Smells like bacon tastes like chicken: Dead Island (PC)

Dead Island released as a broken game on all platforms, but perhaps none more broken than PC. Visually stunning and relentlessly ambitious, it has however been patched at least 5 times on PC and several times on console in order to be playable. Some PC voodoo was necessary to make the game run at a smooth 60 fps at 1920 x 1080 on my HDTV or my monitor at 1650 x 1050.

Built from ground-up to be a 4 player co-op, the game defaults on all systems as open to invitations, a feature I turned off immediately to prevent anonymous intrusion. More problematic was attempting to co-op across my home network with my kid. Finally, only running a private VPN using hamachi was the only workable solution, revealing how deep the console first development cycle hits pc ports.

A fascinating control scheme developed for the console allows the player to change the default combat controls from “digital” to “analog”. The fundamental difference is simply swinging a melee weapon back and forth in the digital mode compared to targeting specific body parts and flicking the right stick to attack. This strategic difference as well as XP bonuses for breaking targeted bones makes the easily repetitious combat ingenious.

Oh yeah, Dead Island is a first person open world RPG zombie game set on a tropical resort island. Borrowing heavily from Borderlands and Dead Rising, Dead Island has floating hit points, weapon’s crafting and colored loot with nonsensical names.

Experience is doled out generously as one travels the island, lopping the heads off zombies and cracking skulls. I spent hours simply exploring the opening resort area and killing the crap out of stuff. The dismemberment and skinning mechanics are superb leading to some genuinely disquieting moments of carnage.

Unfortunately Developer Techland goes ahead and ruins the fun by cramming a story into its pulsing snake’s nest of quests, and not a good one. Hampering the campaign experience is the overhang of the spectacular and entirely misleading teaser trailer.

The story makes a feeble attempt at evoking any emotional response with the story of an NPC family that become companions, but whiff horribly, leaving only a constant annoyance in the second half of the game, which is already overly burdened.

Leaving the Resort area and heading into a nearby city exposes more ambient storytelling, showing the aftermath of a full-scale attempt to contain outbreak. It is evocative, until one is driven into the sewers. Reducing the open world delight of the early game to cramp corridors immediately diminishes the experience.

The mystery of the infection leads to the jungle and simply the worst escort mission in history of mankind, including guarding Lincoln.

A full 20-30 minute section of the game is dedicated to escorting a character to another character and then escorting the second character back. It is unspeakably bad and leaves bitter taste after an amazing meal, then is regurgitated by an ending that barely exists.

Dead Island is a delight, if one never leaves the resort area. The fast travel system has near instantaneous loads from area to area and allows for quick quest turn-in’s, but fair warning: Don’t leave the beach.