I have been preparing for the zombie apocalypse for years now. I know where a stash of canned goods and essentials are. I know where to go if I need guns and ammo. I have even prepared my wife by telling her that I will defend her as long as I can, BUT if she gets bit, I will not hesitate to shoot her (I’m being serious!). But as we all know, until the zombie apocalypse actually starts there is not much you can do to train for it. And this is where Dead Island enters the scene.

Dead Island, the newest game by Techland, is the closest thing you can get to a zombie apocalypse simulator. Taking place on a resort island, all is well in paradise until you pass out drunk. When you awake from temporary alcohol induced coma, you find that the Island has been taken over by a virus that has turned most of the islands tourist into flesh eating zombies. Now you must either band together with friends or set out on your own in a quest to find a way off of the island.

Dead Island Gameplay

Now for those of you who worried that this game would be some sort of Left4Dead clone or a First Person Dead Rising, allow me to go ahead and set your mind at ease. Dead Island is a game of its own right, but a lot of game elements seem to be clones of Boderlands. You have skill trees that are specific to each of 4 characters, do a ton of looting of luggage and other boxes, help up incapacitated friends, and can find a bazillion different weapons in 5 color classes (orange being the rarest and white being the most common). But even though the general elements of gameplay are a clone of Borderlands, Dead Island has a very unique feel to it.

Upon entering the game, you meet up with a small group of people in a shack that are downtrodden. It is obvious that they are going to die unless you help. They will give you a few missions and out you go. Pretty quickly you realize that you can pick up almost anything and use it as a weapon. (boat paddles, pipes, shovels, broom handles, sticks, etc) As you progress in the game you will start to find more conventional weapons like hammers, machetes, knives, and baseball bats. While a lot of the videos show guns, they are few and far between. Ammo is almost as scarce. All weapons have a color code, with white being the most common, and orange being the rarest.

As soon as you find a work bench, you can upgrade and repair weapons. Similarly to the work bench in Dead Rising, you can also combine items to make weapons. But it is not just 2 items and you duct tape them together. These weapons are detailed. For instance to make the Ripper mod, I had to collect a baseball bat, saw blade, metal scrap, wire, batteries, and duct tape. Once completed, I could look at the weapon in my hands and see how the game used every part.