Dead Island Review

SonOfVoorhees

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Aug 3, 2011
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I liked the idea of surviving on a zombie filled island. That made me want this game so bad. BUT. With the inclusion of super zombies ala L4D ive lost interest in it. The games probably still good, but the reason i wanted it is gone and its just another L4D or Dead Rising game instead of being something different to make it worth spending money on. Maybe will pick it up when its cheaper.....alot cheaper.
 

Davih

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May 7, 2011
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I think this game had so much potential, but it is ruined by the level scaling. I'm playing as the blunt weapons expert and I'm in Act 2 and the difficulty curve is so steep.

During the first act I was enjoying killing zombies, but now I dread every encounter. Level scaling was a good idea, but its too steep. They need to pull it back a bit.

Everyone's saying if you upgrade and keep your weapons repaired you will be fine but this isn't true at all. I have a level 24 wrench of some assortment with Impact mod and its level 4 but it still takes a good 3 hits to kill a walker. And considering you fight 4+ zombies at a time that's 12 hits and weapons have about 50 hits until they break, I have to carry 3 weapons that repairing costs a nightmare.

Why do you lose money when you die. This adds to the frustration losing $1k every time you die and then you don't have enough money to repair the 3 weapons your carrying.

Also why do you not need to repair guns? I'm thinking the gun expert has it cheap here. Health packs are scarce and you're damned if you think its possible to afford them on top of the repairs and all the money you are losing from dieing.

All in all, if the level scaling was pulled back a bit, there would be less deaths giving us more money to work with.

So frustrated at the game at the moment, and I'm not sure I'll be going back to it before GoW3 is out. Give me time to calm down, and hopefully Techland to make some changes.
 

Dalek Caan

Pro-Dalek, Anti-You
Feb 12, 2011
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Dastardly said:
Susan Arendt said:
Also, I have a question. Why the HELL are so many people (Rams) running around in straightjackets?
They're not. It's a Banoi Snuggie?.
Possibly the funniest thing I have seen all day. No. The funniest thing I have seen all day. Anyway good review. Hopefully will be playing this game tomorrow.
 

rainbowunicorns

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May 18, 2009
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Baron_BJ said:
At level 40 however I noticed my character (I'm playing as Logan) stopped performing the move as a curb-stomp and then began doing what I can only call "doing the fucking mario" and leaping onto their faces, 2 feet at a time and simply crushing it, aside from looking fucking hilarious when the zombies head bursts like a balloon it is performed more rapidly than the earlier version of the move. This move can be performed on any zombie, even specials.
The final upgrade in Combat turns the stomp into a jump, so you took that talent at 40 :)
 

rainbowunicorns

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May 18, 2009
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None of the below should be construed as supporting the ideas of level scaling, durability loss, or death penalties; I post it only in hopes that you may find it of assistance.

Davih said:
Everyone's saying if you upgrade and keep your weapons repaired you will be fine but this isn't true at all. I have a level 24 wrench of some assortment with Impact mod and its level 4 but it still takes a good 3 hits to kill a walker. And considering you fight 4+ zombies at a time that's 12 hits and weapons have about 50 hits until they break, I have to carry 3 weapons that repairing costs a nightmare.
Some mods reduce durability, I don't know about yours in particular, but give it a look.
Hitting the head deals additional damage, or is supposed to.
Consider picking up the 1-point Combat tree skills, and then using kick to push enemies away or jump + kick to knock them down, followed by a stomp for a kill. These do not use your weapons, and so do not cost durability. As you seem to be playing Sam (you mention blunt weapons), your Tackle can also knock enemies down and I don't know its stamina cost relative to jump+kick (I play Xian), so test the two and see what works best.


Davih said:
Why do you lose money when you die. This adds to the frustration losing $1k every time you die and then you don't have enough money to repair the 3 weapons your carrying.
Most games have a death penalty (beyond the unavoidable interruption in play) to tell you that you fucked up, and you should go ahead and not repeat it. The death penalty in this game is moving you to a different location (that may be right beside a Ram, that was quite the shock), and what seems to be a ~10% gold penalty.
If you take the above to heart and use your weapons less, you will have more money.
The Furies of Xian and Purna both provide an alternate weapon for their duration, I assume Sam's does too. Use this ability to avoid using a weapon when you otherwise would have to, such as special zombies.
I don't know if this is the case for you, but it can be tempting to try and keep 3+ current-level weapons fully upgraded and possibly modded; I don't think that is a sustainable strategy. 2-3 weapons between n and n-3 fully upgraded with 1 modded should do you.
The game claims that it costs more to repair a broken weapon than a weapon with some durability left, might as well follow that (I haven't noticed it being any cheaper).


