Dead Island: Game of the Year Edition Review

Written by Cole Burton Tuesday, 10 July 2012 08:00

Dead Island is a title I’ve been meaning to pick up for some time now.  With the game of the year edition hitting shelves, why wait any longer?  I’ve heard good and bad about Dead Island, but now I know firsthand what Dead Island is worth.  One thing is for sure, if you passed on Dead Island before, it will be hard to pass up the GOTY edition for only $30.

At the start, you choose one of five characters, one of which is a DLC chapter character and should be played after completing the main game.  Regardless of which of the four characters you choose, the other three are always with you in the cutscenes.  This makes the game pretty strange if you choose to play solo like I did, but looking past that minor flaw is possible.  The real kicker is that these four characters are immune to this zombie pandemic, while none of the other survivors you meet are.

          Shortly after Dead Island came out, a friend described it as Fallout with zombies.  After playing for a short time that seemed dead on to me.  In the main story, you start out in a hotel where you can scavenge through endless luggage containing some useful items and some not so useful items.  After you make your way to your first goal, you will meet up with some NPCs and become a mindless lackey.  Because of your strange inability to be zombified, everybody wants you to do something for them.  While this does make sense, it does get old.  You are tasked with everything from bringing unlimited amounts of water to a lady, a teddy bear to another, and other quests that don’t really seem worthy of your time.  But, you can always pick and choose what quests you want to do and progress the main story faster.

          The real fun in Dead Island is the environment.  You aren’t going to find guns and ammo scattered around on the sidewalk.  Instead, you find paddles by boats, hammers on tables, maybe a baseball bat in the corner of a room if you’re lucky.  It all just makes sense, as do the countless zombies at every turn.  The only real out of place things you’ll find in the environment are propane tanks, but they are placed appropriately for some easy kills and good traps.

          Although Dead Island does get repetitive at times, it picks up when you unlock the ability to drive and new weapon upgrades are made.  Dead Island is far from perfect, but is not bad in any way either.  Not to mention it is priced very fairly.  Pick it up today, and help support the team.  The upcoming sequel will be much closer to perfection if we show that we want it to be.

8/10