Remember when we all saw the really emotional, zombie-filled, slow-motion rewind trailer for Dead Island and it looked like it was going to be a moving experience that really made us all fall in love with a new franchise? Yeah, me too. In reality, Dead Island was nothing like its trailer. It was cleverly done marketing that generated a lot of the buzz and shifted a lot of copies of the game (which isn't terrible, but not spectacular) but its generic cast of random people do nothing to engage our involvement. In fact, halfway through the first Dead Island, for no reason whatsoever, all four of these characters suddenly magically appear together as a group even though you're never seen them together before. I understand that co-op is an option in this game, but this one really made the whole thing just look stupid. With pretty damn bad voice acting thrown in, no memorable lines to speak of and basically no reason to actually get involved with your character, the Dead Island series ended up being much worse than it really could have been. Ah well, there's always the Walking Dead for tears in the zombie apocalypse eh?
Dan Curtis is approximately one-half videogame knowledge, and the other half inexplicable Geordie accent. He's also one quarter of the Factory Sealed Retro Gaming podcast.
