Dead Island showed to be the zombie apocalypse video game a lot of people have been clamoring for. Other games like Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead, and the Resident Evil series offered zombie outings ranging from the over-the-top to the b-movie variety. Let's not even mention that forgettable attempt with Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green. Dead Island was the first to really offer a gritty, in-your-face zombie experience. It was a great game in that it brought the looting element of Borderlands and the first-person melee experience akin to Fallout 3 with a dash of Romero-inspired madness. However, there is no word yet of a sequel and there were some things that could be altered or changed for the next game. But, first, let's see what it did right.
Juxtaposition
This game nailed it in giving gamers an unlikely environment for the zombie apocalypse. The island setting gave a nice change of pace and beautiful scenery to gaze at in between clocking the dead. There were moments where it felt like I was in a Lucio Fulci movie as opposed to a George Romero movie.
Weapon Customization
The use of mods and weapon blueprints lends that welcomed sense of intellectual bad-assery. Taking deodorant and duct tape to make a homemade grenade was sick. Using a baseball bat that wielded fire or a machete that doubles as a taser was an ingenious touch. This really adds to the notion that anything can be used or made into a weapon.
Driving
This game allowed me to live out a scene from the Tom Savini-directed remake of Night of the Living Dead: Ben's introduction by plowing through a zombie with a truck. This element immediately killed one of the problems with the Resident Evil series, which was backtracking through streets and corridors on foot. In Dead Island, you just need to climb into a vehicle and floor it. Given that the game takes place in the Australian/Kiwi islands, your driver's seat is what would be the passenger's seat here in America. It seemed odd at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly. If you think the pick-up was cool, just wait til you commandeer an armor-plated tank of a truck.
What the Game Needs to Work On
Character Customization
As much as I enjoy playing a character voiced by the likes of Phil LaMarr or Kim Mai Guest, a game like this needs as much immersion as possible, which means having the character we play be one we created. This aspect is what makes games like Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas feel like personal experiences. This game is about what we would do in a zombie attack, so make us part of the experience. The dialogue spoken by the characters was minimal so why not let us create ourselves in the game, then hire voice actors/actresses of varying ethnicity for the voice of our own characters.
Ditch the Mega-Zombies
I sometimes jokingly refer to this game as “Left 4 Dead Island” since you have mega-zombies like The Thug or The Suicider that took me out of the zombie experience. In any of Romero's films, The Walking Dead, or in Max Brooks' novels did you see muscular zombies or zombies that explode? No. So get rid of them, or at least give us options. Give us the option to have the mixed zombies of the first game, or allow us the choice to only fight the slow, limbering zombies we know and love. You can also give an “Infected zombies only” mode for those who want a 28 Days Later “zombie” experience.
A New Setting
Deep Silver gave us the zombie experience on a resort with some parts in an impoverished urban area. Now, give us the Metropolitan experience gamers have been waiting for. In that environment, the weapon and vehicle possibilities are endless. Imagine plowing through zombies down a city street driving a sports car, or going through a Home Depot-style store to get supplies for making all sorts of new customizable weapons.
Even if there isn't a second game in the cards for the Dead Island series, it's fun to think about the new elements that Deep Silver will bring next to the home consoles in the future. On the off-chance anyone of the people in the company reads this, who knows? This was a great game that really shows what can be done when a zombie game is done right, and somewhat accurately -- in a fictional way -- if any of that makes sense.
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