'Dead Island' does not live up to initial hype

The debut trailer for "Dead Island" was a wonderfully received and emotional short film. Depicting the unfortunate slaughter of a young girl's family by a zombie horde in a hotel resort, the trailer was intentionally animated in reverse to slowly reveal the details of the poor girl's demise, ending before the start of the attack. It was an artfully done trailer that emotionally grabbed its audiences by depicting a tragedy you desired to learn more about. It is also the most falsely advertising trailer that I have seen in recent history.

"Dead Island" is an unfortunate case; a series of great concepts and ideas with unfortunately mediocre execution. The game takes place on the fictional island of Banoi during a zombie infestation that occurs overnight. Players are given a choice to play as one of four characters and are tasked with surviving the outbreak and ultimately, finding a means by which to escape the island.

The game is reminiscent of titles such as "Dead Rising" in that it is very open ended. The entire island is accessible to the player, allowing for multiple pathways to reach their destinations. The player is also limited to whatever items they can pick up and use as weapons. The island of Banoi is beautifully rendered and well detailed.

The detailing is compounded by the excellent sound design of the game. There are a lot of eerie silences in almost every area that you enter which adds to the atmosphere of the undead riddled island. Being in enclosed areas, hearing nothing but the sound of a zombie's heavy breathing can actually be surprisingly nerve wracking, especially when there are corpses littered all over the resort. This means that any of the bodies that you pass could rise up to become a potential attacker. Unfortunately, these qualities are balanced out by quite a few short comings of the game.

The four characters that you are allowed to play as are given unique back stories in regards to their lives before the Banoi incident. This could have been a great idea, except that the personal stories of the characters never come into play during the actual campaign. All of them start the game off in the same hotel room and are given little to no actual spoken dialogue. The only thing setting them apart is their skill set which isn't quite diverse enough to notice much of a difference.

There's also a focus on the use of melee weaponry as opposed to firearms. The lack of attack options that they offer however makes repetition sink in really fast. In addition to the repetitive action, many weapons of the game break very easily, meaning that if you lose a weapon in mid combat, you're left with nothing but your significantly less effective fists until you can scour the island for a new weapon. As a result, combat becomes a chore and in a game about killing zombies, that is a pretty massive sin.

Furthermore, despite its intense atmosphere, the AI of "Dead Island" is pretty stupid. The survivors are unable to properly fend for themselves but the zombies are just plain dumb. I once stood on one side of a table when a zombie saw me and tried to strike. Apparently the zombie must have viewed the table as some sort of invisible force field because I stood there, completely stationary for about six minutes watching him try to reach me without even trying to go around the table. The only reason he finally moved was because I backed up and chucked my knife into his head.  There are a few glitches as well but none as egregious as this lack of simple logic.

Overall, "Dead Island" is one of those games that I simply wish was better. Going into it with low expectations I was pleasantly surprised to see how much of the game that I had actually enjoyed. I would even argue that there are a lot of people that may even have the patience to put up with all of its flaws. I am not one of those people. If you're really interested in the game, rent it to see if it's for you before buying it at full price. Otherwise, if you can wait, this would probably be a perfect game for the discount rack.