Davih said:
Also why do you not need to repair guns? I'm thinking the gun expert has it cheap here. Health packs are scarce and you're damned if you think its possible to afford them on top of the repairs and all the money you are losing from dieing.
Think of ammunition as the durability of guns: Both are expended as you use the weapon, when you exhaust the supply it becomes useless, and both can be replenished with gold. Ammunition is replenished by finding it (so fighting humans refills ammo), or by crafting it, which requires raw materials in quantities I'm not sure you can expect to have enough of without buying them from NPCs.
Right now I have a stack of tier2 med kits, which I purchased to replace my tier1 ones. I'll be picking up a second stack next time I encounter an NPC who sells them, since I'm trying to faze out the tier1 kits as they no longer heal enough to be worth the bag space.


If you don't want to alter your style of play to accommodate the mechanics of the game, the Survival tree has talents that will modify the mechanics of the game to accommodate your style of play. I don't actually recommend this, because you end up with a character who is weaker relative to other characters of the same level; however, if you are playing the way you find fun, it may well be the better choice.

Best of luck.
 

Baron_BJ

Tired. Cold. Bored.
Nov 13, 2009
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MatthewAmirault said:
Baron_BJ said:
At level 40 however I noticed my character (I'm playing as Logan) stopped performing the move as a curb-stomp and then began doing what I can only call "doing the fucking mario" and leaping onto their faces, 2 feet at a time and simply crushing it, aside from looking fucking hilarious when the zombies head bursts like a balloon it is performed more rapidly than the earlier version of the move. This move can be performed on any zombie, even specials.
The final upgrade in Combat turns the stomp into a jump, so you took that talent at 40 :)
Makes sense, that is what I did, however I don't remember reading such a thing on the tooltip.
 

Inquisitor Slayde

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Jan 17, 2009
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I'm a little surprised to find that everyone seems to be reviewing Dead Island so favourably. I can see why some people would like it but I thought a few reviewer might come to the same conclusion I did.

Admittedly I only played it to level 10 but I found it completely unimpressive. It shambles after the delicious metaphor flesh of Borderlands so franticly it keeps tripping over and hurting itself.

It's not even the bugs that turned me off it as I had a pretty smooth experience with it, some screen tearing and texture issues aside. My problems with it are in its design and writing.

I find it very difficult to believe anyone could invest in the story or the caricatures that you play as and the side quests are either fetching a teddy bear for a grown woman ridiculous or heavy handed attempts to pull at your heart strings.

I could get past that if the game play was fun but, for me, it isn't.

The loot system is rendered almost useless by how fast your weapons degrade. I can handle weapon degradation if it's balanced right but when I break two weapons in three fights why do I even care when I find a good weapon?

The skill tree is fine, even a little deeper than the game it is trying to emulate, but in no way is it at the level where the making of a 'build' is fun in itself and I have been known to make 'on paper' Warhammer 40k armies or D&D chars just for the fun of it.

I think the biggest obstacle to me enjoying Dead Island though is its core mechanic. First person melee combat is a difficult thing to do. Only Condemned: Criminal Origins has ever come close to pulling it off. I found the combat in Dead Island a chore. I would run past Zombies to avoid it because it wasn't fun. Sure it was graphic and gory, which I appreciated, but I need a little more than 'Oooh cool I cut his damn arm off!'.

I don't resent people the fun they are having with Dead Island but I am wondering why my reaction seems so poorly represented. I wanted to like Dead Island, but I really don't.
 

Ravnican

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Jul 19, 2010
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Inquisitor Slayde said:
I'm a little surprised to find that everyone seems to be reviewing Dead Island so favourably. I can see why some people would like it but I thought a few reviewer might come to the same conclusion I did.

Admittedly I only played it to level 10 but I found it completely unimpressive. It shambles after the delicious metaphor flesh of Borderlands so franticly it keeps tripping over and hurting itself.

It's not even the bugs that turned me off it as I had a pretty smooth experience with it, some screen tearing and texture issues aside. My problems with it are in its design and writing.

I find it very difficult to believe anyone could invest in the story or the caricatures that you play as and the side quests are either fetching a teddy bear for a grown woman ridiculous or heavy handed attempts to pull at your heart strings.

