HoC experiences Dead Island: two days in

Okay so I know some of you had issues with yesterday's reporting on Dead Island so let's deal with your concerns right away. I am wearing pants. Pajama pants, but I am wearing them.

I am enjoying Dead Island but I am having issues with recommending it right away.

The simplest way I can think of to describe Dead Island is as an RPG-Action game. We have played and enjoyed a lot of games that have been considered Action-RPGs but this is a little more reversed. The RPG elements of this game are very strong. I can see Stormblade and Swag liking these aspects. Fans of Fallout, Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

Dead Island is all about killing zombies, quests and exploration.

There is a huge amount of open world exploring and searching. You have to open luggage, chests, cupboards and search them as well as scavenging dead bodies. I do like the fact that the quests are NOT time locked. I spent 15 minutes exploring the island instead of pursuing my main quest and the game did not care. This was a big issue with both Dead Rising games that counted down your quests so quickly that you didn't have time to explore or experiment.

It's primarily melee. I am 8% into the game and I have yet to see a gun let alone use one. I have used as weapons, oars, hammers, sticks, brooms, planks, baseball bats and pipes. I used duct tape, wire, metal scraps and a motor to attach a circular saw blade to a baseball bat to make a ripper. You have to find all these elements independently.

You can repair, upgrade and create new weapons at designated spots. But you can only make weapons that you have blueprints for. I didn't see any experimenting like in Dead Rising.

The obvious comparisons to Left 4 Dead are misleading. Other than 4 player coop and zombies there is little to compare. I see more Borderlands in this game than Left 4 Dead but it is heavier weighted toward the RPG side than action. Still good but be warned. In fact they have a level up system with three branches of upgrades similar to Borderlands.

You also have achievement progress marked as you progress. Gears of War did this previously, counting down your individual progress toward a larger achievement. For example I have used 7 of 10 different weapons types for kills and walked 4000 of 20000 meters.

I need to play more before I make a recommendation one way or the other. I would also like to try the game in coop mode to see how that works.

If you like quests and searching and zombies then you will like Dead Island.

Minor issues:

One of the quests is to find Alcohol for someone. I keep taking him bottles and the quest doesn't end as he keeps wanting one more. I'd like to know how many he wants to start with. Also sometimes it seems that the Alcohol doesn't count like there are specific bottles that count and some that don't.

I chose to play as the Asian female blade specialist. The game doesn't take this into account and the cut scenes keep referring to me as him and his. Minor issue but it stands out.

There is a large number of survivors but I am the only one that will kill zombies? What's with that?

Things I like:

Zombies!

Exploration (without punishment)

Building new weapons

Huge open maps

Apparently there was a major Day 1 patch released but we won't see it until Friday which by my count is Day 4.

Dead Island is definitely worth it so far but don't think of it as Left 4 Dead – think of it as more of an RPG like Mass Effect or Dragon's Age crossed with Borderlands and Dead Rising.

This combination is not bad at all, it is just different than one expects from hearing 4 player cooperative zombies.