Dead Island: Why all the hate?

[Sanat]

So Dead Island seems to have been condemned by most every reviewer and in public opinion as being not fun, not interesting and a game to steer clear of. And I was wondering why.

I really, really enjoyed Dead Island, and spent nigh on 12 hours on my first play session. From what I gathered through my play of it, it had (Yay, dot-points):

- Involved and highly satisfying combat
- A great selection and variety of weapons both ranged and melee
- A surprisingly interesting and detailed storyline with plenty of logs and diaries to read
- An upgrade system that was better than most examples that I have seen in First Person games
- Interesting and well balanced enemies
- Great graphics
- Entertaining and interesting characters with unique skill trees and traits

And of course, the gore. And the introductory trailer goes without saying as being a fantastic and highly emotional piece of video.

So basically I am wont to ask: Why is the overall response to this game so very negative? It's easily the most satisfying zombie game I've played, and I have yet to really glean any reasons as to why it's so "bad".

 

[Sandjube]

I wish I knew. I found it super fun. I honestly don't know what people were expecting from a zombie-survival game, really. It has everything most of those do and more.

 

[wintercoat]

Well, you know when you get to the fire station for the first time and have to kill one of those tough zombies? When I got there, I glitched through the ground, and ended up in noclip mode. When I reloaded the last autosave, my level was reduced to 1, and I had nothing in my inventory but a paddle. Loaded up my last hard save, and same thing. I lost all will to continue playing, as I have never run up against such a malicious glitch before. The game basically shouted fuck you at me. And I only found it to be mediocre by that point. Okay, but nothing to write home about.

 

[DoPo]

And of course, the gore. And the introductory trailer goes without saying as being a fantastic and highly emotional piece of video.

It's also not the game. I agree it was a nice video but I have no idea why when it came out people decided it would make for a nice game and somehow expected the game to conform to the video. Which is utterly silly. But it got their hopes up. I mean, I know (or know of) people who preordered the game based on that trailer - having no other information than "there would be zombies. And an island". And it was not a small number of people, either. Naturally they'd be disappointed when the game didn't deliver what they wanted. And it didn't because they fell victim of the hype - they didn't know what it would deliver, so they just made it up.

Other than that, I haven't really either played or seen the game, so I cannot comment if it actually had other bad parts.

 

[hazabaza1]

I don't know if they patched it, but it was a piece of shit at launch.
Combat wasn't like swinging a weapon, it was point at something and it dies.
Quests were buggy and didn't work fairly frequently.
Enemies doing percentage based damage completely invalidated any kind of proper threat or level progression.
This is a PC port problem, but it ran like shit and as such ended up looking like 12 different shades of arse.

As for issues in general?
Over-reliance on sewers, getting distracted with shooting people rather than zombies far too frequently, lack of motivation, disjointed story, and just not being all that fun.

 

[AndrewF022]

People didn't like Dead Island? well maybe a minority.. I honestly don't see much hate for it..

I thought it was great fun, some of the best melee combat since.. well.. Dark Messiah. The PC version had a few issues that I had to manually fix (FOV for example), but nothing too painful. The only real thing I hated.. the fucking sewer level, seriously? I thought a nice tropical island, the last place you'd want to have a level being set, in a sewer.

Minor annoyances aside, I still rate it quite highly. As long as you go into it with the right mindset ("Ima gonna kill me some zombies, bitches!") you'll have fun with your mates, hell even Soloing was still fun for me, but like Borderlands, you really need 3 friends.

 

[Fuhrlock]

I hear many mixed opinions about the game, but most were primarily disappointed due to the hype associated with the trailer and that is their own fault. I actually didn't think that much of the trailer and still left the game hating it.

Combat quickly becomes monotonous, and only gets worse towards the end game where everything just feels like a rinse and repeat job, with the stamina system just serving to prolong the slog through the hordes of enemies.

The city and sewer areas are tedious and dull settings that are overused in the zombie genre and take up far to large a portion of the game and kill any sense of atmospheric immersion.

The story and characters are laughable and only get worse throughout, to the point that when the game tries to act serious/emotional I simply ended up laughing at how pathetically hard the game was trying.

From my experience people hate this game primarily out of disappointment and normally I'd think that it's unfair to the game to judge by hype but in dead island's case (while for different reasons) it deserves the level of hate it gets in my opinion. I went into it not expecting anything but simply thinking I could get some entertainment out of it, and all I got was a few laughs at just how bad the story was

 

[Dandark]

I enjoyed the game but got really annoyed with the enemies constantly leveling up and making most weapons useless. It got to the point that I couldn't even kill the normal weaker zombies without having some kind of blessed, electrified, poisened, toxic, glowing sword of doom that was on fire and capable of splitting the planet in half if I missed the zombie.

I really enjoyed the game at low level where you just picked up anything you could find to use as a weapons. Exploring the pool and beach area of the resort at extremely low level was probably my favorite part since the combat was actully pretty good, I just hated how everything leveled up.

