The success of the original Dead Island has led to a number of spinoff games, even including a MOBA, and there are no signs this trend will slow down. At this year’s PAX Prime, we had a chance to check out one such spin off, Escape Dead Island, as well as the current gen sequel to the original game, Dead Island 2.
Escape Dead Island
Escape Dead Island is a third person action-adventure title that serves a sort of stop-gap game between the original Dead Island and Dead Island 2. Dead Island 2 isn’t coming out until next year, so Escape Dead Island is intended to keep you sated until then. This particular title is last gen only (XBOX 360, PS3, PC) and represents a significant departure from the series’ tradition as it is an entirely single player experience.
In Escape Dead Island, you play as Cliff Calo, who is investigating the events of the first game. As you would expect, things don’t go so great when Cliff arrives on Banoi and he isn’t taking it all so well. Prone to hallucinations, the player must decide what is real and what isn’t. In my demo, everything started out black and white, with the exception of the blood red sea before me. As I navigated a number of platforms rising out of the water in front of me, zombies began to attack. Easily dispatching them, I moved from platform to platform, before reaching the end of the sequence and ‘waking up’ to a fully colored world. But was this the real world or not? It’s hard to say. As you move around through the island, you’ll notice subtle things, like chairs or tables moving when they shouldn’t, and it all helps to drive the surreal experience that all may not be as it seems.
Things are completely different in terms of gameplay, too. The HUD is completely minimalistic, for one. As far as combat goes, Cliff can only take a couple of hits before going down, so it’s important to avoid being swarmed. The best way to do this is to take a stealth approach. That’s right, stealth in a Dead Island game. You can crouch to sneak and then shank zombies with a screwdriver if you can close in on them without being detected. Melee combat is a simple mix between light and heavy attacks and you can also shove zombies away to help deal with being swarmed. Shooting felt tight, but it makes noise, so it’s important to keep that in mind given Cliff’s fragility.
Over the course of the demo you’re trying to meet up with your father in the hopes of getting a helicopter lift off the island, but things take a turn for the worse once you find him, as it turns out that Cliff’s dad is now a zombie himself. The demo ends with a fairly easy boss fight vs. Cliff’s dad. I was able to dispatch him with three well timed heavy attacks, but this may have just been tuned for the show floor demo.
Escape Dead Island will be available for $40 on the XBOX 360, PS3, and PC on November 18 and those who pre-order the game will be given access to the beta of Dead Island 2.
Dead Island 2
Dead Island 2 is a tougher nut to crack than Escape Dead Island. In place of a proper demo, the show floor demo simply consisted of some loose objectives and a bunch of wandering zombies to kill. The demo seemed set up more to show off some of the key differences from the original game, namely the eight player co-op (up from four) and the intuitive weapon mod system. Running around the area and collecting electronics let me modify my machete with an electrical charge, which is great for stunning zombies, especially the larger ones that can really lay down some pain on you if they close in. I was also equipped with a revolver that could be modified to fire flame shots after collecting enough gasoline.
Thankfully, weapons are actually useful in Dead Island 2. You aren’t going to spend your time spam kicking zombies worried that your weapons will break. No, you’re a zombie slaughtering machine, and the demo didn’t spare any time emphasizing this. Combat in Dead Island 2 is brutal with the way you’re hacking apart zombies left and right and you can even chain execute zombies in some pretty gory ways that end up making you feel like a zombie killing superman. It almost feels more like playing Dead Rising than Dead Island. Our demo ended with a simple event where we were tasked with defending a gate from attacking zombies. At no point was I worried about the zombies actually cracking through the gate, instead, I was just hoping to beat the zombie kill counter of the dude playing next to me.
Personally, I’m more of a fan of zombie games that make you fear for your survival, but if you’re looking for a game where you can just tear zombies apart, Dead Island 2 will almost definitely scratch that itch.
Dead Island 2 will be available on the XBOX One, PlayStation 4, and PC in Spring 2015.
