Dead Island Message Board older than one year ago

#deadisland Dead Island has earned itself somewhat of a reputation for being buggy. Some glitches, though, go the extra mile—in this case quite literally. More »

#deadisland The PC Version of Dead Island has had a pretty rough launch. First, the developers' code was accidentally released in place of the retail version on Steam. Even after that problem was remedied, the final code on PC was buggy and the multiplayer servers were problematic. More »

4 out of 5

Who are these people? Wait, who cares?

The ongoing glut of zombie video games shows no sign of slowing down, but at least games like Dead Island can still bring some new mechanics to the wanton slaughter of the undead thousands. In this case, the unique additions are a sprawling open world and deeply embedded RPG hooks that place this game squarely between Zombie Fallout and Zombie Borderlands, with just a little bit of Zombie, uh, Left 4 Dead sprinkled in. It's also got some of the most hard-hitting first-person melee combat in any game I can remember, and an optional cooperative element that really broadens its appeal. Dead Island constantly runs the danger of collapsing under its own weird, esoteric technical quirks, but when it's running at full tilt its charms are hard to resist.

There's only a thin wisp of actual storyline here--you're one of four hapless but capable souls marooned on a tropical resort island in the midst of an all-ensnaring zombie outbreak. The game attempts to give all four characters some interesting background at the selection screen: the blunt weapons guy is a one-hit-wonder playing a pity gig at the resort; the blade specialist is the daughter of a high-ranking Hong Kong police official. But none of those stories go anywhere, nor does the main plot thread. You kill zombies throughout the resort, then in the island's lone city, then in the jungle, and would it surprise you to hear the military and Big Pharma might be involved? Does it even matter? (Not really.)

Guns aren't much good against zombies, actually.

The game isn't weaker for the lack of story, since surviving the apocalypse pretty much is the story. The point of Dead Island is to level up, find better weapons, level up some more, and massacre every last zombie that gets in your way. I'll readily admit my weakness for questing in an open world and hunting color-coded loot, and this game scratches that itch very well. It's especially similar to Borderlands, with surviving quest givers congregating around safe houses, giving you tasks that yield experience and rare weapons. Many of the quests simply have you fetching items from one place to another or killing specific targets, but there's enough variety and abundance in the settings and activities to keep things entertaining, especially with better and more unique weapons, abilities, and other trinkets always waiting at the end of each mission.

The parallels to RPGs, and in particular massively multiplayer ones, run deep. The items use green/blue/purple color coding, which everyone who spends much time with video games must be at least passingly familiar with by now. There's a large number of crafting recipes that let you stick nails in a baseball bat to give it a bleeding damage-over-time effect, or wire up batteries to a machete for a chance to electrocute zombies even as you're slicing their limbs off. Each of the four characters--already predisposed to specific combat roles--has a unique skill tree that lets you further customize the way they play. This customization seems tailored toward having the characters work well together in co-op. The blunt weapons guy has a bit more health and can gain an ability that makes nearby zombies more likely to go after him, for example, and heck, the manual actually refers to him as a "tank." If you're burned out on actual MMOs but still get off on their specific set of mechanics, this game is likely for you.

It's a big island, and there's a lot to find.

All the upgradable purple weapons in the world aren't much good if the combat doesn't make them fun to use, but Dead Island really delivers in that category. By default, you can mash on the attack button to swing your melee weapons wildly, and the game gives you a loose ability to target specific zombie body parts to break their bones, sever their limbs, or go for critical damage with a blow to the head. That style of combat is already tactically valuable, since you get experience bonuses for doing specific body damage and you can almost completely neuter some of the stronger enemies by taking their arms off and such. But I also really got hooked on the game's analog combat option, which asks you to make unconventional (and at first, uncomfortable) use of the right analog stick in exchange for total control over how you swing your weapon. Want to swing upward in an uppercut motion, or slam your hammer straight down on a zombie's head, or swing right to left to knock multiple enemies in a specific direction--say, off a ledge? You can do all that, and it's immensely satisfying. And from the standpoint of sheer brutality, it helps that the way flesh strips from bones, arms dangle limply from sockets, and shattered heads spout fragments of skull and blood is also extremely impressive, if a bit disturbing.

