I will echo the cries of crap story, though it was a great improvement on the voice acting of Dead Island. Because of there only being a single character to play it drastically reduced the diversity of player characters and left you with an American white guy, but it also got rid of those awkward cut scenes and instead kept those moments half-life style immersive, which I felt was an improvement, even if it does take your hand off the controls sometimes.

The parkour is a great improvement, and not having character specific weapon upgrade paths does mean that you can develop in a focused direction short term but her everything long term. The combat is hit or miss for me, I feel like it is largely an improvement from Dead Island, but it no longer gives me explicit level information about what I am fighting, and if they aren't keeping some sort of scale to my level then I would swear I am getting worse at this game.

Not having to pay for repairs and upgrades was a huge step in the right direction, and while I miss my nice weapons when they go away the limit on number of times repaired means you can't just make a way too awesome weapon and go nuts with it. All in all the crafting is decent in its own right, the major justification for scavenging and looting, and vastly better than Dead Island.

The day/night cycle I have mixed feelings on. It does make for some super tense moments and is a neat way to change the power dynamic and provide occasional power leveling chances, but mostly I just find it way too stressful. If I adjust the brightness to make it easier to see it is a little less so (though that feels a bit like cheating) but that still doesn't change the increase in general zombies aggression or the volatiles, but this might just be me being a wimp/not as skilled and dedicated to gaming shenanigans, so take it with a grain of salt, and if you want a game with a consistent cycle between reasonable and crazy, this should be a good time.

I haven't beaten it yet but that is mostly a function of increased demands on my time and a new apartment that doesn't have a good chair to game in without making my back and neck a problem. I would say start with a rental if you can and see, it isn't going to win everyone over, but it does have some legs as far as being a solid play experience with a combination of zombie sandbox game with agility while having some fun missions (if poorly justified by the story). I would say 8-8.5, losing points for story and still having some rough edges (though a great leap forward from Dead Island). I am actually excited about Dead Island 2 now, though I don't know if that will be anything novel or just an iterative improvement and a welcome change in tone from Dead Island, but they have demonstrated a decent polish of game and a better sense of how to present the story (if not how to write a compelling one just yet).