Dead Island

Let's get one thing perfectly straight. Dead Island is not a perfect game. All of the characters on offer are fairly cliché, in particular the gangster rapper Sammy B, who all too often throws up a GAHD-DAYUM in the middle of a fight, amongst others. The voice acting is terrible, with some never before heard accents on offer... unfortunately the lack of character in the voices makes it hard to give a monkeys about anyone elses fate other than your own. Also, rather shamefully, there are more bugs in this game then there are fleas on a fox. About 3 minutes into the very first section, and before we'd even seen a zombie, we'd gotten ourselves stuck in the wall of an elevator shaft, unable to move, because we weren't standing in the right spot when we opened the hatch on the lift.

HOWEVER.

First of all, this game is BEE-EE-AY-YOUTIFUL. The feeling of being on a holiday resort (dead folks included) is perfectly captured with the golden beaches, clear blue water and BURNING HOT sun. As you move further through the game and encounter all the plague ravaged towns and locations, the feeling of being trapped in this disaster becomes all too apparent. Second of all, and believe us when we say this, Dead Island is f*cking intense. Although the game is clearly aimed at being played in co-op (more on that shortly), the single-player game gets survival horror by the hair and rams it face first intro the ground until its brains spill out all over the pavement. You get two main types of zombie; the walkers who are quite intent on just wandering around, waiting to take a bite out of whoever walks past, and the runners, who scream alot and sprint in your direction as soon as they catch a glimpse of your tasty limbs. Trying to climb up a ladder when you can hear a screeching undead getting close is the definition of fear. Let alone when you try and take down a thug (think zombies on steroids) while surrounded by walkers AND runners. You aren't safe ANYWHERE, and getting some high ground only to become trapped by a horde of the undead grabbing at your ankles is a truly unsettling experience.

What the co-op does, like in most survival horror games, is remove the horror. Sure, it can still be a bit stressful at times, but the fear is no longer there because you know your mates are backing you up. Co-op is how the game is meant to be played, although we would recommend using caution when playing a purely public game, mainly due to the fact we had one guy join us (the drop-in, drop-out is seamless) in our zombie bashing who just ran around nicking all the weapons, loot and money before pissing off in the middle of a fight. The utter shit.

We know what you're thinking. "Oi pricks. You said earlier you don't care about the NPCs, so why do you keep playing?". Well, apart from the story, in place of loveable characters that you'd do anything for just to see a smile on their cutesy faces, you have a talent tree, that you can tailor to suit your playing style. There is also the option to make your own weapons using various bits and bobs that you pick up/steal/take from corpses around the various areas. That and the actual fighting of the zombies! The combat takes a bit of getting used to, but once you've got it down, it's great fun.

Essentially, what we have here, is a (temporarily) buggy first person persective survival horror game, with elements of RPG and a dash of pure terror. Don't forget your sunscreen.