More than the RPG nuts and bolts, Dead Island nails its setting. The thing that hooked me in World of Warcraft wasn't just the loot-and-leveling treadmill, it was the sense of discovery, the feeling that you were roaming around a fully realized world and constantly encountering unique new areas, events, and people. Dead Island does that specific thing really well. You roam around the resort and find a guy kneeling and sobbing in the middle of a pool of blood, babbling about how he just killed his entire family, or a beachfront bungalow full of apocalyptic partygoers who want you to bring them booze so they can toast the end of the world. You might receive a new quest giver icon on your map simply because you explored a new section of the city and found someone shouting at you from their rooftop. Dilapidated mercenary camps dot the jungle, but then, what's this? A high-tech research lab? The game constantly rewards your exploration of its massive areas with unique new encounters and quests you might have otherwise missed. In place of interesting plot momentum, Dead Island has an interesting world, and that's good enough for me.

He's a big boy! Grrr! Yes he is!

It's also great that you can explore that world with up to three other people. That's where the Borderlands comparison feels especially apt, as you traipse around the island completing quests and working together to take down large groups of enemies. Like most co-op games, you can take all of this about as seriously as you want, skipping through quest dialog and getting right down to the business of collecting gas canisters or kicking zombies back and forth. I personally found the game's world so well-realized that I enjoyed it almost entirely by myself, but for those who value atmosphere less than silly hijinks with friends, the cooperative options add a completely different dimension to the game. The game integrates the co-op into your experience really well, giving you cues when other random players are nearby, in case you want to hop right into their games. Of course, you can filter these options for complete privacy if you want, but it's nice that level of integration is there.

I'm not exaggerating when I say Dead Island could have been my favorite game of the year so far, if it weren't for the presence of strange design issues and technical problems so numerous that I don't know where to start talking about them. The game in general feels chaotic and unevenly paced. Early on in the game you'll open up two different safe houses almost simultaneously and then get bombarded with so many side quests your head will spin, but other sections of the game will feel like there's nothing but the main quest line to pursue. Also, though the majority of the game is nice and open, there's a handful of hours that sends you through not just tightly constrained, linear corridors, but the same constrained, linear corridors over and over. The difficulty seems wildly uneven, with some sections of the city area in particular bombarding you with far more enemies than anywhere else. One of the loading screen tips suggests there are some parts of the game too tough for a single player to survive, but if this is one of those areas, it's poorly marked as such. And more to the point, it's kind of offensive that a large swath of the game might not really be accessible to someone who wants to play by themselves. Occasionally the game seems to forget you can play it by yourself, since some cutscenes feature all four player characters, even when you're playing alone. Other times, though, you only see your character. And some NPCs tend to address you as a group, even when you're alone. It's just bizarre.

Hell of a time to take a vacation.

There's also a host of large and small bugs that never break the game outright but certainly detract from the experience. I had one quest completely disappear from my quest log when I loaded a save game, but I suppose that was karmic retribution for another quest that the game had given me credit for finishing even though I hadn't actually visited the area where you would finish it yet. (Then again, the quest giver in that case literally vanished when I went through a door and came right back in. What?) Issues pop up consistently with the interface as well. Map markers for quest givers and objectives appear and disappear randomly based on some inscrutable set of factors, and I had problems with inventory items refusing to stack, forcing me to drop items temporarily just to pick up objects that I certainly had room to carry. (That's all the more frustrating because the menus are sluggish to navigate even on a good day.) And despite what you may have seen yourself, the game doesn't even consistently let you move between seats in drivable vehicles. That feature only works some of the time, though that may be related to using the analog combat controls. Who can say, or should even try to figure out, why any of this happens? A patch for the console versions of the game is reported to be in testing, and the PC version (which launched in a legitimately broken state) has already been considerably cleaned up with updates, but I'm not convinced this game will ever reach the functional state of most games, on any platform.

