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!

Dead on Arival Island?

How do you get one of the most amazing game trailers (or trailers in general) ever produced to be bad for your product? Just ask Techland with their amazing piece of film that, evidently, doesn't represent their game in anything except in setting.

Like just about every nerd ever I had an amazing nerdgasm over the Dead Island cinematic released a month and a half ago and was really eager to see the Walking Dead of video games. It really looked that instead of being a bland, Left 4 Dead knockoff it would be a drama with the setting being zombie apocalypse. Report after report is telling us that isn't the case at all. Even the producer of the game is likening it to Borderlands in the way it keeps players hooked.

It makes me sad that I really feel that our hearts have been broken already. Maybe my hopes were naive, but I really felt we may be seeing a second fiddle studio really come in to it's own with a tour de force pet project. Then again that's not always a guaranteed success either.

If Techland actually made the game they represented in the trailer I would pre-order 2 copies (because your diety of choice knows I would need it for PC and Xbox). Unfortunately, it is being now represented as a second rate L4D. Dead Island, in my not so humble opinion, has been downgraded to the "must be crap until proven otherwise" catagory.

All I can say is the game better be pretty friggin' awesome.

Dead Island's Trailer is Amazing for a Few Reasons

Last night (EST) the Dead Island trailer was released to the world and has blown up like Hindenburg. This trailer is absolutely amazing (not perfect but I'm not here to bitch this post) and is the newest of very high quality dramatic videos with the setting as zombie apocalypse. The team at Polish developer Techland clearly understand what takes a campy subject like zombies and makes it real and human. This short isn't about the end of the world, it's about the end of a family.



It reminds me very much in tone to AMC's brilliant television show Walking Dead, based on the comic of the same name. Once again it is not a zombie show, it is a drama where the setting is zombie apocalypse.

With that said we can only speculate about the gameplay. IGN's announcement article describes the game as a first person melee game with RPG elements. You can have up to 4 friends playing together and coming in and droping out seamlessly. Not like L4D at all. This makes me really nervous about the game living up to the awesomeness of the announcement trailer as do we really need another L4D with little to no guns and RPG elements? Forget the zombie game part, don't we have enough FPS's with RPG elements?

Here would be GooseyB's Dead Island. Take the journey with me on this one. Survival Horror 4X RTS. Think Civilization meets RE4. You heard me. Early game you are tasked with exploring a giant, randomly generated map rounding up survivors and evading, not fighting the zombie hordes as they are sensitive to sound and would overwhelm you. Next it would be about establishing a basic society. Get a camp together, scavenge resources, keep everyone fed and safe. Do you make one big camp and pool resources at the risk of having a zombie outbreak wipe out all of humanity, or do you make smaller camps and spread your resources thinner? Once you get that handled it's on to starting up production and research to fight/end the zombie infection and then using developed soldiers to fight back. There would be so many tough decisions and emotion to the whole thing. Think World War Z the game!

That concept is already copyrighted guys; no stealin'! Bottom line lets hope Dead Island is as awesome as the trailer.