With Dead Island 2 going onto Xbox Game Pass a few months back I thought it was about time I got myself up to date with the Dead Island series. At the start of this month I finished up my playthrough of Dead Island: Riptide, the stand alone expansion to the first game, and earlier today (at time of typing) I brute forced my way through the third game in the series, Escape Dead Island. I had always thought this game was a prequel to the others, but it turns out the majority of the plot takes place some months after the events of the first two games. Not that any of this really matters however, as it is accepted almost everywhere that what happens here is non-canonical.
After a prologue mission set two days before the zombie outbreak on Banoi (where Dead Island was set), the action moves forward six months later. Wannabe journalist Cliff Calo (voiced by Joseph May - Blair Witch video game, Horizon Zero Dawn video game) has convinced his two friends, Linda (Jules de Jongh - Dead Nation video game) and Devan (Ako Mitchell - Dead Island 2 video game) to help him investigate what really happened on Banoi, with official reports stating the island is off-limits due to a terrible tropical storm. Rather than try and get to that island, the three have used a boat that Cliff stole from his broadcasting executive father to travel to the nearby Narapela island, which Cliff believes will contain information explaining what has happened on that other island. After their boat sinks, they have no option but to head inland, but are surprised to find the place seemingly deserted. Upon discovering a mass grave they encounter dead bodies returning to life, and in the chaos Linda is bitten by a zombie. With Devan looking after Linda, Cliff heads deeper into the island to look for help, and along the way he meets Xian Mei (one of the protagonists of the first two games) who tells the man that inside a secret Geopharm lab there may be a cure for the zombie virus that Linda is now infected with.
Rather than a realistic open world first person adventure game heavily reliant on battling the undead, Escape Dead Island is instead a third person cel-shaded somewhat linear adventure where stealth is encouraged as much as all out combat. I had to dig out my old Playstation 3 to play this, and I was swiftly reminded how terrible the analogue sticks were on the controller for that. While you get access to both a pistol and a shotgun, I found the analogue so twitchy that I preferred where possible to just engage in melee combat. For the first third of the game things were very difficult, Cliff seems only to be able to take one or two hits before dropping down dead, and the weapons seemed very weak. You have irritating acid spitting enemies who sometimes are able to spit acid straight through solid walls, and you often find yourself being swarmed by enemies and reduced to nothing in a heartbeat. I did like that all zombies can be stealth killed in a single hit should you sneak up behind them, even the super zombies like acid spitters, clawed and screaming undead can be dispatched that way. Frustratingly, the same can be done for you, with the most basic zombie being able to grab onto you from behind. This initiates a quick time event that nine times out of ten I wasn't able to complete before I died.
It is relatively generous with check points, but it had the annoying old school way of having check points just before unskippable cutscenes. There was one fifteen second long cutscene in one of the more combat heavy areas near games end that I must have had to watch some fifty to sixty times, often my actual playtime being a few seconds in length before dying, extremely frustrating!
The cel-shaded look grew on me, though there was lots of clipping and bad draw distance. The more cartoon like look didn't reduce the bloodshed, with zombies often losing limbs and heads quite easily. I thought the story had the potential to be really interesting. Playing as Cliff you are given an unreliable perspective on what is really happening. As the game progresses events get more and more surreal, from conversing with dead people over the radio, to huge shipping containers dropping from the sky, being teleported to different places and having several of the ten chapters turning out to be dream sequences. While I pieced together what likely really occurred, this wasn't a satisfying story, with it left up to you to work things out rather than really explain all the weirdness.
I wanted to like Escape Dead Island, but the clunky controls often left me shouting with anger, there shouldn't be a second or two delay when switching weapons, and the reload animation was far too long for guns. The last quarter of the game devolves into a series of combat arenas, and with combat being the least fun part of the game this caused a real fall in quality. The story got in the way here, with even the game's antagonist creature being battled within a dream sequence rather than in 'reality'. By the time the end credits rolled I was glad to see the back of it to be honest. There are some good parts here, I enjoyed the slight Metroidvania way that Cliff gets access to different items that allows him to explore hidden areas (such as a gas mask to get through poison filled rooms and a grappling hook to reach out of the way areas), and the graphics did grow on me. Still, with Escape Dead Island apparently being non-canon anyway, I am very convinced I will never play this game again in my lifetime.
SCORE:
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