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.