The Dead Island franchise is a curious one. Despite not having one entry that could be considered a truly great game since the series’ inception, it still has great appeal. The ingredients are all there for a rip-roaring experience – a nifty weapon crafting system, zombies, a tropical island-based open world, four player co-op and lashings of over-the-top gore – yet the main problems with both main entries and their spin-offs to date have been eerily identical; namely, abysmal frame-rate, loading times long enough to make your entire family a platter of sandwiches, and more issues of freezing and crashing than a toddler riding a bicycle on an icy hill. These flaws are so deeply ingrained in the series they almost seem like features. As I said though, the ingredients are there for a really cracking game if those horrid foibles could just be done away with for good.
So, with the latest addition to the franchise, Escape Dead Island, arriving as a third-person prequel to the original first-person game, can it be the one to fix those problems and deliver a solid spin-off to help take the series forward? Well, I’ll answer that by telling you about my first moments with the game.
Set a couple of days prior to the outbreak on Banoi in the main games, you begin by playing the prologue as an operative searching for a mole you must assassinate and procure vital information from, before moving onto the main protagonist’s tale.
Having played for roughly four minutes of this prologue, after not being particularly thrilled by the cel-shaded, sword-happy combat and terrible dialogue, I came to a cutscene. Well, I was supposed to, but instead I arrived at a loading screen swiftly followed by a black screen. Then I waited for five minutes, went off to make a drink, came back and shut off the PS3 to try again. After all, I’ve had this happen with all sorts of games in the past, so no big deal.
Then it happened again, and again…and again. Same point, every time. Finally, I made it past this loading screen, which was more deadly than the enemies I’d faced to this point, and got to play the actual game. Here it became apparent that initial bad impression was no coincidence.
You fast-forward six months to control Cliff Calo, son of an influential broadcast executive seeking out his own journalistic career because Daddy issues. He and his friends turn up on an island that has been overrun by the infected and naturally end up in in a horrible situation themselves, because no medium that uses zombies as a crutch ever goes with picnics and friendship circles over people getting chewed on. As the game goes on, Cliff starts doubting his own sanity. In addition to having the already stressful task of escaping, he has trippy hallucinations that appear to have no purpose. If the aim was to make the player doubt what’s going on it doesn’t work as they are heavily signalled throughout anyway.
Continued overleaf…
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Escape Dead Island takes a different gameplay approach to the main titles. It tries for stealth-based mechanics with a heavy touch of melee and limited gunplay combat that personifies the Dead Island franchise. The stealth is terribly erratic though; a sneaking method that worked several times before suddenly goes out the window for no valid reason, then works again the next time. I could see no pattern behind it, even going back to previous sections and retrying the same tactics often resulted in a big difference between being spotted or not. Worse still, in trying to be a stealth-heavy game, the combat is left confused about how potent it should be. In the regular Dead Island universe, melee weapons are key to the overall experience. most satisfying part of those games is staving zombie heads in with modified baseball bats and axes, but here, any weapon’s impact has no weight to it, yet they still do drastically inconsistent levels of damage. It comes across like they’re being flung around by an over-excited child with a toilet roll tube version of Thor’s hammer.
The damage you take is handled poorly too. You have regenerative health, signified by red streaks intensifying in the corners of the screen as you take increasing amounts of damage, which is fairly standard as health mechanics go, but strangely, you can pick up health packs that supposedly add health. Where it adds to is a mystery as damage levels remain similar throughout. Maybe two of the design staff had different ideas about the health system and tried to compromise. Or maybe they just rushed it. It’s a puzzle for the ages. Also worth mentioning is that there’s a lot of backtracking, which would be endearingly kitsch if the game wasn’t as appealing as an abhorrent puddle of dayglo vomit.
Hey, the presentation might redeem Escape Dead Island though, right? Sure, if it wasn’t so brazenly obvious that the sub-par graphics are being touched up by applying a layer of cel-shading so thick it would give Jet Set Radio a coronary. From a distance everything looks merely alright, but on closer inspection, large parts of the game look half-drawn and falls far below the average quality you should expect for a third-person action/adventure title. Naturally for a Dead Island game, there are bugs aplenty, little that is game-breaking outside those wonderful freezes and crashes, but laughable animation and clipping issues are frequent guests on this tropical getaway.The voice-acting is probably the best part of the entire game and even that is SyFy Movie of the Week grade.
You may have gathered I didn’t much care for Escape Dead Island. At its best, you can tolerate it. At its worst, you can almost smell the fetid stench of decay coming off it. There is nothing to suggest that this is anything but a lazy, cheap cash-in on a popular franchise. Somehow, I still hold out hope for the series proper to improve with Dead Island 2, but this mess leaves a lingering dread all the same.