My Opening Thoughts
So far, I'm give or take, spent some 19 hours worth of these last 2 days here with Dead Island (PC). I've been basically playing this alone as a Single-Player game, for my first run-through. I'll try to play it online w/ other players, in my next run-through...whenever that may so happen to be.
Performance & Graphics
With all the in-game graphical settings maxed-out and some settings turned-up through the NVidia Control Panel, the game looks pretty good and runs very well, without slow-downs, hitches, or anything. It's running here on 1920x1080 on my PC (Intel i7 950, 1 GB GeForce GTX 560 Ti, 8 GB RAM, Win 7, 21'' Acer P216HV monitor). The environments look really good and are quite big in size and scope - such as the first act's paradise to the second act's urban downtown area.
Combat
The combat is awesome - it just looks, feels, and sound brutal in every shape and manner. Body parts can literally be damaged. Swing a blunt object at a person's arm, it'll possibly break it. Watch an enemy's broken arm flop, when they try to swing at you. Swing a sharp weapon [knife, cleaver, etc] at a person's arm or leg, expect a good chance it'll get cut off. Cut off two arms, expect enemies to try and headbutt you, since they sure won't be able to swing any arms at you. Swing your sharp object at a person's head, there's a chance you'll possibly decapitate it. Many objects in the fame world - i.e. explosive container, boxes, etc - can be picked up and thrown. Not only that - most melee weapons you pick-up get can be swung or thrown. Nothing is more satisfying than throwing a sharp weapon at an enemy; letting it get stuck in their body; going up to them, taking the weapon out of their body; and then right then and there stabbing them w/ that same weapon! Your enemies pretty much range from different types of zombies [fast zombies and slow zombies of different kinds of variations] to actually humans.
Weapons, Leveling, Etc.
Melee weapons are aplenty. Not only that, most of them break like crazy - so you'll constantly be fiending for weapons. If it breaks, the weapon becomes weaker - much weaker; practically useless. So, prepare to be switching weapons out a lot, repairing weapons at workbenches, selling weapons, or what have you. Later in the game, you'll even meet a character who'll be there to store your weapons for you [in Act 2]. You can only carry a certain amount of weapons in your inventory, but you can take with you as many materials you want. Littered in the game are mods, which you can use to modify weapons and create new weapons. You can upgrade weapons at workbenches to add damage, durability, and other things to them. You can add even special effects to them [shock, poison, etc].
Guns works a little different. They can't be thrown, pretty much. You can shoot them, of course. Firing them without firing down the iron sights is pretty much hit and miss. You'll want to just get the crosshair over the enemy; then look through the iron sights; and then aim around their body somewhere and shoot. You won't find guns - and human enemies, for that matter, pretty much until a little later in the game [for the most part, Act 2].
Like most ARPG's, each one of the 4 characters has their own set of special skills and abilities for you to upgrade. There's plenty of skills to upgrade and boosts, as you go along. Also, as you level-up more and more, you'll eventually be able to quick-equip more and more weapons to your quick-slots.
Quests, Mini-Map, & Collectables
Quests are aplenty. Most of them, are your typical fanfare of ARPG quests. Most of the time, you'll be going somewhere for something. Maybe you have to see a certain character. Maybe you might have to get a certain item or items. Maybe you have to kill a bunch of zombies or human enemies. Maybe you have to flip a switch somewhere...or a bunch of them. Maybe move an object somewhere. Maybe you have to do a combination of these things. Maybe escort a character somewhere to safety. Usually, quest-givers are in a safehouse of some kind - and most of the characters in the area have a quest of some kind for you. Sometimes, you'll just be roaming around the game-world and run into a quest right that'll open up right then and there.
You have your typical big-map you can open up. Also, you have a mini-map. You can open your Journal and pick a quest. It'll then be tracked on your in-game mini-map and you can follow it. On the big-map, you can add pin-points and it'll track that point you desire on your map. There are vehicles [trucks, cars, etc] that you can drive to get around in the game-world and you also fast-travel to certain main hubs in the game-world once you've unlocked them.
Within the gameworld, there also are plenty of things that are collectable. You can find ID cards, littered throughout the gameworld - kind of like how Assassin's Creed series has plenty of flags you can collect throughout the gameworld...just to collect them. There are also journals and audio-logs, which players can collect to try and immerse theirselves further into the game and its gameworld.
The UI & Some Other Annoyances
The User Interface is fine, but really could've benefited from being navigate by to the mouse. You have to use the movement keys [WSAD or whatever you change it to] to navigate the Inventory. Would've been easier if they associated this w/ the mouse itself and used a mouse cursor.
Another annoyance is when the player picks-up alcohol. For some reason, when a player picks up alcohol, it auto-equips itself in the place of whatever weapon you have equipped on you - which is very annoying. This means you'll have to go back into your Inventory to re-equip the weapon you never wanted unequipped from your quickslots in the first place. There also are no hot-keys to switch directly to specific items.
Though, instead, we have a wheel that we access, character stands still for that moment, and then move the mouse in a certain direction to equip a weapon from your quick-slot. This works fine, but I'd rather also have hot-keys to access one of the quickslots instantly.
Story And Character Depth...And The Lack Thereof
One thing that this game suffers from is a lack of story and character depth. Most characters seem like they're there just to give you quests and things to do. A few characters, namely a few of those in the main quest [such as The Simanoi The LifeGuard and Helen], you can get a real sense of them being more than being just quest-givers. Most of the story seems to pertain to - we need to survive while we can and find some way to get the hell off the island.
Final Thoughts...So Far
When it comes down to it, Dead Island is just an overall awesome game. If you love [slaughtering] zombies, huge open-world environments, and the addictive nature that comes w/ the ARPG territory, this game is most definitely for you. The complaints I have so far have been pretty much minimal from me, patched-up to Version 1.3.0 here - namely, the lack of story and character depth; and some other minor quirks and annoyances. The game is ambition, huge in size, scope, and is very impressive in most aspects. While Left 4 Dead series was great and Dead Rising 2 was pretty good, they're just not Dead Island. If my first 19 hours or so are an indication of anything, if this game keeps this same kind of awesomeness or better - I think it will, personally - Dead Island will pretty much, to me, be the definitive zombie video-game experience.
