The island is next to Australia, as an Australian I do feel slightly offended with the accents ranging between dead on and ridiculous, especially with the character of Purna. Purna or Sheva Alamor's sister - is a bit too Jill Valentine for my tastes and is wasted as a character with her skipping between frightened to death if you're not playing as her and absolutely cursy and insane. There is a minor amount of storyline which explains why the characters are consistently pissed off, but seriously just let it go. I don't care if it happened before you got on the island or three years ago, but in the context of the game and with all the gore it's something you really shouldn't get caught up in like I clearly have done with the above paragraph.

To be honest, the back story is generic if useful, as it plays into their traits and gameplay and gives the characters a reason to be there. All are hardened, all have experienced prejudice (except Logan, unless you think Matthew McConn...that guy - is gonna sue him based on defamtion of character). Violated or ambiguous morals and slightly racial sterotypes keep the game a bit tense at times, but nothing like the trailer showed.

There are a few minor gripes, like the characters eye movements are a bit twitchy, like all the time, and when characters have singular cut scenes they don't even look at you. It's like rescuing the most anti-social victim in the world. There are a lot of graphical glitches and blurring to cover up some errors, but they sadly take you out of the experience. I hope more work will be done with patches in the future.

Speaking of arse, I don't mind swearing in games or life but here almost everyone says f**k and I get it, you're stressed, everything's crazy, you only have a hand knife, but it's like no more than a minute going past and it's like "F**k me", "This is f**kin' ridiculous" and in the Aussie accent is just added stupidity, it's just me. I'm Australian but I have foreign acceent syndrome and listening to the Aussie accent is so weird, especially in video games and here it's just a point of geography and to show the game is mildly diverse. It works, but not well.

There are some things I do have to commend Dead Island for. For one thing – a personal gripe – the cut scenes are skippable and the story is a bit bland unless you want to see a bit of mildly awkward interaction and bit of gore. The game doesn't pull any jump scare punches in the game or cutscenes, which is really good at establishing both a respect for gamers and the survival horror genre in general. The game does have some incredibly tense moments and action packed sequences that range between mildly amusing and jesus-sweet-christ-run-that-was-so-awesome afterwards, even in comparison to atmospheric classics like Doom.

I want to shake the hand of everyone on the Sound Design Team for making the sound of zombies coming just as intense and awesome like it is in modern films. It's like someone left the foley soundtrack of 28 Days Later on in the background of DOA Beach Volleyball. The blood curdling screams and frothy growling becomes an immediately fun and frightening experience for any first person or zombie player, the rush of one's pulse is transferred immediately from heart to screen as you take aim and ready your next swing or throw. And the music, my God! The music is beautiful in the game and the loading is wonderfully handled being quick and showing great shots of the city. The surroundings, from looking up at the hotel or even just at some trees far away look great and show where Techland's focus was on atmosphere.

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