Zero Punctuation: Dead Island

[Macrobstar]

All it did was add to the ridiculous surplus of zombie gmaes.

Is there just a giant cult of trolls dedicated to perpetuating this rumour or am I missing out on loads of zombie games? I class myself as creepily into zombies and I've bought 3 in the past couple of years (L4D2 DR2 and dead island) or is everyone else counting games like red dead and COD?

 

[Primus1985]

Thanks for the review Yahtzee been dying to hear the honest scoop of this game. Most of the reviews kinda glossed over its flaws or didnt even mention them.

Now I get the pleasure of tearing down my co-worker who has been bugging me about this game for months. ^_^

 

[DragonManRen]

First of all ME!

Second of all yeah, I mostly just want to ***** slap yahtzee a bit too much for it too. Granted technically people are more stupid and rude about tourettes than mine. Granted getting told I'm lying or people assuming that I must be an imbecile( or one of the few nice stereotypes, a genius) does get terribly old and annoying.

People possibly stereotype you as a genius because of your disorder, and Yahtzee's mentioned it? Yeah, I know what you've got, I think. That's rough. Unfortunately, I've come across some of the "self-diagnosed" people Yahtzee mentioned. When people claim they have the disorder and that it is effectively "I Know Everything Disease," it adds another layer of difficulty on living with the actual disorder, because we've come to associate the name with obnoxious know-it-all brats who want to make their superior knowledge unquestionable by claiming it's a medical condition.

Tourette's, on the other hand, is associated with random uncontrolled profanity, which is seldom what it is. I once had a job that involved transportation on a crew bus, and of the eight people on the bus, three of them, including myself, had Tourette's. I recognized it by slight motor ticks and odd blinking patterns that hardly anybody else would've spotted.

 

[tehweave]

Can someone explain to me WHY sewer levels are bad? What's wrong with them?

 

[DragonManRen]

Can someone explain to me WHY sewer levels are bad? What's wrong with them?

They're bland and samey and completely unoriginal. They're in every game, all the way back to when cavemen were using mammoth bones as joysticks. It's not that sewer levels are necessarily bad, exactly, just that there is invariably a sewer level, and if you've played a lot of games, by now it seems like a great joke that somebody has been repeating as often as possible at every weekend get-together for the last thirty years.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

Yes, finally. This game is being berated for all the right reasons:

Misleading first trailer, using elements from other vastly superior titles, escort missions (f***ing escort missions), pointless combat (just kick them already!), and a bad 2nd Act.

 

[DexterNorgam]

I would like to put to bed this ridiculous notion that L4D2 was somehow superior to L4D. This is just false.

1. the second crew of survivors isn't fit to carry spare health packs for the first team. They are obnoxious, and the writing of their interactions is so weak compared to the fist team.

2. The addition of the melee combat didn't impress me much, it was straight out of half-life and had no feeling of "connectedness" (for lack of a better word.) No sense of the laws of physics being applied to the target.

3. The atmosphere of the first game was lost. The first game was dark, and it worked. If you took the time to play through the dev commentary it made it clear how much thought was put into the lighting and the setting and the camera to capture the feel of a survival movie and to subconsciously influence the player to move along the right path. L4D2 abandoned that. (I pin this on turtle rock studio's departure.)

4. The online play didn't run nearly as smoothly as the first game. I'm not sure what they did to the netcode/servers but it was WAY harder to find a game with players enjoying a decent match without one party or another experiencing crippling lag. (before anyone pipes up I had confirmation of this issue from valve themselves.)

5. The balance of the second game was totally jacked up. In the first game I had many more good close games between coordinated teams, with both survivor teams dragging severely wounded people into the saferoom/rescue vehicle each round. The Second game tilted the balance so far in favor of the infected that it became nearly impossible to find a pick-up-team that could survive. (that was the magic of the first game, getting in a pickup team that worked.)

L4D2 was the sequel that never needed to happen, let alone be rushed out 1 year later without the original developers. Even more so than Bioshock 2.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

Can someone explain to me WHY sewer levels are bad? What's wrong with them?

Because according to Spoony there always is a sewer level.

 

[JehuBot]

"Enough With The Fucking Zombie Games"

That's right , Yahtzee , you tell them!

when I saw the first trailer for Dead Island , I expected to see a new take on the zombie sub-genre , and I was interested to see what else they can showcase in this game.

but then the other trailers showed up , and it turns to be just another fucking unoriginal zombie game.

that's when I gave this game a pass.

seriously , Techland , for that misleading first trailer , you go fuck yourselves!

 

[JehuBot]

"Enough With The Fucking Zombie Games"

That's right , Yahtzee , you tell them!

when I saw the first trailer for Dead Island , I expected to see a new take on the zombie sub-genre , and I was interested to see what else they can showcase in this game.

but then the other trailers showed up , and it turns to be just another fucking unoriginal zombie game.

that's when I gave this game a pass.

seriously , Techland , for that misleading first trailer , you should go fuck yourselves!

