Finally, a zombie game that is not extremely repetitive and gimmick filled. “Dead Island” has taken the zombie-genre by storm and allowed gamers a new zombie-genre experience.
The story begins with your character waking up in a practically destroyed hotel on the fictional island of Banoi with nothing but the help of an Australian man on a radio telling you what to do. Eventually you get attacked and wake up with a small amount of survivors of the island and the realization that you are the only person who is immune to the virus; which means you are the only one who can go out and fight the infected.
Normally, when I think of zombie games, I think of first-person shooters and a completely linear story line (ex. Resident Evil). However, when I played Dead Island I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was completely different than what I thought it to be; it was special.
The player will get to choose from the four characters: Xian Mei, Sam B., Logan, and Purna; each with a different specialty in weapons. The game includes open-world roaming, which allows the character to go wherever they want and find whatever they want and focuses heavily on melee, rather than the use of ranged weaponry (ex. Guns, bows, etc.).
The playing experience is both fun and very difficult. Your character can run out of stamina very easily when fighting the infected and will have to stop to recover; not to mention, your weapons can break pretty easily. These problems require the player to constantly monitor their stamina and weapon condition.
The systematic problems that arise from this game are annoying, but do not take away from the fun of the game. When get out of the Beach Resort and in the city, the game becomes ten times more difficult and you will pretty much die at every corner. The resaving in this game is odd aswell, because it will randomly auto-save at randomly parts throughout the game and you will never know what point you are going to respawn at when you die.
Other than those few problems, Dead Island is a gaming experienced not to be missed.