Trying to keep a mental catalogue of the things that are wrong with Dead Island, at least in its current state, is kind of exhausting. The good news is, the sum total of those issues still isn't damning enough that I would dissuade you from playing it. If you list open worlds, questing, co-op, loot, and zombies on your list of video game interests, this game has an awful lot to offer, warts and all.

What do Assassin's Creed, Resident Evil, Halo, and Lord of the Rings have in common? They've all been referenced in one way or another in Techland's new open-world zombie game, Dead Island. Take a look at some of the pop culture secrets we've uncovered in this undead-infested paradise...

#deadisland The reviews are in for Techland's open-world zombie RPG Dead Island. Reviewers are talking about immersion and HUDs, PC bugs and control issues, and whether it is possible to love a game for the cool moments it provides while accepting that it has significant flaws. But from review to review, there is one constant: that damned trailer. More »

#deadisland Here's something I didn't know: Those who pre-ordered Dead Island got a code for free DLC, which includes the "Bloodbath Arena" and a weapon called "the Ripper." They just can't use the Arena until it releases for everyone, evidently. More »

Dead Island has stumbled into its first week, releasing an unplayable version on Steam, needing a massive day-one patch, leaving a sexist slur in a line of code and, of course, there's our own review. But all hope is not lost -- DLC is on the way. The Bloodbath Arena DLC pack will add four new maps with unrelenting waves of zombies to the game, due for release later this month.

Bloodbath Arena was first announced as a free pre-order bonus, and will sell for $10 on all other copies. All XP and cash earned in the DLC maps will carry over to the main campaign, because it looks like Dead Island players will need all the help they can get.

Dead Island released today in the EU while our American cousins have been slaycationing for a few days already. Later this month, there will be more, deader bits of island in the form of the rather unhygienic Bloodbath Arena DLC. The game first showed its rotten face at E3 in 2006 and its prolonged development cycle didn’t manage to iron out all the wrinkles, though John was suitably impressed by what he played. Now that the game may finally have stumbled through the hurdles of its difficult release, maybe the DLC will have a smoother ride. Or I might be back next week to tell you it’s been delayed until 2017. Details below.

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Every editor at IGN wishes he or she had the time to personally respond to every semi-sane comment from the message boards, but we don't. However, in an effort to raise the level of discourse, we've decided to pick out some of the most interesting comments on Greg Miller's recent Dead Island review ...

#deadisland One of the unlockable skills for Dead Island leading lady Purna allows her to deal extra damage against male victims. It's called Gender Wars in the game, but the original skill was apparently named "Feminist Whore." More »

After a rocky PC launch on Steam, Dead Island finds itself amidst another PC-related controversy. A Steam user by the name of AlekseiVasiliev dug into the game's source code and discovered the remnant of a skill called "Feminist Whore" that's attributed to the character Purna...

#deadisland Should you spend your vacation time on Techland's Dead Island? Normally in this situation looking at a range of video game review scores would help. Normally. More »

#deadisland Dead Island has nothing to do with that family and their child and that sad death. But that doesn't mean it's a bad game. More »

Dead Island was released (in some manner) in the US yesterday, and arrives in the UK, once its painstakingly paddled across the massive oceans of the internet, on Friday. I’ve been playing it for a long, long time, and yet still haven’t got anywhere near its ending. And as such, even though I’m about to tell you Wot I Think, in the interests of probity will offer you my Impressions.

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Some game launches go smooth. Some game launches are bumpy. This one was a diaster on PC.

Dead Island went live on Steam last night, as many PC games do. What customers booted up Dead Island, however, they were treated to something...strange. You could tap a button and begin clipping through the environment, there were trace elements in the code about the Xbox 360 version, and all sorts of other nonsense. All of this created suspicion perhaps the wrong version of Dead Island had been uploaded to Steam's servers.

Publisher Deep Silver isn't admitting that's what happened today, but it did just issue a statement that the "correct version" of Dead Island is now being distributed through Steam.

