Gadgetory

what's up Internet Kevin here with Texas lunch and dinner bringing you a review of Dead Island for the Xbox 360 ps3 and pc now the game puts you in the shoes of one of four characters are trying to survive on the zombie infested island each character works a little differently and has their own little strengths and weaknesses their Sam B who is a rapper that basically focuses on being a tank and uses a lot of blood weapons Gyan who uses bladed weapons as well as focuses on being high damage output Logan who can use all weapons pretty well and also excels at throwing them Sue's kinda like the well balanced character and then there's Poorna who focuses on guns but can also boost everyone's stats or he can acts like a team leader role now all characters have the exact same skill trees at least a named combat survival and fury but they each have specific different nodes based on that character so two characters who are different but focus on the same combat tree are gonna under having different focuses and abilities Poorna will get faster reload times bullet penetration better gun damage whereas someone like leigh like say sam b is gonna get better blunt weapon damage and the ability to do things like take downs now the game is built around playing co-op with these different characters it is possible actually have co-op games where everyone's playing the same character but it is definitely a little more fun and interesting to have everyone play someone different the drop in and drop out co-op gameplay is actually really well done for all I'm game however I still find that as with most cooperative games it's still a lot more fun to play with your friends rather than just random people online you tend to just be able to kind of strategize work together a lot more and kind of focus on a single goal not to mention you can all intentionally pick different characters in order to kind of balance each other out and the game uses a first-person view for combat which is interesting since it places such a larger emphasis on melee weapons but it does use this to its advantage for instance alongside swinging weapons you can also aim and throw them in enemies as ranged weapons you can use a kick ability to knock enemies down put them on the ground and make them a lot easier to hack away at on the ground you can also do special things for instance aim at a limb repeatedly so for instance of using a slashing weapon and hit at the same arm alot you'll end up cutting out off entirely making an enemy a much easier target to hit alongside melee weapons which range from some more mundane items like baseball bats crowbars kitchen knives the game also does feature guns but they play a much less prominent role they do come up a lot more later in the game but ammo for them is still very sparse compared to a baseball bat which you can just swing until it breaks guns are awesome when you have them I mean it's a ranged weapon with a high firing speed that can take enemies out it's just that with how rare ammo is you kind of want to save it for the times they really need it now the other thing is that while the game does use an FPS style interface for using guns it still acts more like an RPG so for instance head shots aren't instant kills they're just higher damage so for against particularly tough zombie you could still take ten or twelve headshots to take them out if your guns not very powerful now the flow of the game uses a semi-open world for players to explore while also engaging in a number of missions to complete in order not only get quest experience but also to advance the main plot players are free to roam the island as they wish if they just want to explore around to pick up random items kill zombies for loot and experience one of the cool thing you can do is that while picking up a lot of junk loot things like circular blades wires batteries you can use these items to modify your weapons to gain special properties for instance one of the weapons I was able to make was a baseball bat with a buzzsaw attached to the middle of it which was awesome I was also able to make a gun that had electric bullets so I could also shock enemies at times which dealt a lot more damage not to mention making them paralyzed for a while now one of the downsides to this is that weapons also take durability damage and overtime you need to repair them it's kind of one of the odd parts of the game because you have to pay money to repair a weapon at a workbench even though you're the one doing the repairs it's a little awkward but it's basically a game the only way of really keeping track of some kind of commodity you have to use up to keep your weapons repaired one of the other kind of interesting aspects of the game is the way health works dying isn't too big of a deal you just instantly respond not too far away from where you were before you just lose a chunk of money which you mostly use to repair items or buy stuff from vendors what's kind of funny about it though is that the main way of recovering life aside for med kits is by constantly drinking energy drinks or picking up snack bars there littered everywhere around town and you just instantly eat them and gain life when you see them so if you're low on health and you see you like a 12-pack of energy drinks you're just down all of them to recover your life which is really unhealthy when you think about it and kind of weird one of the other kind of awkward aspects of the game too was the exploration system getting from point A to point B can take a while in some cases the game does have fast travel points but you can only fast travel to and from them while you're at one so you can't be in the middle of and want to get back to the main base you have to walk all the way to your nearest node and go to the next one it does amp up the feeling of survival but in some cases it can just feel really monotonous when you're running back and forth back and forth just to help complete certain quests the game does also have cars which you can use to travel main roads and run over zombies they show up a lot more earlier on the game you do find them later but they just don't come up as often which is kind of weird now overall Dead Island does make for a fun multiplayer experience but as a single-player game it basically falls flat what little storyline the game has honestly just isn't that interesting and half the time it feels like they're trying to have more emotion than they really do it was kind of a letdown really because the initial trailer they showed off for Dead Island made it look like this really kind of emotional holy crap zombies and you know people's lives are ruined kind of thing doesn't really come across in the game it's mostly just lets hack up zombies and complete mission objectives that being said it is a great multiplayer experience if you've got friends that also want to play the game definitely pick it up and play in multiplayer but if you're just looking for something to play as a single-player adventure there are other things to get right now a lot more games coming out this holiday season so might as well wait for one of those well that's our review of Dead Island for the Xbox 360 ps3 and pc stay tuned later this week when I give you guys my full review of Gears of War 3 for the Xbox 360 till then I'm Kevin for tald thanks for watching you