 

[Svetoslav Savov]

zombies oh well, i gess nerds get tired of dragons and swords and magic so they relax with startrek or zombies
LONG LIVE JORGE ROMERO

btw
JUSTIN BEABER WAY YOU BETRAY ME
i click on the red button and have not laugh like that in years XD XD XD XD

 

[DanHibiki]

Won't a wolfman apocalypse only be bad for one day a month?
Rest of the time everyone would be normal and that one full moon day the earth's population would turn in to wolves and try to hunt down the last surviving silver miner.

 

[A Raging Emo]

Ugh... Dead Island.

I hate to admit it, but I bought into the trailer's hype, and was expecting the epitome of Zombie Survival games - you know, Dead Rising but in first person and completely free roam.

What I got was a linear, sub-bar shooter with an emphasis on melee combat. Ironic, really.

Don't get me wrong, it was great the first time through the game, despite the bad voice acting and so on, but still. It's has a grand total of zero percent replay value for me.

 

[DexterNorgam]

I would like to put to bed this ridiculous notion that L4D2 was somehow superior to L4D. This is just false.

1. the second crew of survivors isn't fit to carry spare health packs for the first team. They are obnoxious, and the writing of their interactions is so weak compared to the fist team.

2. The addition of the melee combat didn't impress me much, it was straight out of half-life and had no feeling of "connectedness" (for lack of a better word.) No sense of the laws of physics being applied to the target.

3. The atmosphere of the first game was lost. The first game was dark, and it worked. If you took the time to play through the dev commentary it made it clear how much thought was put into the lighting and the setting and the camera to capture the feel of a survival movie and to subconsciously influence the player to move along the right path. L4D2 abandoned that. (I pin this on turtle rock studio's departure.)

4. The online play didn't run nearly as smoothly as the first game. I'm not sure what they did to the netcode/servers but it was WAY harder to find a game with players enjoying a decent match without one party or another experiencing crippling lag. (before anyone pipes up I had confirmation of this issue from valve themselves.)

5. The balance of the second game was totally jacked up. In the first game I had many more good close games between coordinated teams, with both survivor teams dragging severely wounded people into the saferoom/rescue vehicle each round. The Second game tilted the balance so far in favor of the infected that it became nearly impossible to find a pick-up-team that could survive. (that was the magic of the first game, getting in a pickup team that worked.)

L4D2 was the sequel that never needed to happen, let alone be rushed out 1 year later without the original developers. Even more so than Bioshock 2.

Okay that right there. Seriously? Opinions cannot be wrong, unless they based off a fact that was mistaken and incorrect. Which game is better is a clear one opinion against another opinion situation. So people who think the second game is better cannot be incorrect, because it's their opinion. You on the other hand can be incorrect, because who seem to misunderstand the meaning of the word opinion.

Yes yes, blah blah blah, typical escapist garbage about how opinions cant be incorrect. (not true). Do you have any facts to support their opinion being correct? Or is your whole argument that opinions are all equal? (they aren't) One person might be of the opinion that a kick to the dick is better than a blowjob... they would be wrong. This is just one example. Opinion does not make something impervious to being retarded. And stating that l4d2 is superior to l4d is plain retarded.

 

[DexterNorgam]

Ugh... Dead Island.

I hate to admit it, but I bought into the trailer's hype, and was expecting the epitome of Zombie Survival games - you know, Dead Rising but in first person and completely free roam.

What I got was a linear, sub-bar shooter with an emphasis on melee combat. Ironic, really.

Don't get me wrong, it was great the first time through the game, despite the bad voice acting and so on, but still. It's has a grand total of zero percent replay value for me.

Dead rising doesn't need free-roam. It would just ruin that game. There are a number of ways to kill zombies, once you've done that what else is there to do in free roam? Timers are what makes Dead rising the game it is.

 

[A Raging Emo]

Ugh... Dead Island.

I hate to admit it, but I bought into the trailer's hype, and was expecting the epitome of Zombie Survival games - you know, Dead Rising but in first person and completely free roam.

What I got was a linear, sub-bar shooter with an emphasis on melee combat. Ironic, really.

Don't get me wrong, it was great the first time through the game, despite the bad voice acting and so on, but still. It's has a grand total of zero percent replay value for me.

Dead rising doesn't need free-roam. It would just ruin that game. There are a number of ways to kill zombies, once you've done that what else is there to do in free roam? Timers are what makes Dead rising the game it is.

I think you mis-interpreted me; I never said it did, Dead Rising (The first) is one of my all-time favorite games.

 

[JasonKaotic]

I just "love" it how Tourette's Syndrome is referenced for comedy. As if anybody who does that actually knows what it is. Who else has their neurological disorders laughed at?

I have tourettes and I don't really care...

So do I, and the jokes don't keep me up at night, but it gets a little irritating.

*High-five*

I've never really understood why people get annoyed about people making a joke about a disability, though. They're not making fun of the people, just a joke about the disability itself.
But that's just me.