Zero Punctuation: Dead Island

[Preacher zer0]

mmmm, I don't know.

The combat can get pretty good, I can handle a fairly large mob of infected on my own.
Don't forget to dodge, use the jump kick, chop multiple heads off with single swipes of a blade (I play as the sharp expert).

The game gives you all you need, analogue melee, crowd control, insta-kills, elemental attacks, weapon customisation and specialisation.

Driving is fun, the island is HUGE, the missions are varied and relevant (fuel runs in a pickup truck are a blast with 4 people).

People also ***** that the difficulty in the city is too hard, the streets are often flooded with raving howling infected... but y'know, I just took to the rooftops.
I love the city, the groans of walkers, the screams of infected and the distant disturbing roar of something... big.

If you were thinking about buying this and you let that review (if you can call it that, bit slack imo) put you off you're foolish, at least rent it and see for yourself.

This game is fun.
There are plenty of negative reviews, but just as many peeps saying they're having a blast.

The only way you'll know for sure is if you give it a shot.

Oh and as for the "big guys who knock you on your ass"?
Yeah... you duck.

Tactics see?
The game does not spoonfeed you, it takes time and practice to get really good at dispatching large groups of the undead, if you lose concentration, if you panic, if you flail around with your weapon blindly mashing buttons... you're meat... I guess that concept is lost in todays gaming world. :/

Edit: ...and I've never lost a single escort mission, I don't get what the problem is there tbh, they always go smooth for me.

 

[The Hungry Samurai]

Funny enough none of the escorts ever attacked anything on my end, they just kinda did what they suppose to do. I.E they just stayed back once the zombies attacked 0_o

Agreed, before I saw this article I was just thinking "escort missions suck but these ones are not nearly as horrible as most. They stay out of the way and don't die easy."

They do run like crazy at a few points but Ive noticed that if you stick with them most of the time they lead you on a smart path to evading whatever they aggroed.

Perhaps the developers didn't intend for us to stop and fight every zombie we meet on the street. A tactic that would make a bit of sense in a real zombie scenario if you think about it.

 

[The Hungry Samurai]

For the escort missions, I had only 1 time when the idiot-NPC actually caused his own death. This NPC, who seems to be a giant freaking badass, stops on a cliff to warn of the zombies at the bottom. "No problem," I say, and toss a molotov down there, incinerating the zom-bitches. Before the flames go out, though, Mr. Smarty jumps right in and burns to death. Dammit.

I had the same problem! The helicopter pilot right?

 

[GLo Jones]

Killing zombies should not be the point of a zombie game. It hurts me a little inside every time a title like this is released.

I agree completely with this statement.

I would love a good zombie survival game in the form of an evil genius type layout. Have a group of survivors that have to try to live through everything.

But then again FPS games are apparently the only thing people want to make anymore because they are whats popular.

Hell there hasnt been a AAA zombie game that has really captured what makes the Zombie genre awesome. I would love to see someone make a proper zombie based game before they move on with the genre.

Well, there's been something [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/25/a-blood-red-state-dead-state-revealed/] in production [http://www.deadstate.doublebearproductions.com/] for a while now. Though I doubt it'll be a AAA title.

 

[Ghadente]

I enjoy the game more than i thought i would. I wasn't actually planning to get it at first but i am glad i did. Yes it has bugs and glitches, but nothing that makes me want to stop playing.

I'm not saying its the best game ever or anything, but its simply fun.
I love the multiplayer system of joining people at any time with just one button.
I play with analog combat and i think that makes it more interesting since you have control your swings more precisely. Plus, aren't you suppose to have a tough time fighting off hoards of zombies at once? that's not a flaw to me, it causes you to be more careful and strategic.

Until now, i have only heard good things about the game (besides bugs/glitches). I do agree the story and characters are pretty dull and repetitive but the main point is zombie killing and survival. I find myself not caring too much about the quests and story, instead focus more loot hunting, zombie slaying, and exploring.

Overall this game is just plain fun, especially playing on co-op. If you just play on single player, you are missing out, in my opinion.

 

[cymonsgames]

What sort of OCD does Yahtzee have? This thing he does with alphabetizing his reviews so he keeps track of where in the alphabet they fall, how many peers they have in that letter, and which letters are underrepresented.

Ah well, at least he's not counting the number of words he speaks. Which this week was 1264 by the way.

 

[Mangue Surfer]

Escort missions...

Really : does anyone actually enjoy this concept ?

The natural answer is "hell! Fucking NO!" But then ICO is a cult classic so, who knows?

 

[KiKiweaky]

Great review haha, seriously dont know where you come up with all the varied insults haha

 

[DragonManRen]

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.

 

[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