Dead Island

We had a thread about this somewhere...can't find it. Anyway, gameplay: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/to-kill-dead-island/714102

Was gonna watched it, but god damn 30 second advert dissuaded me.

Firefox+adblockplus

Download them Nao.

They're all Chrome users, so that's their own damn fault.

Skreshavik wrote:

They're all Chrome users, so that's their own damn fault.

Naw bro, you gots it all wrong, fo sho. I rep firefox 4 homie.

So why the fuck do you not have Adblockplus?

http://adblockplus.org/en/

I had it, but it kept making my flash plug in crash. At least, my flash player kept crashing right after I installed it, so I removed it.

Update flash

So...did you ever update flash?

I did. Same result...flashplayer constantly crashing.

Works fine on google chrome though. But the thing is, I got it for the sole purpose of blocking ads on blip.tv video players, but it doesn't.

Installed the 'easy list' and everything.

Huh, odd.

LOL what a fail, they shipped the Dev. build of the game instead of the retail version. You press Y and you get no-clip mode.

Lulz.

Guess I'll pause on buying when it gets released over here...

LMFAO really? How the fuck do they let that happen?

Eradicated wrote:

LOL what a fail, they shipped the Dev. build of the game instead of the retail version. You press Y and you get no-clip mode.

But it was only the Steam version me thinks? I watched the Yogscast play it and they were just no-clipping all over the place and the game looked really buggy/rushed but the people who play it on the Xbox 360 say it's a really good co-op game.

FFigh wrote:

But it was only the Steam version me thinks? I watched the Yogscast play it and they were just no-clipping all over the place and the game looked really buggy/rushed but the people who play it on the Xbox 360 say it's a really good co-op game.

Yeah it was only on steam, funny thing is that it was the dev build for the 360 version, people found tons of 360 coding in the game files.

I actually watched the no-clipping action on Yogscast as well, I lol'd at lewis's response.
"How are you doing that?"
"Press Y you get no clip-mode"
*presses Y*
*RAGEEEEEEEEE*

Got this, all seems fine. Also, fucking awesome game. And hard.

Fuck my life, quest xp doesn't scale on the second playthrough...

you finished it already?

I've already spent like 35 hours on this game...

How would you rate it, terms of storyline, gameplay, functionality? Metacritic is just as unreliable as ever, and we all know IGN isn't necessarily...unbiased.

I think Gametrailers got it right (and generally do). The story is absolutey bananas, but it is a zombie game so it's somewhat allowable. The dialogue is generally pretty bad or at most very average. Voice acting is actually something I remain unsure about...sometimes it feels really well done, but other times it totally misses the mark. Pretty much all the touching, high-emotions scenes were done well however, so the script and voice acting at least kick it at the important bits.

While I have issues with the story in general, I do like how the infection is never really explained and a lot of ends are left loose. But that's more personal preference than anything. It's structure is all over the place, but sandbox games like this make it difficult to deliver a proper 3 act structure effectively. Pacing is good though, with the action dipping and rising at the right times and with the right intensity.

Gameplay is solid, by which I mean the combat is solid, the movement is solid, the difficulty is solid, and the meta-game aspects of economics and modification are solid. Combat high point is the weight of the weapons and the reality of their impact - the game does a great job of making the melee weapons swing right and hit right, giving you a very satisfying, albeit slightly unnerving, experience. Play Dead Island for long enough, and you stop feeling like the saviour of mankind and more like a psychopath, pushed over the edge by the horror of their reality. Which is really what the game was getting all along - while it's got a few jokes and tongue in cheek moments, it's a zombie game that's certainly taken the line that what's happened is horrifying, and has brutalised those experiencing it. Which I also like.

Gun play isn't great, though not unusable. You're never actually forced to use firearms, but it's a smart choice at some points, particularly when dealing with human enemies who are always similarly armed. The guns move a little sluggishly and can be fiddly to aim...probably quite similar to the gunplay in Farcry 2, if you ever played that. Speaking of which, this game really reminded me of Farcry 2...though I'm not sure why. Might have just been the locales, because gameplay wise this is closer to Fallout 3/Borderlands + L4D.

The difficulty of Farcry2 and Dead Island is probably comprabable - both games were pretty damn hard. Particularly when I got to the city in Dead Island, I died virtually every time I got involved in a fight on the streets. Worth noting is that death only means a 10% cash deduction and a respawn nearby, but that cash adds up over time and, more to the point, death means failure. Not for the game, for us. It's not actually important that we lose anything at death, the point is that we have been told by the game that we weren't good enough. When you died in Abe's Odessy, you respawned nearby and lost nothing; no-one said that game was easy. It was hard as hell in fact, but the penalties involved were the same. Dead Island isn't unpleasantly tough though - if you use your head you are well rewarded. Key is understanding when is a good time to fight, and when is not.

Graphics/sound are a mixed bag. The scenery looks fucking amazing, particularly the water (seriously, I can't get over how good the water looks), and everything generally runs smoothly. But it often takes a couple of secs to texture everything when you step into a new area, and the facial animations of NPCs are complete pants. Even so, considering that each of the sections of Dead Island are pretty damn big, and that you can fast travel within these sections with no load time at all (say, Life Guard Tower to Lighthouse on the Resort map, or Church to Warehouse on the City map), it's quite an impressive engine they have.

BUT - quest xp doesn't scale for 2nd playthroughs. Which sucks major balls when you're trying to get from level 37 to level 50. And if you don't patch to ver 1.1.0 then the weapon drops don't scale either.

tl;dr

Mm, interesting. I'll probably pick it up when steam has a sale, thanks for the review.