need for them to have such a fast loot respawn rate, is length. Seriously, what need is there for this game to be this damn long? On the surface, Dead Island has almost everything to be an awesomely fun experience, but this is one of those titles that would’ve benefitted greatly from a shorter exposure, since all the extended playtime does is highlight the game’s issues further. A paradigmatic case of this in seen in side quests, which the game has in spades. While there are a few that stand out, the bigger chunk devolves into the fetching type, something that becomes painfully obvious because Dead Island is dead set on giving you tons of content, even if a bunch of it adds nothing substantive. It will likely appeal to box ticking aficionados, but lose its luster fairly quickly with everyone else. Especially because, although passable, navigation isn’t all that great. True, there's a fast travel system, but I like to avoid it when possible in order to take my time and explore the world. I love the different maps in Dead Island - all main four are vastly different in tone and fun to look at -, but Techland’s first forays into the post-apocalyptic verticality (something so seemingly prominent in Dying Light) are still very basic here, and driving, when you can actually use it, kind of sucks.

There are other issues present in Dead Island, such as some pacing problems between acts, an underwhelming last boss (in terms of setting, not necessarily the boss itself), and the laughable fact that all cutscenes are catered to multiplayer and thus played out as if you’re always part of a group - a bit jarring if you’re on a single player run. But these are minor in comparison with what I said above, and above all, I wouldn’t like to come across as too negative. The truth is that I still had quite a bit of fun with this game. Yes, it is rough around the edges, it somewhat overstays its welcome and it often underdelivers in its premise - ironically, much like that awesome trailer we were shown versus what we actually got. But on the other side of it rests a title that, back then, used a very common trope with a bit of an original spin, even if it doesn’t look like it in 2023. I enjoyed it, flaws and all, and I look forward to diving into Techland’s follow-up. 7.5/10

Completed the game again as Purna at level 43, picking up where I left off years ago. I noticed I was missing 2 locations for the achievement to go everywhere so I scoured the maps for places I had not yet been. Found an entire town with a bunch of sidequests that I completely missed on my 1st playthrough. She was much more difficult to play compared to Sam, but the whole point of playing her was to make it more like a survival horror shooter. I used guns, molotovs and throwing far more often. Rarely used the kick other than when a zombie was getting up. For walkers it was usually enough to circle strafe around them and slice their heads off. For infected I would dodge to the side then slice, or more often just gun them down. For thugs I would target their arms to cut them off while dodging back. A 2 handed weapon with reach is really needed to deal with thugs, and it took me a while to realize the splitting axe I had expressly for this purpose was only a hatchet. I soon found a flimsy white katana and used that only for thugs. My other weapons were a couple of good purple machetes modded with elemental damage.

By the end I was using the orange zed’s demise katana lv 41. Katanas are by far the best melee weapon in the game because they combine reach with speed and high damage, making it easy to kill any zombie from just outside their reach. I even found blades in general to be better than blunt as Sam, despite having talent points to improve blunt. Purna ended up with very similar weapons to Sam; 38 blue wakizashi with short circuit as a great high dps general purpose weapon, 38 orange Tijuana machete with fire which was great for igniting poison enemies, 34 green shock auto rifle which is probably the best overall weapon in the game. Rams and even the final boss cannot stand up to bursts that guarantee electrocution stun. Then I had a 42 purple heavy pistol modded with striker, which was very effective for igniting poison zombies from distance, and a 38 green short shot gun with striker. I skipped the arena but went there often to buy ammo. Despite how expensive everything was, I had no trouble being rich. Struggled at the final boss as I forgot I had to go up to him to trigger the cutscene for the real fight. Instead I was trying to snipe him and getting killed by the flaming weapon wielding armor wearing guard infected that came out of nowhere to almost one hit kill me. I put her talent points into survival first, skipping utility skills and going for her aura: deeper pockets, conditioning, recovery, rain of bullets, and second chance. Then I went into the combat tree to improve her effectiveness with guns: hard knocks, vampire, randori, maintenance, elemental affinity, wunderwaff, and piercing shot 2/3 (where my last point went).

Love this game. The combat is very satisfying, despite the slow and clunky movement. It was obvious that this was designed as a console game and not really optimized for PC. I loved exploring the world and the survival horror atmosphere where I could easily die at any time. My main gripe was how everything respawned; enemies, loot, food. It cheapened the survival horror aspect and I would love to play a mod that disables respawning while adding more enemies and harsher penalties for death. Some of the side quests were annoying when they expected me to actually search for the item rather than showing exactly where it was, and the parts with infinite infected were annoying.

so tbt to 2011 when i was 12 and OBSESSEDTTTT with this game, booting it up in 2021 i was initially underwhelmed but this game is a fun ass time! it takes the Bethesda RPG model, improves melee combat significantly, and transfers it to a bloody zombie paradise! what's to dislike!!

