Dead Island Anyone?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Horribly broken?  I'd have to disagree to the extreme that the game is 'broken' at all.  In fact, some of your claims seem to stem from a lack of understanding of the purpose or use of certain abilities and weapons.  For instance, both SamB and Logan get an ability that allow them to 'push back' marauding zombies WITH THEIR WEAPONS.  It's triggered by either holding the left mouse or timing when they are about to get on you (depends on the character).  Additionally, SamB has a charge that on the second powerup can be used to push down any zombies in your way, so there clearly are melee parries and defensive moves in the game, just not for everyone.  On the subject of ease of death, my guess is you played either Xian or Purna, who both take considerably more damage per hit in my experience than Logan or SamB, though you can mitigate this with certain abilities (Xian can get just about full health from a medium med kit with upgrades, plus she's the strongest runner stamina wise so it's really easy for her to outmaneuver zombs).  Guns, especially when modded with shock or fire, are EXTREMELY useful against the special zombies, most notably suiciders and floaters, though the shock gun mod works well against thugs on a crit (50% of the time they'll elecrify to death).  About the only infected guns aren't really useful on are the crazy bone-stabber ones you encounter at the very end, and those are so rare that I felt they were drastically underused in the game.

Another thing you seem to be lacking is a good understanding of tactics with melee.  Kick is your block.  Jump kick takes down any non-special infected INSTANTLY for an easy head stomp or beat down.  When the target reticule moves up to the head and turns red, if you are using a weapon you have ability upgrades with (blunt or blade) you will perform a repeatable, special attack where you rapidly strike the target in the face.  Note that the specials only work on the face EXCEPT FOR Xian's jump stab, which can do up to double damage and is extremely useful for charging enemies (as is the jump kick).  The only real issue with melee is that it's often difficult lining up with the head when you're harried by enemies, but this never bothered me since you can literally jump kick two or three to the ground and then smash their heads one at a time, or, if you feel outnumbered, hoof it. 

The aspect I really like is that the main infected don't have any specific 'weakness' aside from fire.  The specials have a specific weakness that you can exploit (thugs = shock/toxic, floaters=shock, suiciders=distance attack, chargers = attack from behind).

Now you may be playing this with a controller, in which case I sympathize.  I gave up trying to do that after about two minutes of thrashing the arm around and missing.  It was an interesting idea to let you control the swings but the analogue control makes it too impractical.  Mouse control feels much nicer and you don't have to worry about missing what you aim for.

I don't really know what to say about pistol headshots killing thugs being 'too easy'.  That's life, they are humans who are not infected, so that argument just baffles me.

I see the weapon degradation as one of those necessary game consequences to having so many available, though people have released mods to make them twice as durable or indestructible if you prefer.  Doing this with one of the developer mods, though, would essentially make you godlike as one of them explodes zombie heads with each hit (and loses 20% durability). 

As far as the playable characters themselves, I am in pretty much complete agreement.  I don't 'like' a single one of them and I don't think any of them fit in with a zombie apocalypse scenario.  They are all too 'larger than life' in their character histories.  I mean we have an NFL screwup, a one-hit wonder rapper, a supercop, and a spy.  Xian probably sticks with me the most because the reasons for her being on the island are completely ridiculous.  Also, I wasn't pleased by the way they portray the characters in the cutscenes.  SamB and Logan are total, self-serving assholes while Xian (and to a lesser extent Purna) are interested in helping people.  They should have left out the 'personalities' entirely and allowed the player to decide where they stand.

Hopefully they'll release an expansion and perhaps some new playable characters as I'm definitely enjoying the game even on repeat playthroughs with each character.  Their different weaknesses and strengths are interesting since I can't just charge everything with Xian like I could with SamB, and Purna tends to shine in the latter 50% of the game when she starts getting guns and some of her critical strike abilities.  Logan, I feel, is both the most cliched and least powerful of the characters at end game because while he gets something from every field it's the weakest level (guns and blunt weapons especially) and most of his really useful skills are the bottom of each tier.  SamB tends to be the strongest one out the gate, with good skills accessible right away (same with Xian). 

Perhaps they'll rebalance the characters, but there are already mods out that completely revamp the skills of each character along with other interesting things like making it night time and making zombies only die from head wounds..


One thing I'd definitely like to see is them fix the first person THIRD PERSON model used for casting shadows to function like it does when other people view you.  If you force third person mode you're stuck with this model that had no upper torso motion and the lower half just kind of squashes into it as you run...it's really weird and I have no idea why they have a different model for what the player observes than what other people see.

[LimpingFish]

At least we're in agreement about the characters. And those atrocious cutscenes.

But I have been playing it with mouse and keyboard, and although you guess correctly that I have been playing Xian, I still feel fairly confident in my opinion that the melee is just too imprecise. And that the kick is a poor substitute for a block, especially when it doesn't have much effect on an enemy that's already in the middle of an attack animation. You make a perfectly valid point about jump-kicks and head-stomps, though, but I found the aiming, the window of timing, and the fact that you're left totally open if the kick - or, more to the point, the stomp animation - doesn't register, to be too frustrating to be workable. Especially in single-player, where one zombie attacking from the front and one from the back essential means your surrounded.

My point about the head-shots wasn't about the damage they inflict, but rather that head-shots on humans are ridiculously easy to pull off, making fighting them at range pointlessly easy.

