GAME-A-WEEK - DEAD ISLAND: THE RYDER WHITE DLC

I deliberately skipped Dead Island's "Bloodbath Arena" DLC, because I loathe arena gameplay.  But when the Ryder White DLC came out for Dead Island, giving players a chance to view the game's events through the villain's eyes, my interest was piqued.  I never found White to be very compelling or threatening as the sort of power-mad military antagonist, but I hoped maybe this would shine some light on his character, and give me an excuse to drop back into the zombie-plagued island of Banoi.

And yes, I realize last week I said I'm sick to death of zombies, and yet am doing two zombie games in a row.  Suck it.

What were my expectations going in?

Not high, but not low.  It was just a new character campaign for the game, so at the least, I expected more of the same, with a tacked-on plot. At best, I hoped for a nice insight into Ryder White's character as well as a storyline complimenting the main game's plot, and hopefully I'd get to see some new and interesting areas around Banoi as well.

So how was it?

Have you ever had one of those terrible games or movies that you acknowledge is terrible, yet still absolutely love?   Dead Island was like that for me.  The game is repetitive and glitchy, with broken hitboxes, gameplay mechanics that don't mesh together well, and frustrating controls.  But it's also visceral, violent, and in my opinion, kinda fun in a B-grade horror movie kind of way.  Plus the tropical island setting is often beautiful, and very well realized.  The game is dumb, but it kind of knows it, and never tries too hard to be something it's not.

This DLC fell right in the middle ground of my expectations, just giving me more of the exact same thing the original game had to offer.  And by that I mean the exact same locations, the exact same zombies, and the exact same weapons.  There may have been one or two locales that were new to the DLC, like a bridge to the mainland and a large warehouse, but for the most part it's the exact same city, sewers, and prison levels.  Now granted, this is appropriate to the story, as White is basically following the same paths that the four main characters followed, but it was still a bit underwhelming. 

"You know I'm a military guy because I swear a lot!"

The biggest change that the DLC offers the player is a difference in combat.  In the core game, the player is primarily stuck with melee weapons, offering varieties of sharp and blunt weapons like machetes and lead pipes.  Guns were available in the later game, but they were few and far between.  Ammo was precious, and you only wanted to use guns in very special circumstances to pull your ass out of the fire.  In the Ryder White campaign, the game practically shovels guns and ammo into your hands right from the get-go.  It actually took me a good hour of playing to realize that I didn't have to carefully ration my ammo, and could basically play the game like Left 4 Dead: Tropical Edition.  There were so many guns scattered around, it felt like Borderlands...if they made every gun exactly the same.  

After playing the core game for 30+ hours, this was a lot of fun at first.  That feeling of being able to cut loose after so much time hoarding bullets was very liberating.  After a while, though, it lost its luster, because this game wasn't molded around gunplay, it was molded around melee.  The guns feel like they were designed as an afterthought, and now we get a whole campaign full of afterthoughts.  They aren't that satisfying to shoot, they don't have a lot of feedback or feeling to them.  After a while I found myself thinking "If I wanted to play Left 4 Dead, I'd have played Left 4 Dead".   At least that game makes zombie head shots an instant kill.  After a while, I wound up switching back to the melee weapons just because they're more fun.

I think my only genuine complaint in the gameplay was the difficulty.  Dead Island had some serious challenge to it, and was no stranger to sending a random zergling rush of sprinting zombies at you with no warning, but the DLC seems to say "Well you have guns now right?   So let's do this from three or four different angles at the same time!"  And there are hidden spawn points, so even when you think you killed all of the zombies in an area, more will still inevitably come.  It's not a game-killer, but it did get really frustrating in a couple of areas.

At least they got the splatter right!

The story of the campaign was a high point, but more of a hill than a mountain.  I sort of questioned their choice of plot, because as I said, Ryder White was never that compelling a character.  I honestly didn't think he could carry a story on his own.  As it turns out, as long as the story is a short and simple one, he does okay.  Ryder's main impetus is saving his scientist wife, Emily.  At first he's simply trying to evacuate her, but once he finds out that she's been bitten, it's a race to find the vaccine before the disease sets in too far.  White has to team up with hacker terrorist Charon, who aids the main characters in the core game.  Without spoiling anything, the DLC campaign offers a plot twist that completely changes the core game's finale into something far more sinister.  

I think my biggest issue with White is that I didn't disagree with his motives or actions in the core game story.  Zombie games and movies always portray the military guys as bad guys trying to kill everyone.  While this is true, look at their motive: to stop the infection and save the world.  In that situation, they are actually the good guys, having to do horrible things (usually killing innocents trapped in the infection zone) for the greater good.  Until he goes crazy in the end, I never hated White.  He was a complete prick, but his motives seemed pretty solid: evacuate and nuke the island so the virus doesn't spread to the mainland.  I have no moral problem with this.  The only problem I had with him was that he was trying to take his infected wife off of the island with him.  Beyond that?  I kind of agreed with the game's antagonist.

Graphically, the DLC is, as I said, based entirely in the original game.  This is not a bad thing; say what you want about Dead Island's gameplay, but it's visually fantastic.  Loaded with detail.  The dirty, gritty post-infestation town of Moresby feels real.  The island itself is beautiful, even if you only get to see it from a distance in this campaign.  My only complaint is that in some ways the lighting is very...off.  Character models look realistic one minute, then like molded plastic the next.  And yet there was a point where I was up on the outer walkway of the prison, and the sun was low on the horizon, and down on the cliff, fairly far off from where I was standing, I could still see the shadow I cast, moving along the cliff wall.  That kind of impressed me.

The audio in the game is all right, but nothing to write home about.   The acting in this, especially Ryder's wife Emily, is atrocious.  The voice actors of Ryder and Charon reprise their roles here, and give the same caliber of performance that they gave in the core game.  I think the best word I could use is "serviceable".  Joe Hanna, who does the voice of Ryder, is great for snarling out gruff, angry profanity, but falls short when trying to give any semblance of emotion.  

My recommendation on this DLC is pretty subjective.  The fact is, if you hated Dead Island, you'll hate it.  If you loved Dead Island like I did, you might enjoy it.  The change in focus from melee guns is admittedly kind of fun, and the campaign isn't long enough for it to get old.  While I'm nitpicking, I did actually enjoy my time with it, because I enjoyed the core game.  There's just nothing really special about it to really form much opinion.  Apart from the mildly interesting plot twist, it neither adds nor detracts from the game experience, just gives you a little bit more time with the game.  I guess that's...okay?

Play time:  5.3 hours
Finished:  Yes
Recommended:  Depends on how you liked the core game
Available For:  PC, XBox 360, Playstation 3

*Still the best part of the game is Phil LaMarr as rapper Sam B, performing the opening cinematic song, "Who Do You Voodoo?"  That, however, is just a part of Dead Island, not a part of the Ryder White DLC.