Dead Island; An open world L4D without Guns

**Kekvit Irae** · 09-09-2011, 12:15

I played more of it earlier, and I'm now up to level 17. I had to resort to using a 360 controller... on an FPS.

It's not a bad game, but it's not a good game either. It's pretty mediocre. I'm going to list off the things I hate:

1. Firearms are almost non-existent until you get to around Act 2 (and consider yourself hosed if you play the firearms specialist), and melee weapons have WAY too little durability to bother upgrading. The only reason I really carry around a pistol is in case I run into a Boome- er, excuse me, the Suicider zombie.

2. If you play in co-op as a guest, you can kiss your sidequests goodbye; only the host can do sidequests.

3. Tech support is non-existent. I'm still waiting for that reply.

4. I hope you like scaled enemies; every single enemy is scaled to your level. Instead of walking around the newbie area feeling awesome and blowing off steam, every single area is exactly the same in regards to enemy levels. Unless you're starved for craftable items, or a sidequest sends you there, you'll never again set foot in the newbie zones.

5. Dying is laughable. So laughable, in fact, that you really wont avoid dying. The only thing you lose is a paltry sum of money and some time spent getting back from a checkpoint. Oftentimes, in co-op, the respawn is AHEAD of where you died.

6. Medipacks are virtually useless. There are tons of energy drinks and snacks lying around everywhere, and except for a VERY lucky find, the only place you will find them is on a merchant. They are also used in multiplayer to revive a fallen comrade, but see reason 5 for why you shouldn't waste one on them. They've played enough of the game to understand.

7. Dead Rising and Dead Rising 2 had both humor and compelling plotlines, complimented with character customization and the ability to use almost anything you see as a weapon, adding to the fun factor. Dead Island feels more like a slog through Borderlands, complete with a lack of variation in enemies, without the humor. Seriously, the entire plot of Dead Island is "get off the island."

8. The fun factor, for me, is definitely not in the 50 USD price range. If you're looking for a good zombie slaying game, save 20 dollars and buy Dead Rising 2, or save 30 dollars and buy Left 4 Dead 2. It doesn't matter, Dead Island tried to excel at being both, but failed miserably.

**White_eyes:D** · 09-10-2011, 00:29

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae

I played more of it earlier, and I'm now up to level 17. I had to resort to using a 360 controller... on an FPS.

It's not a bad game, but it's not a good game either. It's pretty mediocre. I'm going to list off the things I hate:

1. Firearms are almost non-existent until you get to around Act 2 (and consider yourself hosed if you play the firearms specialist), and melee weapons have WAY too little durability to bother upgrading. The only reason I really carry around a pistol is in case I run into a Boome- er, excuse me, the Suicider zombie.

Yeah, the controls really suck, I needed to use the 360 controller as well.

1. Firearms are not the best weapon of choice, ammo is really scarce and it doesn't do much damage compared to other weapons. I liked using the blade chick with the "stomp" skill, saves an untold amount of durability with my blades. Throwing them at the zombies is also really good as you can just retrieve them at no durability cost.

2. If you play in co-op as a guest, you can kiss your sidequests goodbye; only the host can do sidequests.

2. Weird, because I and the other two guys were doing a bunch of quests and it was so confusing on what we had to do next and were just going around in circles killing zombies because of it.

3. Tech support is non-existent. I'm still waiting for that reply.

3. I will take your word for it on that. I don't get tech support, unless the need is REALLY dire.

4. I hope you like scaled enemies; every single enemy is scaled to your level. Instead of walking around the newbie area feeling awesome and blowing off steam, every single area is exactly the same in regards to enemy levels. Unless you're starved for craftable items, or a sidequest sends you there, you'll never again set foot in the newbie zones.

4. Just last night I was in a newbie zone Co-oping with two other guys and the zombies were just lvl.5...seems to depend on the hosts lvl.

For the most part, I agree with you here.

**Kekvit Irae** · 09-10-2011, 04:21

Originally Posted by White_eyes:D

Yeah, the controls really suck, I needed to use the 360 controller as well.

1. Firearms are not the best weapon of choice, ammo is really scarce and it doesn't do much damage compared to other weapons. I liked using the blade chick with the "stomp" skill, saves an untold amount of durability with my blades. Throwing them at the zombies is also really good as you can just retrieve them at no durability cost.

I would have liked to see them buff up the power of firearms a bit. Currently, they are only used for headshots against humans (you would think they would have awesome killing power against zombies, but NOPE!), and to kill Suiciders from a distance, especially since ammo is extremely limited. And on the subject of throwing weapons... I hope you didn't really like that weapon you just threw, because anyone in a co-op game can pick up your weapon. It leads to a lot of potential griefing, especially when you accidentally throw your purple knife instead of your white knife.

2. Weird, because I and the other two guys were doing a bunch of quests and it was so confusing on what we had to do next and were just going around in circles killing zombies because of it.

As a guest, you can pick up sidequests, but only the host can turn them in or track them on Quest screen. It's really annoying when you have a bunch of sidequests you need to turn in, but the host has already done so previously.

4. Just last night I was in a newbie zone Co-oping with two other guys and the zombies were just lvl.5...seems to depend on the hosts lvl.

As noted by the quests, virtually every aspect of the game is dependent only on the host, not the guests (since the game is drop-in-drop-out). It would have been nice to have an option to set level scaling to average player level, scaling off, or scaling based on certain players, rather than scaling based on the host.

EDIT: Aaaaaand... I finally found an unorthodox solution to the keybinding woes. Normally I would absolutely hate the game for screwing up keybinding, but I managed to snag myself a Razor Naga gaming mouse (15 buttons of gaming goodness) for my birthday last month, so I just rebound most of the keys I needed to the keyboard numbers (1 through +) and let me Razor Naga handle that. Works fine, but the mouse sensitivity is still all over the place.

**White_eyes:D** · 09-10-2011, 05:10

Yeah, firearms are too underpowered. They need some serious beefing up or ammo should be more plentiful. When I was playing with those two guys we couldn't grab each others weapons and had to trade.(Tried to drop some mollys to a low-leveled player but couldn't)

**Kekvit Irae** · 09-10-2011, 11:38

Melee weapons range from "useless" to "I AM GOD!"
I crafted myself one of the Developer Crafts weapons. Can you guess from the name which category it belongs in? Here's a hint: It's a knife that kills normal enemies in a single, instant hit 100% of the time that synergies extremely well with the throwing character's AoE skill.

Oh yeah, and I can craft more at any time using only a battery, five diamonds, and 10,000 dollars.