I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so impressed by a zombie game like I have with this one. I’m a big fan of survival horror games and this did not disappoint, but before I go all fan girl with this review I should get down to some facts.

Alone and scared

A good survival horror game, is when you feel isolated and on your own, basically fighting for your life. The premise of this game is pretty simple. You can choose between four different characters that will be the lead character, and all characters have different attributes and things they’re good at. Like a firearms expert, melee professional and so on. It makes for a diverse game and also ensures that it will have lots of replay value, trying out the different characters and ways of playing the game.

After choosing a player you wake up in a dark hotel room, hungover from the previous night where you passed out in your bed. The hotel room is dark, lighted by strategically placed lamps that gives just the right amount of spooky atmosphere. You walk around trying to find out where you are and what’s happened. You can hear distant sounds of something gone wrong. A hotel alarm system, and dreadful eeriness as well. Your first job is to escape the hotel and you get confronted with what you’re up against. The living dead.

Allies that speak

The people you meet on your way to figuring out what’s happened at this once beautiful island resort, are not exceptionally multifaceted but they all have an agenda that you have to ascertain, and most of them have smaller or larger jobs they want you to do for them. The good thing about this is, you don’t immediately have to complete the main objective. There are so many side missions that add to the mystery of what’s happened, that if you miss out on them, you might even miss some great clues. Also, the rewards of the side missions is certainly a great motivator to do them. Either you get better weapons or just a buttload of cash, needless to say both comes in handy.

With all the allies around the island, you would think that it would get monotonous or stale, but the voice acting of this game is seriously well done. They all have more or less Australian accents and the voices are diverse and interesting. You never feel like something is being recycled.

Battlemode that tempts

It’s hard to stay away from a good fight with the zombies, as you progress through the game and get acquainted with all the different weapons you can get your hands on. Not to forget the amount of modding you can do with the weapons. Adding nails to a baseball bat will give you an additional edge when bashing in the heads of the walking dead, and it’s quite the pleasure also. Sometimes I get confused when there’s too many things I have to keep an eye on, like when you upgrade weapons and have to figure out the range of the weapon as well as weight of it and how much damage it can deal. In “Dead Island” it’s easy to keep an eye on these things because you are reminded every time you see a new weapon on the ground. Information pops up so you can see how your current weapon equipped is compared to the one on the ground. This is a great feature, because you have a limited amount of stuff you can carry so you don’t end up grabbing everything you come across, which is a weakness I sometimes have a problem with.

Effects, sounds and imagery

The vast beach area of the resort, as well as the hotel grounds, the village close by and the jungle area are very well made. In the village most of the buildings are worn by weather and neglect and even worse when the zombies wreck everything in their way. The resort area is pretty and there’s always sunshine to illuminate the white sand. It truly is a vacation paradise, so there’s nothing greater than to see the undead walk around these pretty surroundings. Beautiful and scary at the same time.

The real treat for me as a gamer, is the sounds. The wind blowing in the trees, the undead shuffling about or screaming and the happy resort island music that plays in some areas. It all blends together to give you a great sense of where you are, and you can imagine the horror of this place being invaded. Even when the rain kicks in and the sky darkens, the atmosphere follows and gives you a sinking feeling. Almost hard to see where the zombies are.

Final comment

The best accomplishment though, is the playtime of the game and the co-op that you can jump in and out of whenever you see fit. Finishing the game, with most side missions reaches about 50+ hours which is VERY good for a survival horror game. Then when factoring in the different characters you can choose from, the playtime could easily reach about 200+ hours. So this game is more than worth the money.

The co-op part is very clever. The game tells you when you’re close to another gamer who’s playing in the same area and you can team up to handle the masses of undead people. Ever since co-opping in the Gears Of War series, I’ve enjoyed it in other games as well. And this way you can play with a lot of different people. Which means the gameplay always changes.

This is a game I would recommend to all gamers that love zombies, survival horror and a gameplay that is very open and not constricted. I’ve enjoyed many hours with this game already, and I’m not even close to getting tired of it. So go get it, before your neighbor does, or the zombies burn down the mall!