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I believe most of us remember the first Dead Island trailer: a beautiful short m ovie recounting, in a nonlinear way, a little

girl's death and her family's desp erate struggle to save her, after the hotel in which they were staying was overr un by zombies. The trailer led to a collective moment of sympathy and applause a nd many started wondering, and for good reason, what kind of game were the Polis h developers at Techland crafting. Retrospectively, I now realize that I was won over by the trailer alone, since it contained no clue whatsoever about the actu al gameplay. Darkness in Paradise Dead Island doesn't look like you don't count the setting. land is determined to make me e a bloody and visceral first mbat. it had If the forget person anything to do with the trailer, either, if trailer almost made me shed a tear, Dead Is about the sentimental stuff and proves to b Action-RPG which focuses on brutal melee co

The game takes place on the fictional island of Banoi, a tropical paradise which houses a luxury resort for wealthy tourists. Unfortunately, one faithful day, a ll hell breaks loose as the zombie apocalypse unfolds in full swing, thanks to a virus or something like that. Anyway, the main character wakes up in a deserted hotel and quickly realizes that the beautiful island of Banoi has become a veri table hell hole, as the streets, buildings and beaches are crawling with zombies . Thus, the all-inclusive vacation quickly turns into a desperate struggle for s urvival, your main goal being to get the hell off the island. Before all of this, though, you need to select one of the four available player characters. Logan Carter is the rich NFL star, spoiled by fate, who manages to l ose it all because of his neglectful ways and who becomes an expert in throwing knives and the like. Chinese woman Xian Mei worked as a hotel receptionist when the invasion broke loose and, for some reason, is great at wielding machetes, sw ords and other sharp weapons. Sam B is a mediocre rapper, hired to play the same songs over and over again during the shows organized by the hotel. And, being a rapper and all, he enjoys clubbing people to death. Finally, Purna is an ex-cop , now a VIP bodyguard who has a solid expertise in firearms. I didn't really und erstand why I'd choose a character who specializes in firearms in a game that cl early focuses on melee combat, so I chose the Chinese girl and got out on the st reets, trying to figure out what's going on around me. The first hour is probably the most difficult, since you have to adjust to Dead Island's weird control scheme. Walking is very unnatural, as you feel like you'r e constantly trying to walk on ice. Your character doesn't stop walking the seco nd you lift your finger off the W button, but rather lags on for a second, which is where this weird feeling comes from. Sluggish movement aside, there is also a useless mini-game which pops up every time you come across a locked door. You have to shake your mouse for a few seconds until your character manages to break through the door. It would have been perfectly fine if I could have just kicked the door open in one strike, instead of losing several seconds brutalizing my h ardware peripherals. Anyway, the good news is that you get accustomed to the con trols pretty quickly and you'll be out looking for action faster than you can sa y "zombie". Those poor, brave, Banoians! Dead Island's flimsy storyline is centered around the obvious knowledge that you r character is immune to becoming a zombie, which is why he is the only one who can help the other survivors. Dead Island's sandbox world is dotted with hubs fortified locations where the survivors have holed up. The survivors act like qu est-givers, offering you various missions with varying degrees of difficulty, wh

