As the name suggests, Dead Island Definitive Collection presents an opportunity to explore the significance of its namesake. Dead Island was originally announced in 2007 through Polish developer Techland. Fallout 3 happened in 2008, Borderlands happened in 2009, and Dead Island disappeared to (presumably) adapt influence from its hopeful peers. It re-emerged in early 2011 with one of the better videogame trailers in recent memory and laid ground for a release later that summer.
Ironically, the completed Dead Island had absolutely nothing in common with its serene trailer. In a double-twist, it wound up being a pretty fun game anyway. In my five-year-old review, I liked its unique setting and synthesis of disparate mechanics, but found fault with its naive pacing, poor balance, and rich catalogue of glitches and bugs. Dead Island punched above its weight, but earned more of a technical victory than an impressive knockout. Expressed numerically, it was one hell of a seven out of ten.
Dead Island sold very well, or at least enough for it to be positioned as a tent-pole franchise for its publisher. Fewer than two years later, Dead Island: Riptide—the other half of Dead Island Definitive Collection—proved to be a dutiful but uninspired successor. 2014 saw the emergence of Dead Island: Epidemic, a MOBA-like spin-off. 2015 witnessed Dead Island: Epidemic’s cancelation before its official release. Somewhere in there was Escape Dead Island, another spin-off that was a critical disaster. Dead Island may have had a very strong debut, but games that followed have been an escalation of dread and misery.
Dead Island Definitive Collection’s place gets trickier when discussing Techland’s recent work. Dying Light, released through a different publisher, is Dead Island 2 in all but name. It created meaningful changes to Dead Island’s combat and quest systems, and defined itself with a greater emphasis on character movement. Dying Light is a proper sequel, sporting a healthy balance of innovation and familiarity. Meanwhile, the actual Dead Island 2 is shuffling through different developers, blowing past release targets, and finding its page de-listed from Steam.
As either a stopgap or a sincere attempt modernization, Dead Island Definitive Collection is now available. Both Dead Island Definitive Edition and Dead Island: Riptide Definitive Edition are available digitally as a $40 package. For the same price at retail, however, Dead Island Definitive Collection also includes Dead Island Retro Revenge, a pixel-art side-scroller that appears to adapt ideas from endless runners and beat ’em ups (as I was not provided with a retail version, I have not played Retro Revenge and cannot accurately relate what value it brings to Definitive Edition’s package).
What I can provide is an examination of Dead Island’s place in 2016. Five years ago, Dead Island was a crude but effective take on open-world role-playing games. It delivered a satisfying number of missions and augmented them with a clever, albeit derivative, loot and weapon creation system. Challenge came by the island of Banoi’s relentless population of angry and occasionally specialized zombies. Balance and pacing were frequent problems—Dead Island couldn’t figure out if it wanted to be a four-player loot fest or a solo decent into tropical horror—and the game went on for at least one act too long, but, overall, Techland did a bang-up job assembling Dead Island’s disparate ideas.
Dead Island’s open world of Banoi, composed by a posh beach resort, eviscerated city, steamy jungle, and crumbling prison, was its most striking asset. At the time, Mad Max had become a bizarre influence on videogame art direction, leading to the previous generation’s overwhelming visual stench of grays and browns. Dead Island’s first act, with its cerulean waters, inviting bungalows, and winding mountainside accents set it apart, visually and mechanically, from everything else in its company. The remaining three environments gradually lost this appeal, but it at least showed Dead Island was capable of coming up with something to say without borrowing support systems from other games.
Combat, or, to put it more appropriately, an optional part of combat was another of Dead Island’s strengths. A range of melee options were available up front while the last quarter of the game made a larger reach toward firearms. The secret best part of the game, however, was buried in the options menu; analog combat. This allowed the player to essentially wield a club (or handheld death machine of your choice) with the same ratio of movement as an analog stick. Even with a significant amount of practice this option was still a bit clunky, but it allowed better targeting of specific limbs and felt much more satisfying when practiced. Analog combat was just about the only edge Dead Island held over its much faster cousin, Dying Light.
