Combining survival horror with Diablo-style loot, 2011’s Dead Island is a frantic, grimy first-person RPG and a minor viral hit with a long legacy. Developed by Techland, who had the trilogy of Call of Juarez games for the 360 under their belt, Dead Island made waves with a viral trailer that promised a moody, atmospheric experience to stand out amongst the brain-eating hordes of zombie games. Despite some clunky gameplay, they mostly succeed!

I remember when this game came out when I was in high school, it had a ton of buzz from the trailer, early reviews and the Borderlands-style action RPG elements. It sold out at local GameStop’s in my area and my friends and I had trouble tracking down a copy. Ultimately, I didn’t get very far in the game and going back to it I can see why. Dead Island has a steep difficulty curve to start, with the combination of zombie ambushes and weapons that break down leading to frequent deaths. The dread in early areas make Dead Island an excellent horror/RPG combo. You constantly hear the moans of infected around you, and deciding which rooms to inspect for fear of alerting a horde of zombies kept me on the edge of my seat for the early stretch of the game.

Like in Diablo or Borderlands, you select a character with different abilities. I chose Xian, a Hong Kong spy working undercover as a hotel receptionist, who favors blades. Decapitating zombies with machetes feels great. Dead Island has a limb-targeting system; aiming for arms, legs or the head helps you defeat zombies faster than blindly slashing at a mass of flesh-eaters. As your weapons break down, you must constantly loot or buy new weapons; it feels great to upgrade to an electric blade that slices through enemies. Eventually I felt burnt out by the combat, as the weapons and enemy types did not evolve to keep me engaged for the entire game. The story takes you from a tropical resort on the fictional Pacific island of Banoi, to a dense city overrun by zombies and finally a jungle with hidden labs and prisons as you work to help survivors and uncover a plot behind the outbreak. The second half of the story loses steam in my opinion; I missed core group of survivors you helped in the resort and city areas and their human elements were more interesting than another generic lab-created outbreak.

Dead Island sold over 5 million copies in less than two years, and despite a standalone expansion, Riptide, it took publisher Deep Silver over eleven years to produce a real sequel in Dead Island 2. Developer Techland, meanwhile, followed up with Dying Light in 2015 and Dying Light 2 in 2022; evolving their ideas for bigger and better zombie games.

Game Design: 3/5 Vibes & World: 4/5 Fun to Play: 3/5

Bonus Points:

• Limb-targeting hack ‘n’ slash.
• Special, mutated zombies that explode or spit acid
• Taking out a swarm of zombies with an exploding barrel or homemade molotov cocktail.

Current ranking of all Xbox 360 games:

• #1 – Singularity
• #2 – Dead Island
• #3 – Kameo: Elements of Power
• #4 – The Club
• #5 – Too Human