ich you are free to accept or decline. Most secondary quests are of the "bring m e an amplifier/spare parts/food" or "my wife/nephew/mother-in-law are missing, g o find them" variety. On the other hand, there is much more at stake in the main storyline: the goal is to develop a vaccine for the disease which turns people into blood-thirsty beasts, but also to find a way to get off the island. Exploring the island and completing these quests are some of Dead Island's stron g suits. The island of Banoi looks stunning: the sun shines up in the clear blue sky, the wind ruffles the palms' leaves, you can hear seagulls crying above you , not to mention the spectacular gorges, waterfalls and other terrain features. Exploring the island would have been a real pleasure, were it not for the infect ed walking about. The developers have achieved something that seemed impossible at first sight: happily combining a tropical island and an invasion of violent h umanoids. The island's holiday atmosphere is horribly altered by all of the cons equences of the epidemic. The warm, golden beach sand is littered with mangled b odies. Next to a beach ball and a sand castle, a handful of infected are fightin g over a man's carcass. The inviting hotel swimming pools are filled with a murk y, bloody water. Tourist busses and personal cars lie abandoned on the roads, wi th broken, smoking bodies, and scattered luggage let you know that their owners tried to run for their lives as fast as they could. I could go on forever, but I just wanted to point out the great contrasts. Despite being a sunny day at the beach, the game's atmosphere manages to be tense and unnerving, especially at th ose awkward moments when you hear zombies groaning but can't tell where the soun ds are coming from. Pure terror. Unfortunately, this is only the case for the fi rst part of the game. The next chapters have us exploring jungles, fortified cit ies and fetid sewers, where the game's atmosphere loses much of its appeal and b ecomes quite bland. The first act owes much of its great tone to the shuffling - or rampant - hordes of the undead. Unlike, say, Left 4 Dead, Dead Island isn't the sort of game whe re you hack up hundreds of zombies and live to tell the tale. Sure, you can have lots of fun with a lone zombie, punching him and shoving him into cars, throwin g sticks at him and finishing him off with a knife to the head. Come face to fac e with three or four of them, on the other hand, and you'll soon be in some seri ous trouble. Your stamina bar doesn't allow you to endlessly swing a mace like there's no tomorrow, so you need to be mindful of your swings and make sure that every hit lands. Given the fact that the enemies rarely give you a moment's res t, combat gains a tactical dimension. You must always be aware of your surroundi ngs: it's very easy to get stuck among chairs or other props while fighting off zombies or fail to notice that, while you're backing away from a group of enemie s, you're slowly heading towards another one. Melee weapons are a key part of Dead Island, meaning pretty much any object that could potentially be used as a weapon. You can gather knives, cleavers, machete s, broomsticks, baseball bats, paddles, rusty pipes and all sorts of other utens ils. These can be enhanced or repaired using a system that's almost identical to the one used in Dead Rising 2. There are workbenches scattered throughout the w orld, as well as all sorts of "ingredients" (duct tape, batteries, nails, etc) w hich you gather while exploring the island. Once you find a workbench and you po ssess a "recipe", you can craft new weapons that are much more powerful than the average weapons you find lying around. The catch is that, just like in Dead Ris ing 2, weapons have very low durability and they deteriorate as you use them. So me players have been frustrated by this, feeling that the game focuses too much on weapon-hunting. Although I can see where they're coming from, I don't agree w ith them and I feel that, by employing this system, Dead Island manages to push forward the whole survival aspect, making the game much more exciting. Being con stantly at risk of losing your weapons means that you have to approach combat in a much more strategic manner and to manage your resources carefully, which adds to the realism of the game. My only complaint pertains to the economy of the ga

me, which borders on the absurd. You can find money by rummaging around in aband oned luggage or by killing enemies, but you also get nice chunks of money by com pleting quests. The price of crafting a new weapon is extremely high, though. In addition to the fact that I doubt I'd need complex schematics in order to figur e out how to drive some nails into a bat, I don't understand why I have to pay a whopping few hundred dollars to craft a spiked bat. I also want to mention that the way weapons and enemies interact is amazing, tha nks to the realistic damage system implemented by Techland. It's just fantastic how, depending on your blows and where they land, the infected get sliced, diced and eviscerated. Techland clearly employs some people with a finely tuned taste for the horrific: Dead Island is one of the bloodiest games around, which benef its it hugely. Blood splatters very artistically on walls or drips in gross pudd les on the sidewalk, limbs can be severed with well placed swings, and decapitat ing an infected turns its remaining stub into a disgusting, gushing blood founta in. I award Techland the crown for outstanding achievements in the field of grue some views. Now, I did said somewhere that Dead Island is an Action-RPG, so I think I need t o mention the basic level-up system, based on experience points awarded for kill ing enemies and successfully completing quests. I don't have a whole lot to say about each character's specific talent tree. It's true that you unlock all sorts of useful abilities as you level up, but I never paid much attention to the RPG bit of the game. I never kept my eyes on the experience bar, because I didn't c are how many more quests I had to do before I could level up, just how I never t ook too much interest in skill points. I distributed my points around the way I saw fit, picking abilities that seemed interesting or useful, but I never bother ed with figuring out specific builds or anything. To me, the thing that mattered most was the endless slaughter of the infected. I'm sure other players will be helplessly drawn to the RPG part of the game, which is perfectly natural and pro ves that Dead Island can impress various people in various ways. Live fast, die young... and leave a flesh-eating corpse. Co-op play allows you to team up with up to three friends and progress through D ead Island's story mode, just like in Borderlands. The transition from singlepla yer to multiplayer is seamless and, even if you don't have any friends to play w ith, the game gives you a notice every time you are near another player, so you can jump right in. Other than that, co-op play isn't much different than singlep layer, except the fact that the atmosphere of the game isn't that sinister and D ead Island loses some of its horror charm. It's only natural, I say. You can't b e as scared when entering an unknown area, knowing that you have three other bud dies watching your back. So, Dead Island isn't the touching, moving experience the trailer led us to beli eve it will be. Instead, Techland's game turns out to be a fresh Action-RPG boas ting one of the best melee combat systems I've ever had the pleasure of experien cing. The game doesn't come without its mishaps, like the awkward controls or th e poor voice-acting, as well as some minor visual bugs. But I glided easily past these weak points, which I strongly advise you to do as well. You will find tha t Dead Island offers tons of fun and that, taking into account the 25-30 hours o f play it offers and its strong multiplayer side, it's well worth it's price. .chester

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