I could get past that if the game play was fun but, for me, it isn't.

The loot system is rendered almost useless by how fast your weapons degrade. I can handle weapon degradation if it's balanced right but when I break two weapons in three fights why do I even care when I find a good weapon?

The skill tree is fine, even a little deeper than the game it is trying to emulate, but in no way is it at the level where the making of a 'build' is fun in itself and I have been known to make 'on paper' Warhammer 40k armies or D&D chars just for the fun of it.

I think the biggest obstacle to me enjoying Dead Island though is its core mechanic. First person melee combat is a difficult thing to do. Only Condemned: Criminal Origins has ever come close to pulling it off. I found the combat in Dead Island a chore. I would run past Zombies to avoid it because it wasn't fun. Sure it was graphic and gory, which I appreciated, but I need a little more than 'Oooh cool I cut his damn arm off!'.

I don't resent people the fun they are having with Dead Island but I am wondering why my reaction seems so poorly represented. I wanted to like Dead Island, but I really don't.
Can I carry your books, like, for the rest of your life?

Seriously, when I saw that trailer I instantly called this, I said "I know they aren't going to redefine the zombie genre, I know they won't deliver on their promises, so this truly great trailer will end up as a load of pretentious crap" and I was right. Although that doesn't mean I think it's a bad game; it' just average and that would not be a bad thing had it not been hyped as all Hell. I'm currently on Act III and I can assure you none of these characters are getting any more likable than at the beginning, nor does the story make any more sense.
 

BreakdownBoy

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Jan 21, 2011
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I am so having fun in this game, don't care that it isn't realistic or that the zombies level with you, it still is awsome to throw an axe into a zombie and then decapitate it with a even bigger axe!
 

Inquisitor Slayde

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Jan 17, 2009
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Ravnican said:
Inquisitor Slayde said:
Can I carry your books, like, for the rest of your life?

Seriously, when I saw that trailer I instantly called this, I said "I know they aren't going to redefine the zombie genre, I know they won't deliver on their promises, so this truly great trailer will end up as a load of pretentious crap" and I was right. Although that doesn't mean I think it's a bad game; it' just average and that would not be a bad thing had it not been hyped as all Hell. I'm currently on Act III and I can assure you none of these characters are getting any more likable than at the beginning, nor does the story make any more sense.
I tried to give it another go yesterday. I tried really hard to see what it seems nearly everyone else is seeing in it. I even switched to using a 360 controller with my PC so I could use the analog combat controls.

I'm done with it. It's uninstalled. I just wasn't having fun. It's not terrible, it's just not very good. Damn shame really, it had so much potential.
 

omega 616

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May 1, 2009
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I haven't played the game but watching like every commentator on youtube play this game, the things I notice is the zombies are the most laid back zombies in any zombie game ever!

They only seem to attack or notice you when you are about 6 foot away, the rest of the time they are stood round looking at the floor ... wondering where it all went wrong and just needing a hug.

The driving seems a little fucked up as well, from what I have seen you have no way to judge how wide your truck is. You can see your half of the windscreen but not the passenger half ... like you have blinkers (like a horse) on, which leads to crashing A LOT!

It seems the best thing to do with every zombie is knock it on it's ass, then boot the fuck out of it or curb stomp it's head off. If you think about it, if you acted like this was real life, how many people would bend over and start wailing on a person/zombie on the ground with a weapon? None, they would kick it.

Imagine being in a fight, the other guy trips over, what do you do if you want to carry on fighting? Do you kick him or bend over and start punching the guy? I know it's a small niggle but come on ...

Last one, it doesn't seem very "zombie apocalypse" to me. The zombies hang around in like 5 at most, like they have there own little cliques. Unlike left 4 dead where zombies swarm you in what seems like there 30's or 40's.
 

scoopz

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Sep 15, 2011
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Well, well. I was skeptical at first thinking it might be another L4D but now I shall have to purchase it at some point.
 

Ghengis John

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Susan Arendt said:
Actually, backtracking can be useful. The zombies scale to the host, but the rewards scale to the individual players. So it can be easy money and experience for people who go backwards.
I just found an incidence of this in regards to a quest that spits out a unique weapon. It can be a great thing to claim one at your current level, then go back and do it with somebody else when you're maxed so a nice call there.

Btw, I enjoyed the frequent uses of the phrase "zombiewar". A World War Z reader I see. Tip of the hat to you, miss.