Dead Island’s world may have presented better if I were convinced Techland was creating a campy (or terrible) story on purpose. Each character is a mess of embarrassing stereotypes, including but not limited to Sam B and his signature hit Who Do You Voodoo (Bitch). It would be hilarious if the cast wasn’t also trapped inside tense and scary situations and saddled with a deathly serious story, all of which suggests Dead Island’s narrative was assembled to fit the needs of its structure. This is fine, but without leaning into either genuine horror or silly camp, Dead Island lacks any sort of tangible identity.
Dead Island: Riptide was a functional extension of Dead Island. It added a few new specialized zombies, another character, attached one-off dungeons called dead zones, and allowed the piloting of boats to compliment the greater frequency of water-based environments. It also made room for some AI assistance in the absence of other real humans, pushing Riptide’s identity closer to a rock ’em sock ’em loot grind. You were also allowed to import your existing character—handy for filling out that skill tree—or start Riptide at level 15.
Riptide’s problems were an extension of Dead Island’s problems. Few improvements made to structure, variety, and pacing made Riptide feel like a questionable encore to a set list that ran out of hits halfway through the show. Fetch quests are a necessary evil in open world games, but you get the sense that Riptide absolutely revels in them. Consequence is a mandatory part of game design, but Riptide still can’t figure out how to punish a player. Combat, even in analog mode, devolves to an irritating process doomed to endless repetition. If Dead Island limped and fell over the finish line, Riptide was in no condition to start another race.
For its part, Dead Island Definitive Collection has a handful of goodies to sustain its trip to a new generation of hardware. Along with all of the downloadable content that originally complimented both games, Definitive Collection has a shortlist of upgrades. Here they are, copied directly from my press email:
· Higher Quality Textures
· Photorealistic new lighting system
· Physically based shading
· Image quality enhancements via anti-aliasing
· Improved-quality game models and geometry assets
· Horizon-based Ambient Occlusion and motion blur effects
· Updated game UI
· Power Fists Power-up
With the exception of the final entry I cannot identify any of the listed items. It could have taken a significant amount of work or it could have taken a week, I have no idea. Qualities I generally look for—improvements other last-gen upgrades have made the standard—like a commitment to sixty frames-per-second, modern animations, and fixing a plague of bugs is non-existent. Definitive Collection isn’t keen to brandish any sort of evidence that Dead Island can compete, visually or mechanically, in 2016.
The exception to this comes with the optional one-punch mode. Adapted from a PC mod of the original Dead Island, it lets you obliterate your opposition in single punch. With one tap of your kick or weapon, walkers go flying and frequently explode into body parts. More specialized zombies can absorb a few more blows, but one punch remains an insane and hilarious cheat. Cynicism arrives when one realizes the only meaningful contribution to Definitive Collection came from the work performed outside of Techland, but I can’t totally fault its inclusion (and it should be noted that trophies and achievements are rightly switched off when this mode is selected).
An audience exists for Dead Island’s intemperate reprise. An ideal scenario places the player with three friends blasting off and indulging in carnage across Banoi and Palanai. With a focus squarely on pulverizing opposition and wreaking havoc at every available moment, Dead Island might be fun to play again. If it’s you’re first time and you’ve never experience the open-world finesse of The Witcher 3, admired the technical wizardry of Uncharted 4, or found yourself under the tormenting power of Diablo 3’s loot grind, Dead Island may offer some new ground for you to cover.
It may not be fair to compare a pair of five and four year old games, respectively, to the current generation’s finest output. In the absence of Dead Island 2, in the shadow of Dying Light, and under the avalanche of similar, better games, however, Definitive Collection’s pleas for inclusion appear feeble and apathetic. 2011 was charitable to Dead Island. 2016 almost holds it in contempt.