Also, I have no idea if everyone is just terrible at the combat, but i beat the game, only missing 5 or so side-quests, in under 20 hrs (played as Xian Mei).

I tried playing Dying Light a few years ago when it released but couldn't get into it, I really need to try it again esp. w the sequel coming up!

Narratively... this game takes a mediocre plot and tells it very badly. Cut scenes are weird and disjointed, the main characters are all flat and 3/4 are completely unlikable, the dialogue is dull and/or cliche, and the story is predictable with nothing new or interesting added to the genre. The only redeeming bits are a few scenes with Jin, one of the main supporting characters.

Mechanically, it's a pretty decent zombie FPS. There is a satisfying variety in the types of enemies and their different behaviors, and a few environmental surprises too. Multiplayer is a big plus and well-implemented (for playing with friends... I haven't tried matchmaking).

There's a pretty good talent advancement/customization system, and lots of different weapon types that you can experiment with. The crafting interface could use an overhaul for usability. I played this years after release so it's a little bit dated, but I still enjoyed playing it in 2020.

I honestly don't understand why this game is so hated. The story might not be a Pulitzer winner, but I didn't find it as crap as a lot of people say. It's a standard story of you getting involved in something you weren't prepared for, standard characters that are trying to survive, standard missions of "can you find this for me" which are available in any game with sidequests, and standard "I've planned this from the beginning" boss that you can fight at the end (the figth is meh, that's true). If you're expecting in a game a soul-shaking story this is certainly not your game.

I've played the Xbox 360 version of this game and I didn't find so many bugs as people are reporting. Strange, maybe the PC version is different.

So, why I've given it 5 stars? Because I really had a lot of fun, Carl! I really enjoyed the atmosphere, the simplicity of the map, the decoration half peaceful/half "I don't know when the bloody zombie will appear". I liked how the zombies are running towards you, the sounds you hear before they appear and how you have to cut his head clean if you don't want to receive any damage. It's true that as soon as you level up a lot it becomes smash and run, but again that's something that happens on any game.

It's not a difficult game, so if you're looking for a challenge this is not for you. There are no different builds that can make replay the game differently. Even though the characters have different skills in the end they do not change anything. With a controller, I found to aim with weapons extremely difficult, so at the end, I was using melee weapons only.

The map is not really big, even if it can look like that at the beginning. However, there's a certain fun in using cars and trying to explore the map a bit trying to reach roofs through hidden ladders, etc.

Ghaaaaa… That was miserable. This is the first time in a while I have been so fucking over a video game before completing it… and yet oddly compelled to see it through to the finish. Even though it ended totally predictably and without any twists or new gameplay elements added past the very first couple missions. This game is just idiocy. It's mindlessly running from point A to point B gunning down everything in your way, watching an absolutely atrocious cut-scene and the rinsing and repeating. Yet, for some reason this mindlessness is palpable to a certain degree. I found this game to be a nice accompaniment to watching tv and listening to podcasts, as it is so mindless and inconsequential that you really only need to use about 10% of your brain power to make it through. And I seriously wonder how many people actually made it through this one. The presentation quality seems to take a pretty hard dip around the halfway point, and the mission structures become even more banal and annoying than they were before. You will run back and forth between the same locations hundreds of times looking for the next item or switch that will further the absolutely asinine plot. I don't want to give anything away… actually there is nothing to give away. I don't know what happened and could not care less. There's an island, zombie outbreak, you are immune, etc. It's the same tired Zombie conventions you've seen in every movie, game or whatever since the beginning of the zombie craze, a fixation that I am personally bored shitless of. Seriously, no more zombie games for a while guys.

There's really not much more to say about this time waster of a game. I could pick it apart piece by piece but it would be needlessly dissecting a turd. It's pretty much all turd- all the way through. Certain questions continue to bother me though: why was the premier trailer for the game so damn good? It was emotional, terrifying and seemed to signal something that would take the genre in a new direction that was laced with heartbreaking ethos. Instead the actual cast of the game is a swath of gangsta rap cliches- even going so far as to have an awful zombie-themed rap over the ending credits? Why did the cutscenes, which featured atrocious texture pop-in, expressionless faces, and seemingly nonexistent lip-syncing, look worse than pretty much anything I have seen on the current generation of consoles?! Why does the game impose any real penalty for dying, meaning that you can just go in guns blazing, die on purpose, re-spawn and just do it again until all of the enemies are dead? It totally ruined any sense of fear or dread I might have had. Why did this game last for 25 hours, padded out with a hundred pointless busy-work missions? Why do they set up the ending for a sequel? God no!

I realize that this game is intended to be played co-operatively. And for stretches of it, I did. It made it a bit more fun, but seemed to increase the occurrence of glitches, frame-rate issues, the game freezing outright, etc. Also, if you join someone else's game, you are simply gaining experience and not progressing your own plot. For someone like me, who was simply trying to power through this mess, that did not work. So, my only option was to just wait and see if people wanted to join in on my game, which only happened 4-5 times.

