Dead Island Previews

We have two more hands-on previews for Deep Silver and Techland’s Dead Island, both seemingly tentatively positive about the zombie-themed open-world action-RPG.

We start with Stuff:

Just outside the cardboard-thin front door, a man is attempting to fight off a horde of zombies. Rather than helping him themselves, the other refugees scold you for not saving him – a common theme through the early part of the game as you seem to be the only survivor capable exiting the house. The trick to Dead Island, we’re told, is not to ask why.

So it is with oar in hand that a first taste of combat is had and the visceral, melee focused nature of Dead Island is revealed. The target zombies have floating health bars offering both the level and variety of zombie. In addition to the experience points that come pouring out of their husks like they were rotten piñatas, these really drill home the RPG feel that comes through in moments of this game.

In the early play available there were only two zombie types on show the Walkers – the fodder – and the tougher Thugs, capable of hitting the player to the ground in a single swing if allowed to close. It’s worth pointing out here that Dead Island wears its influences on its sleeve. The team at Techland are fans of the TV series The Walking Dead, something evidenced by the term “Walker”.

Back to the combat, misjudging a weapon swing, or simply getting surprised leads to a quick time event to try to escape. Immediately, though, there is a slight disconnect as the range of your swing is often hard to gauge, even after 15 minutes of clubbing the shambling horde there were still extended periods of time spent swinging and repeatedly missing as we try to determine the active length of our chosen weapon.

Then we move to 3News, that worryingly compares the melee combat to Oblivion’s not-stellar implementation:

The fight mechanics are fairly loose. I’d liken it to the melee combat in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. It absolutely works, for this type of game, but it’s not nearly as precise as a lot of other games and that might frustrate some players.

In saying that, I didn’t get my hands on a firearm the whole preview session. I threw a decent amount of knives, broom handles and oars at the undead, for sure, but I was deprived the joy of blowing any brains out with a sweet as gun. The physics engine will probably seem a lot more realistic when you have a firearm in your hands rather than a melee weapon.

There’s an emphasis on breaking limbs or body parts of the zombies. The word ‘˜BREAK’ pops up on-screen when you achieve this and the animation goes to slow-mo to further highlight the physical damage you have just inflicted.

If you get the timing just right as a zombie is advancing and smack them upside the head they reel backward, which I think I fluked a few times, but most of the time it’s just a button masher. As you progress you do unlock various special moves to perform which does make the fighting a little more complex and a lot more satisfying.