DEAD ISLAND: Some questions, difficulty, auto aim etc.?

Some weapons don't fully break, they can still be used but need to be repaired before you can deal any damage.

I believe that's your rage meter, once it gets high enough you can go into a rage frenzy with your fists and do lots of damage.

I really enjoyed this game and still do.

I'm pretty impressed at your reactions from this game. You maybe should play MMORPGs more often, or discover RPGs first because such questions should be answered by yourself if you knew the genre and its system. You would know that gaining experience increase your level, your level increase your skills, your strength and so on...

1. The only difficulty of the game is to manage to use your weapons carefully.

2. It's the auto-aim activated, I think there's no way to disable it. This feature just aim automaticly at parts of the zombie you can break its bones. It can aim at his head (neck), shoulders, hips, knees.

3. You can regenerate yourself by eating apples or drinking sodas (Also, when you hold your breath into the water, getting out of the water will regenerate yourself instantly), checkpoints are only quests-checkpoints, when you complete a mission you get a checkpoint that saves the game. If you die, your quest progress is saved, but you will respawn in a different area. If you died in one shot, it's because you might have beat a thug the wrong way. The thug is one of the special zombies you will encounter in the game, it has high HP and strength. You need to find a powerful weapon and be carefully with its attacks, dodge when necessary.

4. Find Maggie is a side quest that requires you to find her, a hide-and-seek game. It would be too easy if the game tells you where she is. You will find her sometime in the game if you really try to discover every single corner of the game.

5. It's the typical Dead Rising weapon system in some points (just here you don't lose your weapon when it falls to 0). Every weapon has a durability, when it decreases to 0, you will need to repair it at a workbench located in the safe-base. With it you can also craft new weapons or make yours more powerful by adding a buff. (to poison zombies, fire, electrify.)

6. It's your experience bar, by killing zombies and doing quests you earn experience to level up your character so you can buy or find better weapons. Those which have different tiers (white, green, blue, purple, orange), an orange weapon is more powerful than a blue weapon.

7. You can use a mod to disable the HUD, but you won't be able to see your health bar, nor your weapon durability.
   The link is here.
   To install: in your Documents, you should reach DeadIsland>out>Data>Menu (create these folders if not there) and put the HUD.xui file from the .rar you just downloaded inside the Hud folder you must create. (Choose between Invisible Contextual Icons (shows nothing), Nearly Invisible (shows the name of people) or Visible Contextual Icons (the normal game))
   Don't worry about Valve Anti-Cheat, this never worked, if you're worried about it just keep playing in single player and don't forget to change the option VAC to Off.