This is not a great game, but it is a very funny game. The pre-menu cinematic is legendary. 'Who do You Voodoo, Bitch?' is a bop and it gets stuck in my head every time I play this. The character select has inexplicably-long, DICTATED character bios, so OF COURSE, I chose the one-hit wonder rapper whose mom was a crackhead in "N'awlins". Listening to him read all that had me howling. Throughout the game they really seemed to attempt some pathos in the writing, but it was just goofy. I'd receive a questline from an NPC like, "oh my god, I just watched my family get ripped apart, can you retrieve this highly sentimental item for me" and your character would voice a random affirmation like "COPACETIC". It robs the game of any attempts to move you, but it did make me laugh a lot.
The gameplay loop gets really old after three or four hours, but those first few are really fun and hilarious. All the weapons you find at the beginning are worthless and abundant, so I had a blast throwing them at every zombie I came across. Taking a boat oar and hurling it full-speed at a shambling corpse that would then either ragdoll or explode truly never got old to me. The melee combat is pretty good. It's definitely better than say, Skyrim, but gunplay is terrible. I'd say it somehow managed to be on par with Fallout 3. The only reason that's worth anything at all was because of VATS, but Dead Island has no such compensation. I can't speak for 2011 anymore, but for 2024, the quest variety is inexcusable. It's the worst of the worst. It's either a fetch quest, an escort mission, kill these monsters, or just run all over the map for one reason or another. They definitely went for quantity over quality and it's to the overall detriment of the experience.
The character models are hideous. The faces are hard to look at it and the way they move is something else. I kinda just stared in awe at the NPC I was following on every escort mission. Old man, young woman, tribal man or scientist, they all run hunched and waddling like they just shit themselves. Human emotions and animations are completely stiff and lifeless but, ironically, the undead are far more vibrant and expressive. Decent variety of them too and lots of skin variations on each. I appreciated it.
Some technical problems as well. Caught an Infected T-pose for a second, nbd, but there was a crash that corrupted some save data. The navigation could be spotty as hell and there was some enemy pop-in. A zombie would lunge at the bottom of a ladder and somehow grab me at the top of it.
There were a couple of minor things that annoyed the absolute shit out of me. For some reason, they'll give you cars or trucks to drive where 80% of the windshield is obscured by the sun visor. I wish I could post a picture, it's absolutely ludicrous. The weapon mods were exciting but, again, annoying. An early electric mod would constantly emit this monotone drone over the other effects and music and it made me wonder why they would do that. Why not just a quick crackling sound every once in a while? Why "bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"?
Dead Island is the definition of a "mid video game". The fact that the Definitive edition is still buggy and ugly should tell you something. That being said, you can find it fairly frequently on sale for like, $3. It's definitely worth that and I definitely had fun, I'm not gonna lie. I wish the platinum wasn't locked behind online multiplayer and the lack of couch co-op was a huge missed opportunity. I can easily picture my buddy and I doing some mindless shit like this for a while and beating eachother senseless with planks.
The gameplay loop gets really old after three or four hours, but those first few are really fun and hilarious. All the weapons you find at the beginning are worthless and abundant, so I had a blast throwing them at every zombie I came across. Taking a boat oar and hurling it full-speed at a shambling corpse that would then either ragdoll or explode truly never got old to me. The melee combat is pretty good. It's definitely better than say, Skyrim, but gunplay is terrible. I'd say it somehow managed to be on par with Fallout 3. The only reason that's worth anything at all was because of VATS, but Dead Island has no such compensation. I can't speak for 2011 anymore, but for 2024, the quest variety is inexcusable. It's the worst of the worst. It's either a fetch quest, an escort mission, kill these monsters, or just run all over the map for one reason or another. They definitely went for quantity over quality and it's to the overall detriment of the experience.
The character models are hideous. The faces are hard to look at it and the way they move is something else. I kinda just stared in awe at the NPC I was following on every escort mission. Old man, young woman, tribal man or scientist, they all run hunched and waddling like they just shit themselves. Human emotions and animations are completely stiff and lifeless but, ironically, the undead are far more vibrant and expressive. Decent variety of them too and lots of skin variations on each. I appreciated it.
Some technical problems as well. Caught an Infected T-pose for a second, nbd, but there was a crash that corrupted some save data. The navigation could be spotty as hell and there was some enemy pop-in. A zombie would lunge at the bottom of a ladder and somehow grab me at the top of it.
There were a couple of minor things that annoyed the absolute shit out of me. For some reason, they'll give you cars or trucks to drive where 80% of the windshield is obscured by the sun visor. I wish I could post a picture, it's absolutely ludicrous. The weapon mods were exciting but, again, annoying. An early electric mod would constantly emit this monotone drone over the other effects and music and it made me wonder why they would do that. Why not just a quick crackling sound every once in a while? Why "bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"?
Dead Island is the definition of a "mid video game". The fact that the Definitive edition is still buggy and ugly should tell you something. That being said, you can find it fairly frequently on sale for like, $3. It's definitely worth that and I definitely had fun, I'm not gonna lie. I wish the platinum wasn't locked behind online multiplayer and the lack of couch co-op was a huge missed opportunity. I can easily picture my buddy and I doing some mindless shit like this for a while and beating eachother senseless with planks.