Dead Island (video game)

[Andy]

This sorta bothers me...I STILL haven't made it to the town because I'm holding off for a HD TV. You basically ran around the city the whole time killing stuff on a need to only basis? The only time I felt comfortable leaving stuff alone was when I was in a vehicle. I'm probably going to shit my pants when I make it to a town. You have to learn to run from zombies instead of fighting them when you reach the town, its not that theres too many you get like 4 or 5 on each street and the occassional thug or ram, but its the fact the respawn is so high as soon as youve killed them more of them are on you. If you tried to fight off every zombie you would wear all your weapons to down breaking point and not advance more than a couple of streets lol Im not quite at the police station danny, but ive not really had time to play this week so ive advanced slowly but i still stand by what i said, its a enjoyable zombie game. I honestly find it more playable than left4dead but honestly, no were near as playable as dead rising.

[Neil]

I honestly find it more playable than left4dead but honestly, no were near as playable as dead rising. I'm the opposite then... L4D2 is the most playable game ever for me...

[Danny]

I'm the opposite then... L4D2 is the most playable game ever for me... i think its better for me too. the world feels like a real world. Those little things like the spray paint messages on the walls and the sheer design that influences play- in particular the way valve uses light- or the absence thereof to direct the player in left 4 dead is a superb way of hiding arrows and such to keep navigating the player through the map correctly. They dont create a world box to keep the player in but create a narrative path to flow the player through. It's design from an almost film maker mindset approach and i appreciate it from a design point and a player point. Dead island doesnt have that. the art direction is good. better than left 4 dead, but it just doesnt use it right. It starts good, the one clean, sterile beach resort juxatposed with the gore and viscera that makes it seem like a dynamic world where a chaotic event just passed through not long before you. However the lightning is bloom dogshit, the sound design is cheap and the sandbox nature means its effectively a box with no constructive input to the player. thats fun. but it just wasnt designed as well as left 4 dead is. look at death toll. form a design point that is bloody high calibre and from a gameplay standpoint that is a hoot.

[Neil]

i think its better for me too. the world feels like a real world. Those little things like the spray paint messages on the walls and the sheer design that influences play- in particular the way valve uses light- or the absence thereof to direct the player in left 4 dead is a superb way of hiding arrows and such to keep navigating the player through the map correctly. They dont create a world box to keep the player in but create a narrative path to flow the player through. It's design from an almost film maker mindset approach and i appreciate it from a design point and a player point. Dead island doesnt have that. the art direction is good. better than left 4 dead, but it just doesnt use it right. It starts good, the one clean, sterile beach resort juxatposed with the gore and viscera that makes it seem like a dynamic world where a chaotic event just passed through not long before you. However the lightning is bloom dogshit, the sound design is cheap and the sandbox nature means its effectively a box with no constructive input to the player. thats fun. but it just wasnt designed as well as left 4 dead is. look at death toll. form a design point that is bloody high calibre and from a gameplay standpoint that is a hoot. Oh, they're very different games, with L4D2 being more action orientated, and DI being more atmospheric/realistic. But versus for me (in L4D2) is just fabulous fun! I'm hoping Dead Island 2 (& there's bound to be one) will up the gameplay to an even higher level...

[Danny]

