Sound

Dead Island has a great atmosphere to it and the sound design is superb, with the ambience of the island highlighted by the normal sounds, mixed in with truly disturbing sounds that can hint to an imminent zombie attack or worse. It keeps you on the edge of your seat and exploring on your own can be a somewhat daunting experience when you're in a very dangerous area. The scream of the infected really does make you jump out of your skin when you're not expecting it.

Music

The soundtrack is solid enough, haunting and pretty apt too. It moves from exploration themes to tense encounter themes and battle themes pretty smoothly.

Voice

The game has attracted the talents of Phil (Samurai Jack) LaMarr and Steve (Wolverine et-al) Blum. Plus a load of others, these actors do a decent job with their lines and perhaps some of the dialogue repeats a little bit too much when you're standing next to an NPC or so on. But it's not a game breaker.

Dialogue

The script is well written, it has a few moments where the dialogue seems a little clunky at times but for the most part it's a good enough story that it keeps you engaged and doesn't ram pages of text down your throat.

Multiplayer

The true charm of Dead Island is that it lets you drop in and out of a multiplayer game; it checks quest progress and warns you how compatible the game is with the person you're playing. At the touch of a button you can literally join anyone's game that appears to be in the same area as you. Or you can play privately so only friends can leap in. It's up to you.

The game supports 4 players, lets players explore in the same area together and quest together. Some quests require the whole team be present to continue and you can roll with a whole group of 4 Sam B's if you like.

Play is available online or system link only, there's no split-screen.

You can revive downed players if you have medkits etc. All in all, it's good fun and working as part of a team brings a lot of benefits, since many of the classes have team based boons for multiple skill trees.

There are a few issues, such as flashlights not showing up for other players and a few animation glitches in multiplayer, again though, they're not game breakers and the game scales the challenge based on how many players and what level they are.

Funny isn't it?

After getting low scores from certain media outlets, the game is flying off the shelves. I can see why as well, it's not the best game in the genre, it's not the prettiest and it's certainly got its share of problems now and then. What it is though, is fun and that's a highly rated commodity in this day and age of Cloned Shooters. It is truly atmospheric and manages to capture the feel of a zombie horror. It's also great to play with friends.

So, there you have it... dare you explore Banoi?