First impressions - Dead Island

It´s funny how zombies always fascinate us. Maybe it´s just that we know what to expect from them. Movies and games that involves zombies are rarely intellectually challenging and most of us don´t even seem to mind. Your main character is trapped in a random location with helpless survivors and your character is the only one who doesn´t seem to get infected by virus that turns everybody to bloodcraving zombies. That´s all you need for a working zombiesplatter game. Just put "open world survival game" in front of everything and zombie enthusiasts around the world rips their pants off. When story isn´t the most important aspect in game there has to be something else that makes the game great. Gameplay mechanics and overall design are essential for these kind of games.

By so far Dead Island has offered me a well balanced gameplay experience. First person perspective creates very claustrophobic and chaotic feel into gameplay. The gameworld is open and it´s free for exploration and you mostly run on errands given by npc:s. The game seems shallow storyvise in which I am not suprised but the overall atmosphere is great. Is it scary? Yes and no. The survival feeling and the dark corners in the game makes you feel paranoid at times. The gameworld keeps you on your toes all the time as difficulty level is increasing as you proceed. I think that this "arcade" feeling in Dead Island is taking a bit of scares away. This is obviously present only because this game is meant to play Co-operatively. Items respawn in places you´ve just looted minutes ago, car that you wrecked and left behind spawns in the place where you first took it. This eats little credibility in the survival feeling but it doesn´t take the fun away. I haven´t tried playing online Co-operative mode yet. A full review will be published soon!