Dead Island does pretty well with female characters, but ultimately falls short

DEAD ISLAND RIPTIDE SPOILERS TOWARDS THE BOTTOM

Let's be honest, I love women. I mean, I am one, sure, and I also happen to be gay, so there's that, but in general, I think we're some pretty badass people. And in the context of what I'm talking about right now, which is video games, it's fun and empowering for me to have some good, playable (or background) characters in the series I enjoy.

I've never been a huge "gamer" in the sense of the word. As a kid, I liked Pokemon. As a teenager, I enjoyed Golden Sun and Fire Emblem, mostly, and also some more of that Gotta Catch 'em All stuff. When I moved in with my now-fiancee in 2010, she started introducing me to other games -- namely, the Assassin's Creed and Resident Evil series, and, more recently, we have been enjoying The Last of Us and the Dead Island games.

Now, I've read somewhere that 45 percent of gamers are female. I've also read, and seen online, the stereotype of girls who are either constantly harassed by guys online for being girls, or the girls who brag about being "gamers" just to...I don't know, sound cool? Impress dudes? I'm not sure how that works.

Though  I enjoy the joy of killing zombies/thwarting evil pharmaceutical companies in Resident Evil, and there are some (sexed up) female characters there, too. I love the thrill of stabbing evil Renaissance men in Assassin's Creed, but the fact stands that the only playable characters are male assassins -- through five games, now, and going into a sixth. Sure, you can be a woman in the multiplayer, but that's not as fun. However, props to the AC series for including Leonardo Da Vinci's sexual orientation as a side comment. Dude was gay. And I don't see a lot of gay people in video games. Am I playing the wrong ones? Anyhow. I think I am, because I know there are some good female characters in Metal Gear, in Portal, etc. But I don't have those! So let's talk Dead Island. I haven't seen many essays about this game. I think Dead Island is headed in the right direction with their female characters. And, they get points in my book for including about every ethnicity you can find in the world among its characters.

There's been one bad move on Techland's part about the first game -- an unlockable skill for one of the female characters was called "Feminist Whore" in the programming. Not so nice, Techland.

Why don't you say that to her face?

The first game does a fair job of balancing the roles between men and women, at least for the first part of the story. Here's the premise: the island of Banoi has become host to some kind of zombie virus. No one can get out because a monsoon is coming, and of course the radios out of the island don't work because of that same monsoon. Out of the survivors, four become heroes because they are immune -- Sam B (African-American), a one-hit wonder rapper from New Orleans who is a man with ghosts in his past from Katrina and a rough childhood. Logan (white American), a bit of an asshole ex-football player from Texas who can't play any more because he crashed his car while drunk driving. Purna (Aborigine-Australian), an ex-police officer and reluctant bodyguard for rich dudes. Xian Mei (Chinese), a hotel desk clerk who secretly spies on wealthy Westerners for her superiors. Another male character, John Morgan (white Australian) is added in the second game, Dead Island: Riptide.

L to R: Purna Jackson, Xian Mei, Logan Carter, Sam B. They look a fair bit different in the actual game, but this is them!

All of them have their skeletons in the closet, and also their strengths and weaknesses in-game.

It's good to have a diverse cast of characters to select from. And the rest of the world, this beautiful island and the city and jungle on it, is inhabited by zombies and survivors. Both men and women, of all races and colors. On the surface, it looks pretty even.

But then you start to pick it apart. As you progress in the game, there are a lot of characters that you meet and you can do tasks for. One lady wants bottled water. One man wants canned food. A few people want them to find their loved ones or find them a certain item. And there are specific point people -- main characters, kind of, that advance your quest along. But most of them are male. Sinamoi, the head lifeguard. Joseph, who leads you the sewers so you can get into the richer parts of the city to look for food. Matutero and Mowen, who lead you through the jungle. Dr. West, who is working on a cure for the virus. Titus, a leader at the prison. The man actively facilitating your whole crazy ride is Col. Ryder White, who is holed up in the prison with his sick wife. He's hoping Dr. West can make a cure out of the heroes' blood to save his wife because she was bitten. And you find out after the game that a hacker named Charon has something to do with the virus's release. The heroes meet him in the prison--and he's a guy, too.

There are a few female characters of note. Mother Helen is in charge at a church in the city. Jin is a teenage girl whose father died of the virus--she accompanies the heroes along the journey. Yerema is a teenager, too, I think. Her father is a leader of a native jungle tribe, and he's gone a little overboard with his homemade cures for the zombie virus. The heroes save her and take her with them.

In the later parts of the game, it's mostly a man's world. And you see it more when you get out of the resort part of the island and into the city, jungle and prison. The random thugs who are looting the area are all male. They pop up in the city and parts of the jungle. The zombie officers that you encounter in the police station are all male. The scientists in Dr. West's lab are all male. And the prisoners are also guys--admittedly, that makes some sense. Additionally, all the tougher zombies are male--the Rams, the Thugs, the Butchers, the Floaters and (I think, you can't really tell) the Suiciders.

That brings us to the second game, which has a bit of a better male-female ratio as far as main characters go.  I haven't played it quite as much, but I still enjoyed it, and was thoroughly pleased with the addition of Harlow. She's a survivor who isn't all sexed up like some female characters, and (SPOILERS) is also immune, and who ends up being the final boss in the game--a very welcome change from all of the male bosses and big Thugs or Infected from the rest of the games. When we had to fight her at the end, I was pretty darn happy about it. I am so used to the tough-guy lingo in games -- "take this, you son of a bitch!" "Let's finish this bastard once and for all!" It was refreshing to hear Logan Carter call the final boss a bitch and go with her with as much ferocity as he would a male boss.

There is also one special zombie, called a Screamer, who is specifically female.

In the end, of course, it's all about survival. This game isn't the most challenging, but it also doesn't take time to develop much romance or many relationships between characters. It's not focused on sex appeal. Sure, there are some minor characters in swimsuits because they're on a damn island. There could be some more female NPCs (trying to kill you--because women can be evil, too!).  But most of the game is shooting, slashing, helping people, and trying not to let the health bar get too low.

As a woman, I appreciate having my choice of characters. None of the main characters look like me, since I'm a white girl from the USA, but it's still cool to know I have a little femme fatale charm behind my rifle or my wakizashi when I move out onto the island to kill the zombies.