This updated version may break compatibility with saves, however. Deep Silver noted that players will have the option to "Chapter Select" their way back to roughly where they were, though.

"We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused to fans who wanted to spend their day crushing some zombie skulls," said the company in a statement. "We are right there with you."

There will be a "make good" moment for fans eventually but in what form remains to be seen.

"Stay tuned in coming days for those details as internal discussions are ongoing on our end," said the company.

If you're still experiencing "The Ripper activation bug," Deep Silver's aware of it. A fix is coming.

What a mess of a launch! Hopefully, these issues let people get to the zombie killin' soon, as Brad seems pretty keen on the game. This one seems to have fallen in the good pile of Techland releases.

Over the weekend, IGN Loudmouth Greg Miller reviewed Dead Island and IGN Guides Editor Stephanie Lee posted a 45-minute Dead Island walkthrough to supplement her ever expanding guide. Needless to say, both have been playing the hell out of developer Techland's undead RPG. Once the review and guide w...

#deadisland I think we were all a bit shocked when Techland told Kotaku earlier this year that the family so poignantly represented in the award-winning trailer for Dead Island wouldn't actually be in the game. More »

An early version of Dead Island has been released on Steam...

Regarding the strange derpage today, where Deep Silver seem to have somehow released the dev version of Dead Island to US Steam users, we’ve had a statement back. It’s succinct:

“the final version will be out during the day”

Which would seem to be both a tacit acknowledgement that something that wasn’t the final version was released, and also the good news that the error should be fixed before bedtime. So that’s good. Our review of Dead Island will appear just as soon as I’ve finished writing it.

Gosh, here’s a whoopsie. Dead Island is out now on Steam for the Americanish, except the version they’ve received probably isn’t the one Deep Silver were hoping they’d get. It seems the dev build of the game has been put out there, rather than the official version. Complaints about a bad port, mysterious goings on, and no-clipping all seem to come down to the fact that this is the bug-testing, cheat-enabled, not-for-release version of the game. Code that people are digging up seems to reveal that this might even have far too much of the 360 version left in it. Crikey, that’s a big oops. (I should note that the PC review build I’m playing certainly is optimised for PC.) A day one patch is intended to fix an impressive thirty-seven issues. Perhaps one of them will be the release of the internal debug of the game to US customers? We’ve contacted Deep Silver to see what’s really going on.

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Dead Island is Now Available on Steam.

A holiday paradise gone mad. A tropical island turns into total chaos after a mysterious zombie outbreak. Cut off from the rest of the world, the players only chance to survive is to fight to the death and find a way to escape from the island.

Dead Island is out tomorrow in the American States, but not until Friday for the Eurochaps. I’m playing it right now! (We’ll have a WIT up in the middle of the week, to confuse everyone in all territories.) I’m also not encountering quite as many bugs as others have spotted in some of the reviews that have appeared today. But that’s not stopping the appearance of a day one patch, due out tomorrow along with the game, that will fix an impressive thirty-seven issues. You can read them for your own amusement below.

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Dead Island is probably the most realistic recreation of the inevitable and oncoming zombie apocalypse in video game history. It's typified by desperation, sacrifice, frustration, terror and the overbearing sense of hopelessness.

But there's a catch. Though the zombie apocalypse may occasionally be grimly satisfying or fleetingly triumphant when you survive another night, there's one thing it almost certainly won't be.

Fun.

IGN's Dead Island review is live, and now you know how rad the open-world zombie RPG is. But do you know where the family from the debut trailer is? As you'll recall, Dead Island burst into pop culture in February with a piano tune and a backward trailer. In it, a family of three is attacked by the undead...

Dead Island is Fallout 3 with zombies. Plenty of people are going to compare it to Dead Rising (as you can create weapons) and Left 4 Dead (as the action is first-person and good for four players online), but when I finally got past the game's obtuse opening and less than stellar cutscenes, I found ...

The official Dead Island map app turns your iOS device into a veritable Wii U, offering details about every mile of Banoi Island, including the locations of more than 150 items and an objective checkbox. The app will launch September 6 for $2.99 on iTunes.

