Dead Island Gameplay Trailer

Thanks to the amazingly beautiful and haunting, yet increasingly irrelevant cinematic trailer released for the upcoming release Dead Island I have been following the media surrounding the game reasonably closely. Just a couple days ago a 12 minute gameplay trailer was released finally granting us snarling undead masses of the game buying public it's first real impressions regarding the actual mechanics to back up the amazing 3rd party cinematography. Don't remember the video? Click here.

So the game looks like a Grand Theft Auto clone with zombies. Well that's not entirely accurate..... more like a Just Cause clone with Zombies with a bit of Bulletstorm (minus the subliminal sexual assault impulses) mixed in.

It looks like it might be fun, but my pressing concern is that of a lack of gameplay focus.

I see instances of score boons rising from bloodied undead corpses being shot with automatic weapons and then scenes portraying horror and other similar emotions. It seems to me like you have to choose between Duke Nukem and Silent Hill 2; it really would be impossible to be both. Bottom line is looks like the game is trying to mix arcade style action with tense survival horror and that is the developer trying to have it's cake and eat it too. (The cake is obviously a lie anyways wakka wakka)

A horror experience needs to be before anything else immersive. For a survival horror game to really be effective the player needs to truly forget they are sitting on their couch and really be fully emotionally invested in what is happening on the screen and in the game. Huds, numerical scores, and other numerical information displayed on screen serves only to remind us we are playing a game; a pleasant diversion rather than being a part of a story in another universe.

Arcade style games are very fun, but for completely different reasons. It is simply a blast to pwn newbs with the sniper rifle from half a map away and see the kill message broadcasted to the entire server. It is a blast to get points for mutilating fodder enemies in creative ways a-la Bulletstorm, but it is a completely opposite experience from that immersive survival horror.

My kingdom for a true zombie apocalypse sim!

Honestly, making an fps where survival is prominent, you need to strike a balance between resource management, creating safe houses, and staying a step ahead of the zombie hordes would be epic. Hell a talented modded could do it in Minecraft in theory, or make a complete mod for L4D. It really would be a license to print money if someone would do it right.

Regardless Dead Island looks to be in danger of having an identity crisis. Of course the game doesn't release for some time, but being an anonymous internet troll I certainly won't let that prevent me from passing judgment!