As for zombies, I was using modded weapons exclusively by the time I reached the last third of the game, and while the shock shotgun I was using worked well at close range, nothing else seemed to do much damage, regardless of accuracy or buff. The suiciders could be popped with a standard pistol in three shots anyway, so I don't feel that counts. The floaters never really went down under any longer-ranged guns I had, though, and fighting them up close was a bit silly, since, even though I was damaging them, they could still vomit regardless, and you couldn't flank them in any meaningful way because they seemed to possess the hilarious ability to rotate on the spot, and always seemed to be facing me. I never found a gun that could do decent damage to a high-level thug or charger, either, head-shot or otherwise. Still, limiting effective gun damage to buffed weapons seems like the wrong design choice, but that's just personal taste.

Those three-hit infected attacks are too fast and cheap, though, to ignore, especially when it's more than one infected at a time.

Limiting the ability to parry to (a) only certain characters, and (b) only through the use of an upgrade, is either plain unfair, or stupid design. I mean seriously, how do you construct a game based largely around melee, and omit the two basic fundamentals of block and parry from the most basic level of the system? Which reinforces my opinion that it's at best a poor system, and at worst a broken one.

Both Condemned and The Chronicles of Riddick had melee systems that, while not perfect, actually made sense. I don't see why Dead Island couldn't have.

Which all makes me sound a bit silly when I say that I still really enjoyed my time with the game.

But please, PLEASE, somebody release a mod to fix Xian's ugly-ass shoes.  Leaving aside the point that a martial artist would never run about an island in such impractical formal footwear, they make it look like she has horribly elongated toes!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Well, as I said, kick is the equivalent of melee block for everyone.  Even the developers have said it.  The unlockable bonus skills just further specialize each character and I for one think it's a long overdue element of multi-character, multiplayer gameplay.  It's about time someone stepped up and made the characters different than slapping a pair of tits on them or a different name.  They certainly could have replaced some of the less useful skills with more interesting ones (a sniper scope option for purna would have been nice for headshots), but after playing all four of the characters they tend to be pretty balanced overall, though again, Logan tends to suffer from being the Jack of All Trades aside from his boomerang skill, which is pretty damn funny when paired with an explosive knife...The knife actually returns with the explosive intact and then the zombie blows up hehe...Also, if you give him developer mod 1 (exploding head knife), he's EXTREMELY deadly.

When a zombie is about to grab you, jump kick.  It knocks them on their ass every time, even if you standing still.  This is what I do when I'm surrounded with Xian, then go around stomping their putrescent heads in a circle.  With the proper rage bonus, you can have her jump kick pretty much infinitely with a stamina regen bonus.  Also, her jump stab with a fully modded weapon ALMOST ALWAYS CRITS, so bear that in mind, and you can execute it while standing still just by jump+attack.  A direct attack to the head can deal like 4000 damage and pretty much kills all the regular infected I use it on, so she's far from harmless.

Also, use your surroundings to your benefit.  If you see a group of zombs jump on the hood of a car where only the psycho screaming runners can reach you, then pick them off with a large weapon like a magic wand bat.  What you seem to dislike about the game is what I love about it, the amount of strategy and tricks at your disposal that you need to take advantage of from time to time. 

I do agree that some of the human opponents will leave their heads just thrust out waiting to be shot, but then there are some in the police station who actually seemed rather smart and used cover effectively.  My guess is they didn't spend as much time on the human opposition as they did on the infected, but frankly I was pleased to see a bit of both.  Especially since the human enemies are much more dangerous in melee and you really have to take them down hard broke up the monotony of another zombie kill for me.

Most of the issues you seem to have sound like they would be mitigated through team play with someone watching your back, and vice versa.  I've been saved many times from a charger or whatever by one of the people in my steam group, and the game is just flat more fun when you get a particularly annoying zombie down and group kick the shit out of him .

I'm sure they'll patch some melee fixes since there are some pretty major exploits in the game (item duping, unbreakable cars) and hopefully they'll release the new campaign at the same time.  Hopefully they will also expand the ranged weapons, maybe add a crossbow with some mods that have different tipped arrows (explosive, fire, shock, venom) that you can fire from stealth.  That and a real sniper rifle and maybe an uzi or other handheld automatic weapon would round it out pretty well imo.

As far as Condemned and Riddick go, I thought Condemned had ok controls but the enemies blindsided you in that game easier than in Dead Island, especially with it always being so damn dark.  Riddick I liked all around so I don't have any negatives except it needed more melee weapons.

Message me when you're online and we'll start a new game or something.

[selmiak]

I want to destroy the sand castles but I can't. Now I have to smash zombieheads to vent my anger.
And what's this with the girl that can't sleep without her teddy bear? Once she has this piece of cloth she can sleep like a baby with all these zombies around?

[Grim]

I finished it yesterday, after 27 hours of total playtime (not all at once, overall). I think it was a really good solid game. The quests weren't that interesting, neither was the story... but there was something ablsolutely fascinating about exploring game's varied locations, so beautifuly realized and detailed, that it felt almost like being there... I will have fond memories of it;)

And why would you care about the sand castles?...  I'm sure they're already working on some sand-castle destroying simulator for Wii or Kinect for those who prefer that to zombies:)

[selmiak]

I't just that the game wants to look so realistic yet you can't stomp on the sandcastles. And when kicking the beach balls with every spiky weapon available the just get kicked away and don't go flat. And the 'Quests' are really fed ex jobs like kconan mentioned already.

[Grim]

I traded my copy of Dead Island in. For only 99 pence at Game I could get a brand new Rage, so I went for it.

I regret it now.... Nice looking game.... but so empty. I miss Banoi......