Prior to 2008 zombie games were a much more niche genre,
Resident Evil, Dead Rising, and Left 4 Dead all being some of the biggest but
never really reaching the mainstream, and then came Call of Duty: Black Ops
which featured a bonus mode originally unlocked after completion of the main
game, titled simply “Nazi Zombies” you and up to four friends find yourselves
attempting to survive wave after wave of increasingly stronger zombies, working
together to kill everything that moves, keeping windows and other entrances
boarded up, and using your accumulated points to open new areas of the map to buy
newer weapons and power-ups. That game sold over 1.41 million copies in its first month
of release and subsequently proved that zombies could be big business, with
almost every Call of Duty title that came after including a variation on the
original zombie survival game-mode. What followed was an onslaught of zombie titles, each with
their own ideas and new twists on gameplay, until 2011 saw the release of Dead
Island, an action role-play survival horror where you are one of four
holiday-makers on the island resort of Banoi who wake up after a rather drunken
few days to find themselves amidst a zombie outbreak and one of few survivors
to be immune to whatever is affecting everyone else around them. What makes this game different is the focus on a more melee
style of gameplay, as well as being able to use your fists and feet against the
hordes you face, you’ll also find everyday items laying around that you can
pick up and use, these have limited use and are often pretty weak but can be
repaired and even upgraded at workbenches, during your travels you’ll also
pickup random materials dotted around, these can be combined together with
weapons at workbenches to create better arms with added benefits of catching
enemies on fire, electrocuting them or even poisoning them. You’ll gain experience as you fight the undead and complete tasks
for fellow survivors, each time you gain a level gives you points to spend
towards additional skills for your character, enabling increased stamina and health,
extra inventory and weapon slots, and even weapons and damage perks, these all
add up and contain plenty of variety to suit your particular play-style. Character quests range from finding various items for
someone to clearing a particular area of the shambling brain-munchers in order
to create a new safe zone, on completion of these you’ll be rewarded with experience
points, weapons, and even blueprints for better items to craft. Everyone you interact with progresses the story in some way,
taking you from the island’s zombie-infested hotel complex through the
overgrown tropical jungles and eventually facing undead criminals deep within
the walls of The Banoi Maximum Security Prison as you attempt to find out what
is really going on and get yourself off the island to safety. Dead Island: Riptide followed in 2013 as a stand-alone
expansion for the 2011 original, continuing on where Dead Island left off you
find yourself now shipwrecked on the island of Palanai, where the infection has
also taken hold, forcing your ragtag group to once again work together with the
uninfected inhabitants that remain in an attempt to survive. This title introduced new gameplay elements to the series
like base fortification and defense, a little more emphasis on guns and
firearms, as well as new zombie types and locations, but was generally
considered more of the same with a slightly different backdrop. I enjoyed both of these games immensely when they first came
out, the atmosphere they set up with the feeling of helplessness at times, then
when you find yourself armed with a particularly powerful weapon-mod and the
belief you can take on the world until a new stronger zombie type rears its
head and puts you back in your place, making your way slowly around corners in
case your confronted by too many at once or hearing the distant roar of a thug
and hoping he’s not stood between you and your destination.
Everything that made the original games so good is there,
albeit now in stunning 1080p with higher resolution textures and incredible
models and scenery, the character models are the only thing that really let
this edition down, they look great but the facial animations are still of a
last gen quality and almost detract from all the spit and polish everything
else has received. It may not sound like anything important but the new lighting
and visual effects are what really improve the new versions of these games, the
sun beaming down through the palm trees, mist and smoke obscuring your vision,
blood and viscera spraying at all angles, if you didn’t believe you were
fighting for your life in the middle of a zombie apocalypse on a tropical
paradise before you will now. The world itself has been given a greater level of
physicality with realism being the key, the sea lapping at the wreckage-strewn
beaches now has depth to it, as do the flooded streets of Palanai and the
stilted town of Halai, the city of Moresby is littered with debris and carnage
and a far cry from the bustling capital it once was, all the locations now have
a greater atmosphere to them and for me that’s the most important thing in a
title of this type.
Regardless of being armed to the teeth or having to pick
your battles because all you’ve got is a kitchen knife and a baseball bat with
a nail in it, without any kind of atmosphere it’s worthless, the sense of
impending danger around every corner really helps immerse you in this world
that has gone to hell in a hand-basket, the original versions of these games
already had this in the boat-load but the Dead Island: Definitive Collection
brings an entire shipyard.
Not content with just giving us a couple of excellent
remasters, Deep Silver have also bundled into the mix Dead Island: Retro
Revenge, a 2D side-scrolling beat-em up in the style of Double Dragon or
Streets of Rage, you play as Max, a heavy-set rocker dude who looks and sounds
like Jack Black whose cat gets kidnapped, your quest then sees you fighting
your way across California to rescue your feline friend. What disappointed me first about this game was that it plays
more like an endless runner than the beat-em ups of yesteryear, switching
between one of three paths in order to attack zombies or dodge obstacles,
timing your attacks with the on-screen reticule to maximise the damage you
inflict and building up your combo to increase your points and power-up your
special attacks. The controls are basic but remembering which attacks to use
against certain zombies can prove annoying and when the stages go on for as
long as they do can make the repetition tedious, the game isn’t necessarily a
test in skill rather a test in patience, the main problem is that it doesn’t
explain itself very well, you are told the controls but figuring out what
you’re actually supposed to do with them is a challenge in itself, charging
your super weapon still seems to be random to me with no obvious sign with what
I’m doing to affect it. I do like the art style however which has a great 16bit look
to it even with a border and screen effect that gives the impression you’re
playing on an old CRT monitor, it’s a neat little touch but that’s really as
retro as it gets, Retro Revenge plays and feels like a mobile game, the only
thing missing from it are adverts and micro-transactions.
Dead Island: Definitive Collection looks and sounds
fantastic if a little light on extra content, if you haven’t played them before
then they’re some of the most unique zombie games out there even now, but if
you have and are yet to play Dying Light from the same developer then get that
instead, you’ll probably find it for cheaper and it’s a much bigger and better game
whilst also retaining a lot of what you’ll experience in either Dead Island
titles.
Dead Island: Definitive Edition is out now on PC, Xbox One and PS4