This is an interesting take on Dead Island. I agreed with many of the points the author made regarding his frustration with the characters, the inventory, and the endless weapon names, none of which seem to make much sense - to say nothing of the economy where you can sell duct tape for $3 and buy it for $150.
I do disagree with his distaste in Gamification. When playing Battlefield 2, I found myself jumping on to Statsverse daily to check my progress. I have no idea why, but I love stats.
When reading this, I had to look up the word 'bathykolpian'. I had a chuckle, and I'll have to use that word in a sentence soon.
Video Games Killed the Video-Game Star (On Dead Island) by Tom Bissell [Grantland.com]