HOW TO FIX IT IN A SEQUEL -remove weapon stats. they were mostly ignored in favour of weapon types by players anyway. instead focus on types of damage eg: sharp, blunt, heavy, explosive etc. -set it in a single location and make it less of a sandbox. games like alan wake have shown you can simulate a massive world yet still keep the player focussed and driven on a goal. -OR make it full sandbox but focus more on surviving and less on a generic forced plot for what is essentially a multiplayer hack and slash exercise. -more emphasis on vehicles and the armament of them. -give zombies the ability to break down doors and you the ability to reinforce them or push a bookcase of vending machine in front of them or something. -More emphasis on lighting and sound- particularly sound which was a colossal disappointment in dead island. -maybe set it somewhere with enough real character to not need you to force in a fake alcatraz or secret labs, Like maybe tokyo or paris or something. Areas with modern technology AND old iconic architecture as well. -more zombie types but make them rarer and the shamblers greater in numbers. shamblers are a great threat in huge numbers, otherwise they are at best a chore, at most common something to just sidestep and ignore. make herds- or ganados if you will, that block paths properly. Plus if left for dead taught you anything its that a hunter ever so often is disconcerting, multiple hunters in a row is annoying. see the infected in this game. too many and too few overall variants. id rather see far more zombie mutations, but also see them less often so they seem a credible threat. I'm reminded of the shibito in siren that for one level only had insect like wings that let them glide over little gaps and they would sit crouched like spiderman on top of lamp posts and drop down on you. -characters: either give them some or let the multiplayers just design their own. Not barely voiced stereotypes we are never allowed to emotionally invest enough in to give a fuck about. -move environmental control: just throwing shit at the game cliche red exploding shit was tiresome. why cant i trail gasoline across a choke point and set it on fire? push a bit of broken masonry off a roof onto a thugs head to kill it? i mean think what a waste the city in banoi actually was? a whole city and STILL you just blew up barrels, what about nocking down a fence on a roof to make a walkway? there was so little environmental choices it was laughable. -animal threats: with all the humans dead and rot spreading to kill off food supplies animals will become increasingly feral and desperate, why be scared of a shambler when you could see 4 rottweillers come sniffing round the corner and make you think "back the fuck up, slowly and quietly and move the hell out of sight". Hell imagine if they set the second somewhere like canada and you ran into a bear, condemned 2 was a piece of shit game, but that one cabin sequence showed how you unarmed vs a bear can be fucking terrifying- as much as as any zombie or monster. Quarantine the virus: one thing that disappointed me was when i reached the city and saw plastic quarantine wrap around whole buildings. i expected some CDC style guys in biochem suits or something. There was absolutely nothing of that. Now i dont mean i want the typical emotionless military villains. I mean this is a virus, sure you are immune, but nobody else is. Why not make this a big deal? you save people and send them to the church or whatever, but how do you know they arent infected? I find it a little tiresome that in 20 years of zombie/biohazard games only the two worst resident evil titles made the actual biohazard a big deal- not counting dead rising 2's zombrex plot device of course. I want some scenes almost reminiscent of the thing where they test the blood with the copper wire, what IF somebody ahs been bitten? what do you do? why do we not get the choice outside of a cutscene? this guys bitten but a electrical genius. Spare him and risk him turning and infecting others, or kill him but lose his invaluable expertise? map: remove the HUD map and directions. make exploring desperate and confusing. Alone in the dark blew chunks but one good thing was the real time inventory and map you took out and looked at. Respawn: REMOVE THIS BULLSHIT. it takes any and all threat from your friends needing help if you can just drop dead and come back 6 fucking seconds later. Oh dear teds pinned down as we try and siphon gas and he needs help! oh wait- fuck it, he will be right as rain in seconds. Hell, maybe you arent immune, maybe ted gets bit and doesnt die then turns IN the car on the way back? just make death a credible threat then you make death matter. all off the top of my head, not all of which particularly ground breaking changes a sequel could use.

[Andy]

Oh, they're very different games, with L4D2 being more action orientated, and DI being more atmospheric/realistic. But versus for me (in L4D2) is just fabulous fun! I'm hoping Dead Island 2 (& there's bound to be one) will up the gameplay to an even higher level... I Think the difference is im a very solitary player, i dont really like multiplayer games especially of this type so that effected my enjoyment of L4D, it was good when i could get 4 people i know in to do a game but most of the time it was just arseholes online blasting each other and i dont enjoy that. The story, the RPG side of things, leveling up your character and choosing weapons to progress, making new weapons, finding facts.. all that appeals alot more to me and for that, dead island is alot more playable than L4D.