Dead Island is a culmination of things that need to go away in the video game industry: mindless shooting, overuse of zombies as a plot device, pointless fetch quests, total lack of any meaningful story, cliche characters, length that seems wildly disproportional to the amount of time you would actually want to play it, a disregard for presentation that is honestly insulting to the completionist gamer,  extremely graphic violence with a lazy context… the list goes on. And yet, it still doesn't descend into the absolute pits of gaming hell. As hypocritical as it sounds, I guess I had a bit of fun. If this was a movie it would be a Sci-Fi Channel Original.

Beat the game as Sam B, because I like hard to kill tank characters. In fact I took it to the extreme and found I could get away with using garbage white weapons. My inventory was constantly full of junk as I methodically used each weapon until it broke, then sold or tossed it. I did not make much use of the crafting and never bought anything, leading me to have ridiculous amounts of money. There were tougher spots where I needed to use my better weapons. Despite my character being specialized in blunt weapons, I found blades to be overall better. The katana was the best overall weapon type, followed by other swords, then axes. Two handed axes and blunt weapons were a bit risky to use due to their slow speed, but the extra reach was useful when fighting from a top vehicles. One handed blunt weapons are in the middle of effectiveness while knives and knuckles were the least effective; mind they have very high dps but you have to get so close that they are very difficult to use without taking significant damage. I kept a compliment of each type of gun but found them to be difficult to use and not really needed for zombies.

Sam ended at level 43 and my skill points are:

Recuperation

Motivation 3/3

Hardened 3/3

Deeper pockets 3/3

Regeneration

Bulletproof 3/3

Last stand 3/3

Rebirth

Feel no pain 3/3

Greater haymaker

Pain killer 3/3

Incredible haymaker

Heavy hitter

Devastation 3/3

Effortless 3/3

Lights out 3/3

Blunt expert

Hammer blows 3/3

Aimed shots 1/3

My equipped weapons are:

Orange Zed's Demise, level 41 katana

Blue short circuit wakizashi, level 38

White spiteful katana, level 39

Blue cruel magnum, level 38

Green pride short shotgun, level 39

Green shock auto rifle, level 35

Last slot for molotovs

I have a few other weapons, the best of which is a purple lethal metal kanabo at level 40, but is not as good as those blades. I did complete the arena and the short side campaign as Ryder. Later I played through again as Purna to try and get a more survival horror experience (not very scary when you can just tank everything with crap weapons). She plays a lot more like Ryder and is a much bigger challenge. No more hoarding garbage weapons and using them up, now I have to tactically choose which to keep, use and repair. Knives are kept for throwing and guns are used far more often. She is currently level 34 at chapter 11. At some point I will finish as her, and maybe play the chinese girl next.

I greatly enjoy this game with the combination of 1st person combat, zombies and diablo style loot. Fun environments to explore and an interesting enough story. My notes say I give it 8.5/10.

After having played and highly enjoyed Dying Light and it's DLC, I played the predecessor Dead Island, and just now finished it as well. It had a promising start, but as I got deeper into the game, all of it died and everything became a miserable experience. It's clear to see that Dying Light improved on a ton of things, and is the way better game. I would advise anyone who wants to play this game to not go further than Act 2, which is where the game starts to go downhill. Here are some good and less good things:

The narrative and story was boring, but that's hardly why anyone picks up a game like this. Characters are uninteresting, especially the main villain (boss battle and entire ending was a joke), and dialogue is very basic. The main characters you get to choose from might just be the worst ones in the game, they are very one-dimensional and hardly say much at all.

The gameplay is fun enough to keep you on your toes, but I'd say only until act 2. After that, all missions are escort missions where the companion is extremely stupid, and enemies spawn all the time which prevents them from walking any further. There are various unique enemy types which I enjoyed, except for one called Thug. They have lots of health, and one hit from them sends you flying which makes you unable to do anything for 5 seconds. They also seem to have very long arms which are hard to dodge. Hitboxes are pretty bad in the game, especially driving a car and getting stuck everywhere. Cars don't work out in this game, the world is too linear for it, and there are too many obstacles between destinations. Weapons break down after about 15-20 enemy hits (this is not a joke), and you CONSTANTLY need to swap weapon, which is incredibly boring.

So what's good about the game? Well, most of act 1 and 2 is interesting, especially the world building and environment. I LOVED the resort area in act 1, I could stay there forever since it was a very nice place to hack zombies. Loot is good and there's plenty of things to pick up, modify and collect. Everything that wasn't IN game was also good, like the trailer and the intro.

Overall, I feel like this game could've been great but the devs ran out of ideas after act 2. Game was also clearly made for a group of 4, since all main characters show up in cutscenes and when spoken to. If you liked Dying Light, play this but please don't play act 3 and 4, it's a waste of time. I give this game a 5/10