Dead Island Anyone?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I'd like to get together a solid group of 3 other people who'd like to really put Dead Island through the paces in a co-op game.  For zombie survivalists, this is hands-down the most expansive and gritty survival horror zombie game made so far, and it's pretty much everything I was personally hoping for Left 4 Dead to be (instead of a linear campaign).  It has a score of bugs but fortunately as of yesterday most of the problems I was having have been fixed (the memory leaks were the worst).  So if a few of you I know would like to get a steam game of this running from scratch, my steam name is...ProgZmax. 

[kconan]

  I bought/pre-ordered it on Steam a while back (that amazing trailer sold me), and will supposedly be able to play it for the first time tomorrow.  I'm going to check out the singleplayer story first, and then once I get decent enough at zombie-bashing I'd be game for some co-op action.  This is the first "non-indie" game I've bought in a long time - well, outside of a brief Duke Nukem Forever stint - so I'm hoping it will be good.

[Anian]

L4d never did recover from lack of content and I for one don't buy the fact I should be happy for DLC that was actually just put off content that should be in the game. The one thing that l4d did right though, was the melee (the push away and actual melee in the l4d2) combat and I hoped they fixed the slugishness and perception because in gameplay videos it really sucked and the feeling of distance and range was terrible.

I mean I like some attention to detail I saw, but some parts turned from "realistic" to action and that makes it look strange and switches tones, unlike L4d which doesn't try to do anything besides campy over the top action (it's not even horror, just action). It kind of even confuses me why this game is made from first person view and not more of an rpg/gta camera view.

[SpacePirateCaine]

Man, I remember playing L4D2 with you, ProgZ, that was awesome. I'm hoping to pick up Dead Island pretty soon, but already blew my monthly gaming budget on Deus Ex. If you folks are still playing in a month's time, I'm totally down with some zombie-smashing action.

[Buckethead]

A friend and classmate of mine pointed to me towards this game and I will most likely pick it up some time. I'm not great at co-op though. I'm very much a team player but I just suck most of the time. I'm usually fine with friends but with random people I usually get shouted at in Polish. In L4D anyway 

Another thing. I'll probably get it on xbox, and not on pc. Although it seems like more of a pc game, I'm playing mostly on xbox these days.

[Chicky]

Dead Island looks like another generic FPS to me, a mashup of genre. Then again, i'm sure it will be a lot of fun playing co-op with friends!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

For me, it's everything I wanted L4D to be.  Mostly free-roaming (like New Vegas) with scattered hidden and unhidden quests, upgrades, and unlockables.  Some car + zombie crunching as well, and a pretty well realized city to explore, with varied locales (beach, sewers, urban sprawl, hotel, prisons, jungle).  Now that they've done some basic patching I can safely say it was worth my money, and I can only hope it raises the bar for survival horror type games.

If they were to release level building tools for this game it would absolutely explode in popularity, considering the sheer amount of varied locations you could make.

[kconan]

I think it has great potential to advance the zombie game genre, but overall I would rate it as an ok game.  What is killing me is the video artifacting, FedEx quests, clunky interface, and my biggest video game pet peeve, fake doors (as in you can't open them).  I'm also wondering why the environment isn't more interactive.

The best thing about Dead Island is the open world and the zombies themselves.  The melee combat is pretty cool and more than just a clickfest, though I am starting to itch for a gun.  My favorite moment so far was throwing a meat clever at a zombie and seeing it actually stick in his head.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

If every door in every game led somewhere there would either be very very few doors or loads of empty rooms. 

[kconan]

If every door in every game led somewhere there would either be very very few doors or loads of empty rooms. 

I think it is a huge waste of time to continually walk up to fake doors.  The Dead Island style isn't as bad as other games (like Duke Nukem Forever), at least an icon will appear when you walk near the door if it is capable of being opened or rammed open.  I still don't like it.

Heck yeah I would take less doors/rooms over fake doors.

[Anian]

If every door in every game led somewhere there would either be very very few doors or loads of empty rooms. 

Yeah, but some doors really look like they should be openable, I mean you have two same looking huts on a beach and then one you can enter but the other one you can't - that hurts the imersion. I'ts not being able to enter a hut, but the inconsitency that really is the hiccup and kind of shows of limitation of the game, which is never good especially in an exploration game.
There should either be a visual que (not very obvious one, but something along the ways of door being boarded up or no door being there but instead the enterance is blocked by furniture or something and a guy screaming from the inside that he won't let anyone in.

[Igor Hardy]

Yeah, but some doors really look like they should be openable, I mean you have two same looking huts on a beach and then one you can enter but the other one you can't

It's a game made by my fellow countrymen. We enjoy being mean like that.  8)

[Anian]

It's a game made by my fellow countrymen. We enjoy being mean like that.  8)

Well my fellow country made are makers of Serious Sam, so in the end that door would not stand a chance. 

[ddq]

Dead doors was a problem in Alpha Protocol, too, and several other games. I really like the LA Noire solution of golden doorknobs on the ones you can open. I'm not suggesting all games do this, but a similar vusual clue that can be spotted at a distance would be nice.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Yeah, but some doors really look like they should be openable, I mean you have two same looking huts on a beach and then one you can enter but the other one you can't - that hurts the imersion. I'ts not being able to enter a hut, but the inconsitency that really is the hiccup and kind of shows of limitation of the game, which is never good especially in an exploration game.

