Dead Island is a game that I have fond memories of from when it was first released back in 2011. Walking around on the beach, killing zombies with paddles and bats, those were the moments that I remembered fondly. I never made it far into the game, as I quickly dropped it in favor of other games around that time, so I've thought for the next 13 years that this game was a great zombie-killing experience. I was immensely mistaken...
To start, I want to talk about the gameplay/movement. For some terrible reason, walking or running around feels like you're sliding on ice. This game has HORRID unresponsive movement and the input lag (I think that is how you describe it?) is so unbearable bad that I had to download this mod just to make the movement tolerable. It's a terrible first impression when just the first few minutes of gameplay make me want to stop playing. I've experienced bizarre glitches and bugs when playing with my friend, such as falling through the floor after getting knocked down by a zombie, suddenly having a huge jump boost, the AI breaking itself and getting stuck on props/zombies, and much more.
The combat is okay-ish at best, with gunplay being completely amateur while melee is slightly enjoyable. Once you get closer to the end of the game, zombies become sponges even when you're at an even level with them, making you slash or bash them plenty of times before they fall over and die. Guns are a complete joke with how piss-poor the aiming and shooting is. Don't ever try to hip-fire in this game, even when you're up close to an enemy, because guaranteed nearly all of your bullets will miss. I found guns to be so useless that I ended up switching back to strictly using melee weapons or even my own fists over the god-awful gun mechanics.
The story is completely forgettable, so much in fact that I cannot remember much of anything aside from the locations I was in. The cutscenes feel so stiff with how the characters move and talk, with their mouths poorly trying to lip-sync to what the dialogue is saying. Every song in this game is basic and boring, aside from the extremely catchy and earworm-worthy song, "Who Do You Voodoo" which is canonically written and sung by in-game character, Sam B. Navigating the locations, especially the Slums, is miserable to experience. Roadblocks, cars, misc. props, with the occasional annoying zombie variants scattered around the roads made for a terrible time.
By the time you get to Act 3, the game becomes an extremely irritating and boring fetch quest where you have to go to X and speak to this person, then go to Y and do this thing for this person, rinse and repeat. In conclusion, Dead Island is a game that shows its age greatly, and its spiritual successor, Dying Light, is a far greater series that plays a million times better than Dead Island and Riptide, leaving this series as a diet version of Dying Light essentially.
To start, I want to talk about the gameplay/movement. For some terrible reason, walking or running around feels like you're sliding on ice. This game has HORRID unresponsive movement and the input lag (I think that is how you describe it?) is so unbearable bad that I had to download this mod just to make the movement tolerable. It's a terrible first impression when just the first few minutes of gameplay make me want to stop playing. I've experienced bizarre glitches and bugs when playing with my friend, such as falling through the floor after getting knocked down by a zombie, suddenly having a huge jump boost, the AI breaking itself and getting stuck on props/zombies, and much more.
The combat is okay-ish at best, with gunplay being completely amateur while melee is slightly enjoyable. Once you get closer to the end of the game, zombies become sponges even when you're at an even level with them, making you slash or bash them plenty of times before they fall over and die. Guns are a complete joke with how piss-poor the aiming and shooting is. Don't ever try to hip-fire in this game, even when you're up close to an enemy, because guaranteed nearly all of your bullets will miss. I found guns to be so useless that I ended up switching back to strictly using melee weapons or even my own fists over the god-awful gun mechanics.
The story is completely forgettable, so much in fact that I cannot remember much of anything aside from the locations I was in. The cutscenes feel so stiff with how the characters move and talk, with their mouths poorly trying to lip-sync to what the dialogue is saying. Every song in this game is basic and boring, aside from the extremely catchy and earworm-worthy song, "Who Do You Voodoo" which is canonically written and sung by in-game character, Sam B. Navigating the locations, especially the Slums, is miserable to experience. Roadblocks, cars, misc. props, with the occasional annoying zombie variants scattered around the roads made for a terrible time.
By the time you get to Act 3, the game becomes an extremely irritating and boring fetch quest where you have to go to X and speak to this person, then go to Y and do this thing for this person, rinse and repeat. In conclusion, Dead Island is a game that shows its age greatly, and its spiritual successor, Dying Light, is a far greater series that plays a million times better than Dead Island and Riptide, leaving this series as a diet version of Dying Light essentially.