[Neil]

I Think the difference is im a very solitary player, i dont really like multiplayer games especially of this type so that effected my enjoyment of L4D, it was good when i could get 4 people i know in to do a game but most of the time it was just arseholes online blasting each other and i dont enjoy that. The story, the RPG side of things, leveling up your character and choosing weapons to progress, making new weapons, finding facts.. all that appeals alot more to me and for that, dead island is alot more playable than L4D. Understood... I'm enjoying DI at the moment, but I know once I've played it through, I will feel like I've finished it... Unless a DLC come out. Meanwhile I'll continue with my numerous times a week visits to L4D2 versus, which I've been playing since day 1 of its release!

[shootemindehead]

The best thing the producers can do for a sequel, would be to "oblivion" it. Make the world a truly open one. And give the NPCs a few more lines to say. "I heard this scourge came from outer space..." "SHUT...THE...F*CK...UP!" *buries machette in head on each word*

[Tricky]

The best thing the producers can do for a sequel, would be to "oblivion" it. Make the world a truly open one. And give the NPCs a few more lines to say. "I heard this scourge came from outer space..." "SHUT...THE...F*CK...UP!" *buries machette in head on each word* ha ha yeah that line annoyed me, I kept talking to him hoping he would say something different but he didnt. I dont think Dead Island needs a sequel as such, it just needs the modding community to make the game into what it should have been using the tools already available, at least as far as the PC version is concerned anyway. The setting and everything is fine, we just need a better story & NPC's that actually do something other than send you on daft errands...

[childofgilead]

76I kinda agree with what all of you guys are saying. A friend picked it up for me from her brothers video store over the weekend to tide me over until Arkham City and the game definitely isn't what was advertised by the trailers. Of course I watched a few let's plays and walkthroughs because I couldn't get it on release day, but after seeing a few, I was turned completely off by the arcadey nature of the thing. Now if someone CAN mod the game, I'd love to see a version with only the walkers. Hell, maybe even a few infected here and there, because at least they make sense in the context of the game universe in that they aren't dead yet. But that leads to another annoyance. Why can you kill a walker by crushing it's chest with an axe or busting off a leg? Really really frustrating. Even moreso than you can kill humans with one immediate headshot, but not a walker. *sigh* Overall, I wouldn't mind paying up to 30 bux for it used, but if I'd paid full price I'd honestly feel a little gipped. It seems long sure, but how much of that length is just bullshit cheap deaths followed by trying to get back to where you were? I dunno..maybe I'm just being too critical at the moment, but I'm just really really really tired of gimmicky bullshit "special" undead in videogames. I would so much rather have a game without that shit it's not funny. I'd much rather have alleyways full of walkers or hell, even roving bands of raiders than that crap. I don't even mind the thug undead too much because hell, there are sometimes some tall dudes, why wouldn't they be zombies too? I just think that spitting, vomiting, exploding zombies need to piss off. They just don't feel like zombies to me. I don't really feel a sense of immersion like I want. Danny made a metric buttload of good points, things that I've wanted in an undead videogame since the first Resident Evil, yet we STILL haven't gotten. Why the fart is it so hard to do? l=

[Tricky]

Dead island real life?? http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16090513

[Andy]

So i finished dead island last night and the last boss.. what a fucking let down!! The movie introducing him took longer than actually killing him, 4 or 5 hits with the electric rifle and he was down on the ground, i hit him once with my electric morning star and then stomped on his head. Whole fight was over with in like 10 seconds. Be trading this one in for arkham city i think!!

[Neil]

(PC) The most recent update has screwed my mouse wheel changing weapon. You now have to use the stupid method of bring up the circle of weapons and rotating around it to select one. Anyone know have you can have a button (or rotate the mouse wheel) to go through your weapons, like you could before?

[SymphonicX]

(PC) The most recent update has screwed my mouse wheel changing weapon. You now have to use the stupid method of bring up the circle of weapons and rotating around it to select one. Anyone know have you can have a button (or rotate the mouse wheel) to go through your weapons, like you could before? Yeah it's on the xbox controller hehe

[Neil]

Yeah it's on the xbox controller hehe So why no longer available on the PC?