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Zombies can cover a multitude of sins. They're famously dim-witted, so bargain basement AI and wonky pathfinding is easily masked inside the fiction. And they're always falling to bits, so it doesn't really matter if textures and models are crude. Whoever saw an immaculate zombie?The original Dead Island and its hurried semi-sequel Riptide got a lot of mileage out of this loophole. Neither game was what you could call polished, but developer Techland compensated - sometimes overcompensated - by filling the cracks with gallons of loot, outlandish weapon crafting and knockabout four-player co-op. Both games outstayed their welcome in the long run, but offered enough mid-tier laughs to justify the start of a new franchise. That franchise will decay into slime all too quickly if clunkers like Escape Dead Island are what publisher Deep Silver has in mind, however.
It's actually hard to work out why this game even exists, since its relationship to the core Dead Island series is tenuous at best. Beyond the concept of zombies on a tropical island, a tangential cameo and the occasional pile of suitcases, it could easily be related to one of the dozens of other cheap zombie games that have shambled into view over the last few years.
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