Ed. note: PC reviews for Dead Island are hard to come by. All the words that follow are about the console versions. The game is due for release tomorrow (June 6).
Start with Dan Whitehead's review on Eurogamer. Of all the reviews in this post, his is the most informative. The conclusion:
I didn't encounter anything game-breaking in the 26 and a bit hours it took to complete the story solo, or during my forays into co-op play, but it would still be all too tempting to fill this review with complaints about the flaky game engine, the weird floating objects and distracting animation spasms, and annoying glitches like inactive quest points, inconsistent navigation markers and the general air of a scrappy half-finished game. All that stuff is in here, and can easily dominate the experience.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the experience though. Dead Island is a deeply flawed game, but it's also clearly a low-budget game and one that has interesting ideas, often under-served by the bargain-basement code. Finding the diamonds in the rough demands a lot of patience, and enough investment in the base joys of zombie slaughter to tolerate the laundry list of flaws.
I suspect this will be one of those games that will be justifiably mocked by the majority for its many flaws but embraced by a forgiving minority, and passionately defended for its underdog status. Neither response will be entirely wrong. Much like gnawing on human flesh, Dead Island's clumsy horror-action role-player is the definition of an acquired taste.
IGN has the only video review I could find (GameTrailers has one posted, but it wasn't working at press time). IGN's reviews are generally garbage -- and Greg Miller's is no exception -- but you will get to see some of the texture pop-in everyone's talking about. Note that you have to have a YouTube account to watch it, due the age restriction.
GamesTM has a short review with one worthwhile quote:
Aspects of Fallout 3, Resident Evil, Far Cry 2, Borderlands (and many more) litter its design, in ways that would reduce a whack-by-whack review down to a comparative shopping list of features. But even still, it somehow still manages to moan with its own zombified voice, with a system of exploration, quest accumulation and bespoke weapon upgrading that somehow combines well with the simple act of driving over a procession of the undead in a van so heavily decked out in armour that you can barely see out the front window. Furthermore, Techland ramps its character levelling almost perfectly, as feeble weapons give way to heavier duty, home-tooled monstrosities, and the spreading mutation introduces new types of zombie and even more powerful versions of the blade fodder you’ve already encountered. At its best – say, taking three zombies’ heads off with a single swing of the arm – it’s a hugely empowering experience.
Justin McElroy at Joystiq offers a mostly negative review. A few of his caveats deserve consideration:
* The game encourages you to throw weapons, but doing so risks accidentally tossing your prize into an area you can't retrieve it or under a pile of bodies where it's similarly inaccessible. Plus, when you're on the run from too many zombies to handle, throwing a weapon is basically saying goodbye to it forever. Another whole system that should be fun, but isn't.
* [Y]ou'll almost always use disintegrating melee weapons and the only way to stay ahead of the curve of weapon loss and degradation is by being thorough with your looting. Entering pretty much any room in the game presents you with 10 to 15 areas to search, usually yielding a bit of wire, deodorant (or some other random trinket) or a couple of bucks. When you do find a weapon -- since your inventory will almost always be full -- you'll have to meticulously compare it to every other weapon in your possession. When entering any room is marked by rifling through seven trash cans and comparing the durability stats between two hammers, pacing is ... a problem. Oh, and did I mention the searchables replenish themselves, so you get to frequently repeat this banal dance? Whee!
* Your occasional AI partners are beyond stupid, thinking nothing of walking into a Molotov cocktail fire, for example. At least twice I had to restart because an AI guide had lost his pathing and couldn't complete the mission. In another instance, my partner wanted us to run from the zombies, only she wasn't running fast enough to outpace them, so we just kept getting eaten.
Jim Sterling has a helpful analysis at Destructoid, which features this study in contradiction:
And of course, there's a day one patch, with an enormous changelog.
Ultimately, this is a Techland game that looks just like a Techland game. The glitches, the low quality graphics, and the bizarre gameplay issues that are hampered by broken animation and temperamental collission detection scream of a game that needed at least a few more months of development. To say Dead Island is rough is to be diplomatic. It is, in many ways, a severely broken mess.
Yet ... it's a fun broken mess, at its most ultimate conclusion. So much about Dead Island doesn't work, but its ambitious concept is so earnestly presented and its loot-heavy character progression so addictive, that it somehow manages to get away with a laundry list of problems that ought not to be forgiven. I hate Dead Island, yet I adore it at the same time. Its combat irritates the shit out of me, yet I created a knife that has a 75% chance of making heads explode with one stab! Co-op is obnoxiously restrictive, yet I can't help jumping into games because taking out zombies in groups is so cool. Its story is inane and pointless, yet I found a bonus enemy in the jungle with a hockey mask -- called Jason -- who had a secret chainsaw in his cabin. Dead Island is the kind of game that mercilessly punches you in the gut with one hand and gives you a slice of birthday cake with the other.
And of course, there's a day one patch, with an enormous changelog.