I don't think it's inconsistent because there are several huts (and later on homes and buildings) you can break into that will have a door with bar locking the door, that when removed, make it accessible.  There are other huts I've entered that will have couches and all sorts of stuff overturned blocking the door, and there are even a few doors that will open slightly and hit said objects that you can then see when you enter through a working door, so I think it evens out pretty well.  

I'm surprised so many doors are open in the game, really.  If it were me those suckers would be reinforced and everything else to keep out those bitey bitches.

[kconan]

  I finally got a few guns, the shooting aspects remind me of Rainbow Six Vegas's shooting galleries.  I know taking on punks is a sidelight to the zombie takeover, but hopefully decent AI can modded in down the road.

  In the handful of times I've played Coop the other players were tricked out with crazy hand-to-hand moves, which means I still haven't scratched the surface of melee combat.  Even with bugs and mostly lame quests, Coop is a blast.  I love the simplicity of "KewlDoodz69 is nearby, press J to join".

[Grim]

I bought the PS3 version few days ago and I'm really enjoying it. I do agree about the doors... but I suppose it just doesn't bother me enough to grumble.

I haven't been able to play any co-op though. I press the required button when other player is nearby, I get loading screen... and the connmection always fails. I wonder what's causing that? Lame PS3 lobby system or maybe my wireless connection dies out after a while and by the time it's ready that other player is already gone.... I don't know. But so far I have not managed to connect with anyone, therefore I slay zombies alone. It's a big job for one man....

  I should also add that Ascovel's fellow country men are my fellow country men too.... So I'm very proud, as well:) First the Witcher, now this... Soon, we're gonna be bigger than Japan ( with the release of The Cat Lady hopefully, hahaha:) ) Go Poland!

[LimpingFish]

I'm ten hours in, and I'm liking it so far. I'm not a huge fan of the melee mechanics (judging swinging distance is almost impossible), but I like the scale of the world and such. I've always enjoyed Techland's expansive level design, ever since I played Chrome back in 2003.

Oh, I'm playing single-player too. Co-op holds no interest for me.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I was having trouble connecting to groups when I first got the game, but after re-verifying with steam I haven't had a problem since.  I'm not sure if the PS3 has had a patch yet.

It's a shame you don't want to co-op, Fish.  It's actually quite fun (depending on who you team with).  I quite enjoy the melee all around, I just wish the group mechanics had a gui approaching L4D's so you could keep better track of your team members.  Fortunately though, from the mods I'm already seeing (there's a 'haunted' mod that makes it really dark and foggy outside) I'm looking forward to a good 3rd person mod and a gui overhaul if it's not done officially.

Of course, we already have an additional campaign promised on the horizon (and in the extras menu).  If they release level build tools for this game someone could really release a Dawn of the Dead total conversion.  There are already mods that make the infected behave like traditional romero zombies right up to the point of suffering no 'damage' when struck anywhere but the head.  You can take their arms off and repeatedly hit them in the chest and they'll keep coming until you take off the head.  

Really exciting stuff ALREADY happening with this game, and it has such a massive variety of locations (indoor and outdoor) that the potential for zombie violence is just amazing.  

And considering the sheer variety of weapons, someone could mod in just about anything short of maybe a bazooka.

It's really rare for me to gush over a game but I'm just so impressed with Dead Island overall that I have to.  This is the kind of zombie game horror fans like me have wanted for ages, and again, it's not perfect but it's done so many things right that I can easily look past its flaws.

[LimpingFish]

And that, as they say, is that.

Thirty hours to complete, pretty much saw and did everything, all in single player of course.

Warning: Minor spoilers ahead.

I liked it, despite some HUGE flaws. My opinion of the melee combat never changed; I still think it's horribly imprecise and badly executed. The lack of a block or parry move is criminal. The amount of damage you take from a single swipe from a common walker shows how unbalanced the health system actually is; an infected can kill you in a one triple swing attack, taking you from full health to zero. Ranged weapons are only of benefit against human enemies, with one-kill pistol head-shots being ridiculously easy to achieve. Against the undead, guns are almost worthless. I'm in two minds about weapon degradation, which both adds tension while also being a contrived pain.

Also annoying is that not one of the four main characters is remotely engaging, though the female leads are at least less overtly hideous than the male. The faux-hawk dude (Oh, Modern Warfare, what have you done?) and the par-for-the-course black rapper (pig-headed boorishness seems to be standard issue for this character type) would be offensive if they weren't so lazily defined. The addition of the teenager and the tribal girl help the story along, but the former soon dissolves into sulky teen territory, while the latter does nothing except give the player someone to rescue. NPC characters provided some interesting side-stories, though, such as the guy who gets you to tell his wife he's dead so he won't have to spend the apocalypse in her company. But overall, the story went nowhere and was a major letdown.

But I liked the scope of the environment. I liked actually exploring the various locales, far more than I enjoyed killing Zombies. I liked having the ability to drive around, despite restrictive boundaries and obstacles; a pile of empty suitcases seem to be able to stop a truck dead in it's tracks. I liked having so much stuff to do, to be honest. There was always some goal to achieve or side-quest to complete.

So while it's partly a horribly broken game, it's also an enjoyable one. As long as the combat doesn't grate, and you can stand the arse-numbingly lousy story.

[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......