What was supposed to be a three-hour tour aboard a tiny ship turns into an undead nightmare when developer Techland leaves us stranded in its first-person brawler Dead Island.
It has been a while since we were last marooned on Dead Island back at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo. Now we’re back again alongside developer Techland for another brisk outing in its zombie apocalypse, armed with a wooden boat oar and a pocketful of experience points. Our own personal hell: a tropical paradise turned tropical wasteland brimming with death and beautifully rendered in the same engine as Call of Juarez. We recently sat down to watch a demonstration of what it’s like to go face-to-face with the walking dead in this gruesome first-person brawler…armed with little more than a oar.
Dead Island is all about getting extremely up close and personal with hordes of zombies. Your arsenal is a near-endless supply of mundane items scattered across the ravaged island, including wooden oars, machetes, and the occasional gun or two. If you’re feeling creative, you can combine certain items to make powerful new weapons, a la Dead Rising 2, provided you have the right blueprints. Once you have armed yourself with the deadliest vacation items imaginable, it’s time to take the fight to the horde. You can fight in one of two ways–we saw both styles in action with an Xbox 360 gamepad. The first, analog, uses one analog stick for movement and the other for arm control. This unique setup looks like it will take some getting used to, but it does allow you more control over the strength and arc of each swing. The second, digital, is a more-traditional setup that will be familiar to anyone who has played console action games. The analog sticks are dedicated to movement, while all the attacks are mapped to the face buttons.
The four unlucky people you will be controlling are described as a leader, a tank, an assassin, and a jack-of-all-trades. Each of these characters brings something unique to the profession of zombie killing and can be further specialized by leveling up and progressing down one of three skill trees. The leader, for instance, can be specialized to boost his party’s performance or maximize his effectiveness with the island’s limited gun supply. Techland wants to give you plenty of options for dealing with the deceased by loading up each character with plenty of active skills. These skills can then be used in concert with other player’s skills to devastating effect, such as using the tank’s ability to knock enemies prone followed by the assassin’s ability to quickly slay foes.
Our brief demo opened with a man shouting in our character’s face. We had awoken in a tiny shack and were instantly aware that something terrible had happened. Apart from the man shouting, we could hear a woman’s cries in the distance and some otherworldly growl issuing from beyond the shack’s thin walls. Our character quickly discovered that no one here had any idea what was going on. Determined to figure this out, the character snatched up a nearby metal pipe and turned to face whatever was happening outside. Beyond the doorway’s illusion of safety, two men were struggling to keep a pack of zombies from clawing their way inside. Without a moment’s hesitation, our character plunged into the fray, striking wildly at every rotting face within arm’s reach.
Every swing of our character’s arm carried with it numerous consequences. Most apparent were the gruesome cuts and gashes that we were carving on our victims. The game’s damage modeling seems extensive and, in a twisted way, very satisfying. Each enemy has a health bar and a stamina bar. Draining all of an enemy’s health will kill it, while draining its stamina will only incapacitate it temporarily. Our hero also had his own health and stamina bars, and as he fought, our stamina began to drain, which resulted in less-damaging attacks. His pipe, which had entered this battle straight and clean, had also degraded into a bent, gore-covered mess. Normal weapons will degrade with use and eventually break unless repaired at a workbench, but the aforementioned pipe was not so fortunate.
The last zombie finally fell just as we were approaching our limits. However, it was obvious that even with the immediate threat neutralized the survivors wouldn’t be able to hold out long in this simple hut. They would need to be moved, and to do that we received our first quest to locate a key card needed to open up a larger facility. The quest structure in Dead Island is being designed to flow at your own pace. The entirety of the island will be open from the start, and you can stick to the main quest line or explore this open world and deviate down the numerous side quests as you see fit. However, just before we set out, a sudden flash, a vision, dropped us in yet another unfamiliar surrounding. Computer monitors lined the walls around us, and an ominous, booming voice growled questions at us. Were we willing to kill? Who were we willing to kill? What if it were someone we loved? And with that, the vision ended, just as abruptly as it had begun.
After our character’s senses cleared, we realized that a man nearby was barricaded inside his truck, and that a pack of zombies was about to flip it faster than a horde of drunk teenagers on spring break. Our character entered the fight armed with a wooden oar and, after a brief skirmish, left with a bloody, wooden stump. To show his gratitude for being rescued, the man took us to a workbench where we happened upon some blueprints for an electric machete. It just so happens that our character had picked up a machete on our way here, and after rummaging through a few boxes, he produced some tape, batteries, and wire. The resulting combination sliced and diced just like before but could now also stun enemies for a brief time.
Armed with this new weapon, our character quickly racked up enough experience to level up. With that new level came new skills–in this case, the ram skill, which let the character charge through crowds of undead, and the payback skill, which increased his stamina when his health was low. The road to the key card was a long one, and it quickly became apparent that our lone hero didn’t have the stamina to fight off an entire island of undead on his own. After collecting the tiny slip of plastic, he ended up putting the ram skill through its paces as he charged toward the potential safe house the card was designed to unlock. Any hopes of rest and reprieve were quickly shattered when the metal shutters opened to reveal a massive, hulking zombie within. Fade to black…this is where our demo ended.
In the twisted world of Dead Island, you and your cohorts are not superheroes. You’re just ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances, not unlike the unfortunate protagonists found in some of the game’s inspirations–including the Walking Dead graphic novels and the Lost television series. More than headshots or bunny hops, the most important skill to master is conservation. You’ll need to spend your energy wisely to make the most of it before having to fall back and rest up. And all the joys of zombie slaying can be enjoyed with up to three friends through drop-in, drop-out online cooperative play. Round up all your survival gear, grab your sturdiest boat oar, and prepare to set sail for Dead Island on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC later this year.
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