Dead Island is one of those games I remember playing for hours on end back on the PS3. Being terrified of the game while also amused by the sheer graphic fidelity. I beat it multiple years ago and here I am beating it once again.

To put it short this game has aged fairly well at least in my opinion. The graphics still look fantastic all these years later, the zombies scared me multiple times through my playthrough, and overall the enviroments were diverse and helped the game not feel too bland. All of the melee weapons feel satisfying to use. The weapon mods look and help the "tankiness" of certain mobs. The hidden objectives scattered throughout the map are a fun addition to the game. The lighting is mesmerizing.

The zombie AI is wonderful. Each zombie has its strength and weakness and I can see how each character (in a co-op) setting would have something unique to counter said zombies. Multiple times throughout the game I would be doing something just to be ambushed by the running infected zombies. Fantastic.

Now onto the bad portions of the game. The music. Jesus Christ, the music has to be the biggest short coming of this entire game. The games soundtrack consists of the same four songs it feels like. The combat music is even worse. It got to the point where I just turned the music down due to sheer repetition.

The overall sound of the game is bad too. Multiple times throughout the game where the sound would bug out and I would have to reload my save. The ambient sounds in certain areas was fantastic meanwhile in places like the city you could go to edges of the map and hear where the "ambient" sounds were originating from.

The game ran flawlessly at first, however, once I made it to the city portion of the games -multiple- times the game was just take a dump and drop from 144 FPS to 15-20 FPS. I would either have to stop and hope the game adjusted itself or just completely quit the game and relaunch. ( At the time of playing this game my rig has a 3900x, 2080 Ti, and 32gb of 3600 DDR4 ram. Well over the recommended specs). I am playing on 21:9 instead of 16:9, however, I don't believe this to be the issue.

The AI... for humans anyway, is awful. Really. No other terms can begin to describe how pitiful the human AI is. Multiple times the AI would just freeze and not even attempt to shoot in my location if I "broke" LOS. (I say broke loosely because I would be hiding behind a pole or something). Thankfully you don't deal with humans too often so that is a bonus.

Guns are a complete joke and I believe they are there only for novelty sake. Ammo is scarce and to make matters worse guns do next to no damage. Even if you were to play as Purna (the gun chick) I believe they would still be mediocre. One change from the original Dead Island to Definitive Edition is that they have completely ruined shotguns. They used to be a guaranteed critical if aiming at the head, this feature is completely gone and now you have to pump shells into mobs. I just ditched the shotgun after the city due to this. I am also pissed that they ditched the original gun models in favor of the dying light models. In the original game you had the M4, M16, and AK. Now you have this weird AR, a sig 556 clone (that may I add is shared between the single and burst variant) and it leaves you wondering why except for sheer laziness. Also the animations for most of the guns in the game simply do not line up with the new models they have brought from Dying Light (looking at all of the rifles).

The story is lackluster at best. The voice acting is horrendous and the accents do not help in the slightest. This gets progressively worse the further you progress through the story. The final boss battle is one of the most anti climatic moments in recent gaming history and the side quests can be frustrating (especially the ones that send you back to a location you just came from).

Finally, the game is extremely short. I played the game solo, took my time doing every side quest and looting -everything-, and still managed to beat it in 18 hours. This game was obviously intended for new game+ and co-op play. For me I just wanted to replay it after all of these years, I just couldn't imagine sinking more time into multiple playthroughs.

To conclude, despite my many criticisms of the game I still believe it is a gem. The game overall has aged well and the combat is enjoyable enough to make up for the shortcomings of the game. Multiple times through my playthrough I was genuinely scared and the atmosphere of the game is eerie throughout. Don't go into this expecting AAA title quality, however, I would -only- recommend this game if it is on sale.