Review of Dead Island

Let me start off with the negatives first. The singular purpose of every character other than yours is to send you on fetch quests. Besides that, they don't have any personality or additional dialogue. The plot consists of: go there, do that, come back, move on to the next group/area. Any events that happen that leads to you getting off the island could all be cut together in about 5 minutes tops. The voice acting is sub-par to the point where it sounds like they're reading the script for the first time, and there isn't a whole lot of diversity of zombies. Now on to the good parts. The resort, village and jungle is beautifully and intricately designed and could very well have been a real place. The combat is the game's finest point, with the weapons crafting adding to this. The zombies are relentless and despite lacking diversity in move sets and design, it is very easy to get swarmed if you don't watch your back and some of them are truly horrifying to look at. All in all, Dead Island is a good combat-driven zombie massacre that could have been a great one had there been more effort put into the characters, dialogue and plot.