Introduction

This cinematic trailer was the first glimpse most people had of Techland’s new first-person zombie beat-‘em-up, which takes place on a tropical resort in the heart of Papua New Guinea, just north of Australia. It’s beautiful and heart-wrenching, but in the grand scheme of things it had very little to do with what the gameplay turned out to be like. Unfortunately (if unsurprisingly), this had a negative impact on many early opinions of the game with many anticipating an emotion-fueled survival horror experience, as opposed to the “Borderlands with zombies” vibe actual gameplay footage gave off. And no, undead children do not make an appearance.





Mounting expectations and nerd rage in the wake of that announcement earlier this year notwithstanding, Dead Island has finally arrived. It makes no apologies (except for sexist jokes, apparently) and in fact is very unlike most other games set during an outbreak of the seemingly undead. Its focus on melee combat fought using anything you can find laying around is in direct opposition to the norm, which dictates the player be given ample supplies of firearms and ammunition with which to defend himself. This up-close-and-personal style of survival is the crux of Techland’s design gambit, but did it pay off?

Despite its rocky start on Steam last week, the best way to experience Dead Island is definitely on PC. By spending at least $10 less than you would on the console versions, you get a choice between using keyboard/mouse controls or a gamepad, higher resolution graphics, the opportunity to tweak the game for even better visuals than the developer intended, and the ability to mod the game however you see fit. Indeed, the PC community has already figured out how to tweak the game files to do all sorts of things, but we’ll get to that later. First, I’m going to tell you about how it plays vanilla, so read on!