A fantastic trailer for the game fooled me to get it, and boy, was I fooled! OK, the setting is kind of fun, a little like 'Dead Set' (which handles a zombie outbreak from a group of Big Brother contenders), but it is so very wrong.
Zombies belong to the horror genre, and a resort island has absolutely nothing in common with horror. The entire background for the game is therefore flawed, especially when you also take into account that it never gets dark - the mood is still light and happy happy joy joy. Some rain and wind doesn't change that. Here I do think I should mention the virus - the game makes a quite good attempt at explaining exactly what the virus is, but you can't really do anything about it or dig deeper into that mystery.
In the game you can choose between four characters who are quite well described, but so very cliché - you can't go a game nowadays without having a game with a hot black chick - who also runs around half-naked around crazed flesh-eating zombies... *sigh' doesn't cover it all. I couldn't find a single really likable character amongst these four - Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 also lacked better fleshed out characters, but they were more likable than this bunch.
Which brings me to the 'role-playing' part of the game (it has very little to do with role-playing). The game essentially builds on that you have to do all kinds of stupid side-quests, and even the main quests feel like side-quests since they don't really lead to anything major. And, its ONLY during these missions you will encounter zombies - the safe-houses are so safe its ridiculous. You never get a feeling of dread and fear that something will tear down the walls anytime soon, because that can't happen. Which sucks.
For the voice-acting part, well, it's OK. Its nothing earth-shattering, nothing fancy but it gets the job done.
The zombies are... Well, not that good. They are both slow shambling corpses as in Night of the Living Dead and fast runners as in 28 Days Later, and some might even handle weapons. That is OK, but why couldn't the writers have made up their mind on what kind that would be used? Besides, you never have the option to sneak, but you can most of the time outrun the zombies since they won't leave their turf.
The zombies never come in hordes either, which also adds to the lack of doom and gloom feeling a game like this needs. Five zombies running at you is never a horde, only an annoyance.
The good parts are few, but also very good: the navigation system, where the compass constantly gives the correct path to where you are going is great. I also liked the general user interface where you have stamina which goes down every time you run or fight in melee - that made the fights a little tougher.
Combat is mainly done in close combat - fire arms are quite few, and only available in special places, so its generally a bad idea to pick up a gun and fire away at zombies, since you'll need the guns for non-zombie enemies. And close combat is quite OK. I didn't like that weapons could break (no matter how many heads you bash, a crowbar will NOT break), but I could live with that. Another nice feature was the ability to upgrade or repair weapons, or even create new ones which was a lot of fun.
What I turn against is the sanity of going into close combat with all these zombies, all of which were only around when you were out doing missions - what would actually happen would probably be more of a frog-leaping method from safe house to safe house (as in L4D) until you reached total safety or managed to flee the island.
The sound is OK. That is all there is to say about it, because there is so little of it.
The graphics is sub-par. I don't really think one should pinpoint graphics since that always depends on what kind of system you have, but I played the game with high settings, and it still looked bad - the faces of people were clay-like, environments looked stiff and few things looked really good. The only people that looked good for real were the four main protagonists - and you only see yourself in some carefully selected cutscenes.
The game re-uses some areas. That was bad in Dragon Age 2, and it was bad here. Thankfully much of the game takes place outdoors where this is less noticeable.
Overall, this is not a good game. It is not a bad game, but one that might hold a couple of hours of reasonable entertainment, and there it ends. If there will be a sequel, I really hope they get it right.
Zombies belong to the horror genre, and a resort island has absolutely nothing in common with horror. The entire background for the game is therefore flawed, especially when you also take into account that it never gets dark - the mood is still light and happy happy joy joy. Some rain and wind doesn't change that. Here I do think I should mention the virus - the game makes a quite good attempt at explaining exactly what the virus is, but you can't really do anything about it or dig deeper into that mystery.
In the game you can choose between four characters who are quite well described, but so very cliché - you can't go a game nowadays without having a game with a hot black chick - who also runs around half-naked around crazed flesh-eating zombies... *sigh' doesn't cover it all. I couldn't find a single really likable character amongst these four - Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 also lacked better fleshed out characters, but they were more likable than this bunch.
Which brings me to the 'role-playing' part of the game (it has very little to do with role-playing). The game essentially builds on that you have to do all kinds of stupid side-quests, and even the main quests feel like side-quests since they don't really lead to anything major. And, its ONLY during these missions you will encounter zombies - the safe-houses are so safe its ridiculous. You never get a feeling of dread and fear that something will tear down the walls anytime soon, because that can't happen. Which sucks.
For the voice-acting part, well, it's OK. Its nothing earth-shattering, nothing fancy but it gets the job done.
The zombies are... Well, not that good. They are both slow shambling corpses as in Night of the Living Dead and fast runners as in 28 Days Later, and some might even handle weapons. That is OK, but why couldn't the writers have made up their mind on what kind that would be used? Besides, you never have the option to sneak, but you can most of the time outrun the zombies since they won't leave their turf.
The zombies never come in hordes either, which also adds to the lack of doom and gloom feeling a game like this needs. Five zombies running at you is never a horde, only an annoyance.
The good parts are few, but also very good: the navigation system, where the compass constantly gives the correct path to where you are going is great. I also liked the general user interface where you have stamina which goes down every time you run or fight in melee - that made the fights a little tougher.
Combat is mainly done in close combat - fire arms are quite few, and only available in special places, so its generally a bad idea to pick up a gun and fire away at zombies, since you'll need the guns for non-zombie enemies. And close combat is quite OK. I didn't like that weapons could break (no matter how many heads you bash, a crowbar will NOT break), but I could live with that. Another nice feature was the ability to upgrade or repair weapons, or even create new ones which was a lot of fun.
What I turn against is the sanity of going into close combat with all these zombies, all of which were only around when you were out doing missions - what would actually happen would probably be more of a frog-leaping method from safe house to safe house (as in L4D) until you reached total safety or managed to flee the island.
The sound is OK. That is all there is to say about it, because there is so little of it.
The graphics is sub-par. I don't really think one should pinpoint graphics since that always depends on what kind of system you have, but I played the game with high settings, and it still looked bad - the faces of people were clay-like, environments looked stiff and few things looked really good. The only people that looked good for real were the four main protagonists - and you only see yourself in some carefully selected cutscenes.
The game re-uses some areas. That was bad in Dragon Age 2, and it was bad here. Thankfully much of the game takes place outdoors where this is less noticeable.
Overall, this is not a good game. It is not a bad game, but one that might hold a couple of hours of reasonable entertainment, and there it ends. If there will be a sequel, I really hope they get it right.