D:
Act 1 was the best, if that didn’t grab you , then Acts 2-3-4, will not make you want to play it more.
Ugh the sewers , the SEWERS!!!
Why would another wave of players affect your interest in the game?
DeepT
1703
I found the opening area, the hotel resort to be the best part of Dead Island. It all just goes downhill from there. Overall, IMHO, it isn’t a very good game. About 1/3 of the way through you are getting tired of the same kind of zombie action. You soon want to just finish it, but there is so much more to do until you get to the very predictable ending.
I would only get it if you absolutely love zombie games, or you are very, very bored. Perhaps even loving zombie games isn’t enough. My friend loves zombie games. He was super excited about this one. Half way through he was asking, “How much longer can this possibly go on?”
It’s easier to ignore a game if I think I’ll be the only one playing it. It doesn’t always work that way. But it’s one more parameter to decide whether to invest my time.
This is just really strange to read given how many of the quest lines can be skipped entirely and how very choose-your-own-difficulty the gameplay is. I mean - the first two times I went through it I missed an entire quest hub! There is no significant penalty for death (-% of useless resource) and it pretty much dares you to see just how deep you can get yourself into trouble and then get out… or not. No matter.
Actually I see a lot of that in reactions to it along the lines of - I don’t know - I only liked the easy and very linear first chapter, it sucks I can’t sit back and snipe zombies at a distance all the time, oh no my weapon broke in a fight how shit, oh no this section I could have raced through at top speed took too long, oh no all these skippable quests keep coming up. It sure seems like it is really easy for some people to play it in a way that removes just about all of the fun.
That’s exactly how I felt. By 1/2 way through I just wsa joining random multiplayer games to make the last 1/2 go quicker.
tgb123
1707
As someone who sucks at action games, how much of the combat is stat/equipment based as opposed to reflex based?
Marcin
1708
Yeah okay, there were some sewers. And then there was the jungle with the human shooters.
Fortunately, the sewers weren’t too long (although there was a bit of backtracking) and then they got you out again, and the human foes you could mostly run over. The ones you couldn’t were an interesting (and fairly brief) challenge after the city. But I definitely agree that the beach, hotel and the city were the best - fortunately that’s the meat of the game anyway.
The ending fight was awful and threw away a lot of the goodwill from the rest of the game. Lower the difficulty all the way and ignore it, imo.
Can be very reflex based at times - and I think - ideally and most excitingly played, is very reflex based. But also usually with a fair amount of strategeryerising your way around fighting a crowd of enemies who will come in at different intervals and speeds. Some are always slow, some are always fast, some randomly lurching towards you quite fast, or getting attracted to a fight you’re having with another enemy and coming up from behind, etc.
Personally I think the biggest achievement of the game - other than the cool combat controls - is how intense it manages to make what are essentially stakeless fights where you’re fighting low health, low speed, usually well announced enemies. They made beating zombies up really fun, they made being hit by zombies really gross, and they made being attacked by a group of them really intense. Zombies aren’t just filler enemies like in L4D that go down in one hit - they have a presence and they’re creepy. You’re always feel very powerful in comparison to them, but they just have a way of getting through and pressuring you … it’s very well done and quite hard to relate without playing it.
Dead Island combat is both stats/equipment and timing based. Weapons stats and bonuses are like any MMO (there are whites, greens, blues, purples etc.). Finding better weapons is a must, but combat is definitely based on timing your blows to hit and avoid being hit. Also, characters have a stamina value that has to be managed or you won’t be able to attack.
I really enjoyed the combat, which is some of the best first-person melee I’ve seen. Arms and heads come off. Extremely satisfying. The opening is the best section of the game, though. It really started to really wear on me after I got to the second area.
Yeah, they’re important … but it’s easy to get too attached to something and use it too long. The weapons have their own level and if you’re more than about -3 or so weapon levels below the enemies you’re almost better off taking any common levelled white weapon you find around. If you’re spreading the damage around through different weapon types you really shouldn’t be spending all that long using the one kind - you and the enemies will outlevel it pretty quickly.
Again I think this goes towards some of the ‘too long and boring’ complaints because it’s really tempting to add yet more to-and-fro-ing to the game by saddling yourself with a constant “repair my weapon” quest. That you don’t need to actually do, so much. Oh and! The other thing is - you don’t lose durability for throwing a weapon at a zombie either, and you’re silly if you’re not doing that a lot, even just to take another hit-to-kill off one.
The one thing I think they could have done was scale levelling to a point where you would hit the cap around the end of the game on one run through - I did that (set the levelling to about 1.8x normal) and I thought it was much better.
Nice deal for a system if you are also looking for a 27" lcd with 2560x1440 resolution. I think you can still offload the monitor for around 700-800 if you dont need it.
Tony_M
1714
The real game doesn’t start till you get to Nightmare. Just play for 20 hours and then you’ll start to see the good stuff. ;)
Thanks for all the comments on Dead Island. Just put about 4 hours into it and I’m loving it so far. The melee combat is a blast and it even has a little of that Diablo-style loot hunting addiction.
The Thief games are on sale on Steam. $13.49 for Thief Gold, II and Deadly Shadows. The first two are still $10 each at GOG.
I wonder to what extent these Steam versions of Thief Gold and Thief II have been massaged to work on modern systems vs. the GOG versions. I had a disc-based copy of Thief Gold that I played a few years back under XP, and I managed to play up through an early level where you have to try to bust a guy out of prison (or at least find him in prison and talk to him). When that level ended and the next one launched its intro cut scene, the game would always crash.
Anyone had experience with the GOG versions (or these Steam ones) lately?
Ender
1718
So should I buy Dead Island now or wait till a summer sale when it will be 9.99… I won’t be playing it till I’m done with D3 and Gratuitous Tank Battles anyway. Not to mention my need to play Shogun and Skyrim as well…
Ahh crap, I hate my backlog.
Daagar
1719
I think you answered your own question :)
I have the same question, I’m interested in the first two games, but only if they run decently. I’ve been burned by old games on Steam before - though I admit when I say burned I’m not talking about a ton of money.
