The island of Banoi is a lush, tropical paradise in the South Pacific where its flagship Royal Palms Resort serves as the ultimate getaway for vacationers with money to burn. However, all good things must soon come to an end – and the picturesque resort falls into madness, carnage and chaos after a mysterious and contagious zombie outbreak claims its once peaceful atmosphere. Cut off from the rest of the world, only four individuals who strangely find themselves immune to zombification have the power to protect the remaining survivors from the horrors of the island, discover what’s really going on and find a way to escape before their own fatal ends.
Highlights:
- In keeping with an atmosphere of desperation and survival by any means, Dead Island focuses on serious, first-person action gameplay with a close-quarter, immersive melee focus.
- With an open-world setting on a massive tropical island, Banoi is filled to the brim with things to do and objectives to tackle, allowing a fresh way to advance both the characters and story at the same time and providing for endless replay value.
- Dead Island’s seamless 4-player co-op multiplayer seeks to provide the most immersive multiplayer experience to date. Players can drop in and out of each other’s games at any time with no loss of progress as well as the ability to continue on alone or with others.
- The ability to enhance and develop your character using RPG-like elements including four unique character/classes, an XP-based leveling system and un-lockable skill trees put the power in your hands to create and play a unique protagonist.
- With thousands of weapons in-game, from simple wooden bats to fire-axes to heavy rifles, Dead Island is a collector’s dream. This in combination with Dead Island’s weapon customization system will enable the player to craft the ultimate weapon to ensure their survival.
- Dead Island’s damage system gives an unprecedented visual detail of the effects of each attack
- on enemies, pushing the boundaries of visualized gore.
- The game’s damage system considers the type of weapon you have and they way you would strike with it as to whether or not you take off a limb or a head or nothing at all.
Hands On E3 Impressions:
When it was time for my turn at zombie beating I went to the media contact for Square Enix and asked where the Dead Island kiosk was. After a moment’s blank stare she turned to someone else and the other woman pointed me to a kiosk with another game playing. So I walked to the back side, not visible to anyone who wasn’t looking for it and tucked in a corner were three consoles set up with a mass of onlookers pushed tightly together, some waiting for a chance to play, others just gawking with amazement. I had really been looking forward to seeing this game, had followed it’s progress as best I could and now it was my turn to give it a shot.
The headset though amazing looking was drenched in sweat when I slid it on but I didn’t care. I was in the zone and the game had a 5 minute timer so I had to savor every second of it. After a little adjusting to the controls and some storyline development I was beating down zombies, watching their blood and gore fly all about and constantly picking up different items from a broken oar to a machete beating and hacking away to save other folks on the island. Five minutes goes by pretty quick and really doesn’t give you the greatest chance to actually get a feel for the game, but the play was smooth, the mechanics and controller response time were excellent and the gore was over the top and fun. I smashed zombies to a pulp and got attacked by burning zombies all while making my way along beautiful beaches and gorgeous seas. I’m pretty sure I saw the sun setting over the ocean just as my time ended and I wanted more. I was already invested in the story and wanted to be on the search for the next weapon to take down the next zombie.
Dead Island was one of the games I was looking forward to the most at this E3 and it did not disappoint. Well, maybe it did just a little bit in that I only got to play for such a short period of time. I easily could have played the same demo over a couple more times and still have been thoroughly entertained. This game is going to be huge when it comes out, taking the best of other zombie based games like Left4Dead and Dead Rising and bringing the genre to a whole new level.