The app doesn't appear to connect with individual Dead Island games, meaning objectives and items will have to be checked off manually. We can't help but assume that Dead Island will keep track of our objectives and items for us, though perhaps not in such a neat-and-tidy handheld manner. The app also emits Dead Island music to immerse users "in the mysterious and dangerous atmosphere of the game," which could be a bit redundant if used while playing the actual game.

Personally, we can't wait to take our Dead Island map apps on the go, pumpin' out zombie music and staring at our objectives in the office, on the bus and at funerals everywhere, just to get our money's worth.

Ever since February's trailer, Dead Island has been on the tip of a lot of tongues. Will it live up to the somber vibe? How will the online work? Is this going to be another Dead Rising 2 when it comes to combining weapons? We don't have the answers... yet. IGN's Dead Island review will go live ...

#deadisland Before everyone died in horror game Dead Island, they liked to hit the pool and drink beverages with little umbrellas in them. Those days are dead, err, gone. More »

The Dead Island Total Game Integration continues in PlayStation Home as the third and final wave of the zombie horde is unleashed this week. Head to the Central Plaza this Thursday, September 1st and get to slaughtering swarms of zombies with the new Sawblade Mace weapon. Survive a series of bloody, hyper-violent challenges that allow you unlock a host of unique rewards – including the exclusive “Exploding Zombie Meat” weapon for use in Dead Island. Can you help the community exterminate 20 million zombies? Get your hands bloody this week in PlayStation Home.

The Velocity Racing League enters a new phase this Thursday with the Sodium 2 Nemesis Update. With the start of the Nemesis stage of the Velocity Racing League a new challenge awaits you in the form of a new track (complete with reverse mode) – Wasteland Spires!

New technological advances pioneered on Iridos have also paved the way for a new set of Velocity Racer upgrades, also releasing this week. New rocket boosters and hover engine upgrades will give you even more customizability options for your craft, allowing you to make the decisions that could see you sitting pretty at the top of the Sodium 2 leader boards.

Your hard-fought quest for bragging rights also gets a boost with the introduction of the Holo-rank system. When you enter the Launch Grid, your level will be displayed on the back of your avatar for all to see – wear it with pride! Also added are a range of smaller improvements to Sodium 2 based on your feedback such as the ability to quickly select new classes of vehicle in multiplayer, and removing chat bubbles during the race. Check out this huge update to Sodium 2 when it releases this Thursday!

The long-awaited Winter Vacation Villa personal space releases this week. Experience the frills and chills of winter in this ski chalet, nestled neatly in between a white-capped cliff and snow-dressed forest and overlooked by an icy cascading waterfall. Complete with its own outdoor Jacuzzi, indoor fireplace, and veranda bedroom, this is how the winter was meant to be spent! Don’t believe me? Take a tour by selecting the Winter Vacation Villa Personal Space Open House from the PlayStation Home Navigator and get up an up close and personal look at this luxurious abode. If you like what you see, you can easily add it to your collection for the low price of $4.99.

VeeMee is packing the shelves of the PlayStation Home Mall this week with its new line of Across All Arenas virtual items. Choose from a wide array of items from hit musical acts like The Wanted, White Lies and Florence + the Machine as well as designs from the popular clothing brand Star in the Hood. While you are in the Mall, be sure to pick up LOOT’s adorable schnauzer companions and the recently-released Deus Ex: Human Revolution costumes. Afterwards, head to the Central Plaza to receive an exclusive X-MEN: FIRST CLASS reward!

The PlayStation Home Community Theater receives an update this Thursday. This week, LittleBigPodcast covers the new Toy Story DLC for LBP2 while PSXextreme shares some Resistance 3 news and looks at upcoming HD game collections.

See you in Home!

Deep Silver today released a six-page digital comic revealing events that lead to the highly anticipated Dead Island, which places players amidst the terrifying zombie outbreak in the tropical holiday island of Banoi. The comic introduces journalist Roger Howard, who has traveled to Banoi to inv...