After the Apocalypse: A Dead Island Retrospective

[gamegod25]

"But clearly for some people I think it raised unrealistic expectations."

I'd say more like different expectations, at least for me. I had expected it to be focused on the story and the horrors of a zombie apocalypse, rather than a much less polished left 4 Dead with light rpg elements.

It looks like a lot of silly fun with some friends and booze, but if you want story and/or horror this isn't just your game.

 

[duchaked]

it would definitely be nice to properly introduce co-op in an open world RPG without sacrificing story

I still wish I could get a friend to just grab a controller and jump into Fallout 3 with me. sure would be more useful than any of the number of followers the "Lone Wanderer" haha

 

[Danceofmasks]

Dead Island is a good game, but there are many reasons I can't recommend it to my friends.

The challenges dishing out XP is interesting and all, but with the tally accumulating for all characters, you can run across ridiculous scenarios of a brand new character suddenly going from level 1 to level 12 before leaving the prologue.

The UI has some serious issues, especially the way weapons are picked up and/or replaced.
Throw your weapon, go to retrieve it, and potentially end up with half a minute of inventory shuffling.
I would have been happier if there wasn't a "replace" option at all, and you simply can't pick something up if you have no room in your inventory. Would solve a lot of problems (especially for the yogscast, lol).
Finally, it's obviously a console game .. apart from mouselook (which is awesome, by the way. Here I'm referring to the sensitivity slider and general responsiveness), managing weapons was a chore.
Assign numbers to each of the positions on the wheel. People can still use the wheel. They wouldn't have to press numbers if they don't want to. That's how little it would take to turn a shitty UI into a decent one.

Multiplayer is a bit of a mess, the way quests and level scaled zombies are managed.
Sure, it's fun when a level 35 guy joins my level 6's game, and the characters are equally proficient at beating down zombies ...
Ok, the level 35 is a little better with melee and guns, but the level 6 can kill anything with a single molotov. It balances out, right? What it does is make no sense.
I'm not even going to get started on how the loot drops happen.
Obviously, this isn't an issue if a group of people only play the game with each other, but then how's that different from having no level scaling?

Then there's the voice acting, which can be vomit-inducing depending on how familiar you are with the supposed accents.
As a chinese-australian, it was bad enough for me to skip most conversations and cutscenes.
Just one example - a fresh off the boat chinese should not be voiced by a vietnamese. Just sayin'

The game is a lot of fun, but from the perspective of a 1337 gamer who picked up the game without any expectations, it's nothing special.

 

[MisterDyslexo]

smh...

Did they really need to learn the hard way that you can't have a touching and moving story in a 4-player co-op game?

Lets pretend they never knew anything about games for a moment. Even then, they should've known better. I mean, when you go to a movie theater, whats the environment like? Dark and quite. Ten minutes into the film, its just you and the story. Now imagine watching any movie, no matter how touching, with your friends at home, on a couch, lights on, doing everything possible to break your immersion. Its just not possible to feel the same way.

There really is no excuse for being that dumb. Epic failure. An epic fail on the level of games like Mindjack. And not because the gameplay is bad, or poor exposition (Dead Island does do that through the environment, like Borderlands, but it neither did anything to incite emotion) its because you did something so utterly stupid in the sake of ripping off Left 4 Dead (we all know that was their intention). You had a concept that had never been executed well in a videogame, and barely so in cinema, and threw it away in hopes of stealing some players away from Left 4 Dead. You sold out your integrity as artists and you failed to even attempt to create fans of your own by put out a good product.

 

[Doc Cannon]

Wow. Lots of people hated the coop? Didn't even know that.

I loved it. If it wasn't for the coop I would have quit the moment I got to the city. I hated that map. All the originality of the game went to hell. "Another destroyed town? I've seen millions of these!" I shouted to my coop partner.

But we had fun anyways.

I like the fact that the guy sounds like he is not afraid to try new things in a sequel

I'd like DI2 to be longer, to have more randomized elements, some emergent stuff (opportunity missions, dudes to rescue, etc), less vendors, less survivors (in safe houses and all around), no main characters (create your own appearance, select one out of 3 or 4 voices for one liners only).
I think you can't tell a story as well as you can in SP, but you can set a mood. For the first 2 hours me an my coop buddy were quite immersed in the game. We went "OHHH daaaaamn! There's a million zombies there! We can't do shit with these pipes!" and "DIDJA SEE THAT PLANE? Wonder if we can reach it". We could not.

Oh, and the sequel? Don't make it in a city FFS.

 

[Ninjafire72]

"But clearly for some people I think it raised unrealistic expectations."

I'd say more like different expectations, at least for me. I had expected it to be focused on the story and the horrors of a zombie apocalypse, rather than a much less polished left 4 Dead with light rpg elements.

It looks like a lot of silly fun with some friends and booze, but if you want story and/or horror this isn't just your game.

This. I think Yahtzee said it in his review of Dead Island, but the game has absoloutely no consistency in its tone. Seriously, you can't develop a narrative about surviving the horrors of a zombie aocalypse and then have your character hack off a zombies limbs for giggles. Either be serious and gritty or fun and light-hearted, you can't have both.