Dead Island Previews

We have yet another batch of hands-on previews for Deep Silver and Techland’s Dead Island, starting with GameSpot, which doesn’t seem to be thrilled about what the game’s single-player experience offers:

Most items can be repaired and upgraded with the right amount of money. Early on, the cost of improving smaller items doesn’t break the bank, and in most cases, you can fully upgrade thanks to the fact that cash is very easy to find. Unfortunately, the first portion of the game doesn’t give you the opportunity to create new weapons, so that aspect of the weaponry was not experienced.

There also wasn’t much of a difference between the four characters in regard to their abilities. The one specializing in firearms didn’t even have the opportunity to get hold of one. Also, these characters, including the football player, lose their stamina very quickly in the beginning. As you progress and level up, they do improve, but early on, you will have more luck in “hit-and-running” rather than attacking head-on.

After completing the brief prologue and meeting the first group of non-player characters, your initial task is recovering an ID card that opens up the lifeguard station. Once there, you’ll face off against some zombies, and once the area is secure, it becomes your early base of operation. For an open-world game, the opening sections are extremely restrictive; the first missions are limited, but thankfully quite short in length. Once you do secure the location, multiple mission types become available, and the island becomes yours to discover.

Next in line is GamePro, which seems to be very intrigued by what the title offers:

The experience could unfairly be hacked down to merely “Dead Rising in first-person,” but it’s actually a lot deeper than that. Dropping players in a tropical paradise infested with the undead, Dead Island weaves elements of other games and genres into the experience, too.

It even borrows from games like Fallout, considering that — in-between slaughtering zombie hordes with blunt instruments and knives — you’re constantly scouring your surroundings for supplies necessary for your survival, including everything from lighters to cold hard cash. You can spend hours just rummaging through abandoned suitcases and hotel closets alone.

Hunting for equipment might not necessarily sound like the most riveting (or fitting) feature in a game where your main objective is to kill zombies, but this is one example of how Dead Island truly encourages player freedom.

Games.on.net notes some ridiculous Australian accents:

In practice, it’s a bit of a different story. The problem is the characters necessitated by the game’s setting, which is a fictional island by the name of Banoi sandwiched somewhere between Papua New Guinea and our modest little penal colony. Or rather, it’s their voices that are the problem. Techland have a very exaggerated, stereotypical idea of what an Australian sounds like, and Dead Island is full of Steve Irwins. One vital NPC is actually supposed to be a Kiwi a modern-day Maori complete with a facial tattoo, actually, as if it they couldn’t get more deliberate about things but he sounds like a miner from Mackay. If BioWare could get it exactly right with Miranda in Mass Effect 2, I don’t see how things went so comically wrong here. The rest of the world most likely won’t bat a cochlea, but for Australian gamers Dead Island is very hard to take seriously and it all but dissolves the fear of being alone against the horde with naught but a boat-paddle for comfort. Most of the time, you’re giggling and/or groaning. Mostly groaning.

And finally, AusGamers seems overall pleased with the title:

Once you step outside you get a real sense of the immediate environment and a face to face look at the zombies, and how Techland have stepped it up from the visual let-down that was Call of Juarez: The Cartel. It isn’t breaking any boundaries compared to some of the first and third-person games we’ve seen lately, but definitely a great looking game, with great scenery, zombie and character features as well as weapons, weapon-damage and even some decent-looking pickup trucks to get about in.

Starting with a boat paddle for a weapon, I quickly came across sticks, metal pipes and more paddles scattered around the environment. With continued use (by beating the crap out of zombies) these weapons quickly deteriorated and the need to constantly pick up new weapons was obvious.

Zombie heads flying off, being crushed by weapons, or your feet, and a good splash of blood to boot, really made me want to experiment with as many weapons and attacks as possible and really get into the gore. And considering the game it is, this all seemed very fitting and not over-the-top. Luckily for us in Australia, it escaped any censoring or cuts, so we will get to see all this under an MA15+ classification, unlike with the similar-in-theme Left 4 Dead 2, which was clearly unfairly censored.