 

[Wayneguard]

I loved Dead Island. I just love anything with zombies though so it didn't even have to be that good. But, in fact, it was actually pretty good on its own merit. I really liked the locations, especially the city. And the game was fucking huge; I got 20+ hrs on my first playthrough.

I enjoyed the game but got really annoyed with the enemies constantly leveling up and making most weapons useless. It got to the point that I couldn't even kill the normal weaker zombies without having some kind of blessed, electrified, poisened, toxic, glowing sword of doom that was on fire and capable of splitting the planet in half if I missed the zombie.

I really enjoyed the game at low level where you just picked up anything you could find to use as a weapons. Exploring the pool and beach area of the resort at extremely low level was probably my favorite part since the combat was actully pretty good, I just hated how everything leveled up.

I agree with this completely though. I really do wish the game had been an action-adventure game with a solid story rather than a 4-player RPG. As this poster said, the promise of using every day objects as weapons against the undead really isn't a concept that lends itself well to scaling enemies in an RPG. If this game had been more of Red Dead Redemption type game where there are a few items/weapons that are objectively better than others, the focus really isn't on "leveling"; rather, it's on playing out the story and immersing yourself in the world. That would have made this a completely different game though and Techland probably decided, not unreasonably, that a 4 player coop game would be more popular and sell better than a single player action adventure game.

 

[Laughing Man]

Well I loved the game. The combat was enjoyable and very tension reliving. I didn't have any problems with the game glitching or having bugs and once I knew the story wasn't really made to be taken seriously, that it was purely there to give a minor distraction between the acts and major level changes, well after that I just sat back and enjoyed.

Plus the mods, walking up to a zombie and hitting it with a club that has a force value close to 300,000 and watching the zombie fly off in to outerspace, ahhh fun.

The trailer for the game was so well done that I think it gave people expectations of what the game was going to be like, but given that the video contained no actual in game footage then people can only blame themselves for having certain expectations.

If I had to list flaws?

- The use anything concept was fine but rapidly became pointless, one of the first weapons you use in game is an oar but the chances that you will EVER use an oar again after that first five minutes, next to zero
- The menu was clunky and was clearly a direct console port which really could have done with a mod or patch to sort it out
- I would list the sewer levels, a lot of folk did but to be honest the sewer levels can be blasted through rather quickly and they are a tiny part of the game, anyone who says they were a major part of the game spent far to long in them because you can blast through them in 40 minutes and that's in a game that will last a good 10 hours.
- The prison level at the end was far to linear and the fact that once there you could not go back was a tad annoying, oh and the last boss was just stupidly difficult the first time round and then stupidly easy the second time round??? I used melee the first time and the second time I used an assault rifle.
- The DLC was meh, Blood Bath was fine but added nothing to the game whatsoever and the Ryder White campaign was just plain arse.

 

[Smithburg]

- Involved and highly satisfying combat
- A great selection and variety of weapons both ranged and melee

This.
I dont know why but there was just something hard hittingly satisfying about the feel of the melee weapons. Loved the game especially the beginning in the island. Kinda wish they would have kept it there the whole time

 

[w9496]

well balanced enemies

Only part I didn't agree with. Late in the game, if you don't start every fight with a kick, it seems like like you aoutomatically lost. I don't know of any man-sized creature that can take a sledgehammer to the forehead and not fall over.

Other than that, it was a pretty good game even if the story was kinda lame.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I understand Dead Island to be a bug ridden, unbalanced, poorly ported fiasco. That's what I remember of reviews/user comments way back when.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

Because some people don't know how to use Google and based all their expectations on an outsourced CG trailer.

Seriously, anybody who based their purchase on that trailer deserved to feel "cheated."

Me? I loved the game. It's almost everything I've wanted in a zombie game. Only reason I haven't repurchased it for my PS3 is because it has some pretty horrific screen-tearing issues.

Can't wait for Riptide.

 

[antidonkey]

People got too caught up in the hype thanks to that fantastic trailer they put out. It promised something other than what was delivered. I found the game to be great. I borrowed a friend's ps3 copy and beat it with all 4 characters. I recently snagged a pc copy and am playing through it again....having already beaten it once. I find the gameplay highly addicting and simple until humans come into play. However, thanks to a mouse being way more accurate than a controller, those parts are less frustrating.

 

[Jhooud]

I picked up the game on a steam sale, and I've enjoyed what I've played of it. Not sure if my experience is better having waited for patches and what not, but I really like the mechanic of finding plans and upgrading weapons. Not a lot of horror (or even RE style scares) but still fun. YMMV I suppose.

 

[WanderingFool]

And of course, the gore. And the introductory trailer goes without saying as being a fantastic and highly emotional piece of video.

It's also not the game.

My problem with it aswell. There is embelishing the truth, and then there is saying one thing (the teaser) and doing another (the actual game). But I didnt really care for the trailer, and was actually pleased with the gameplay I saw. Though that is where it fell apart when I tried it on a friends console. I ran ito this nasty bug...

Well, you know when you get to the fire station for the first time and have to kill one of those tough zombies? When I got there, I glitched through the ground, and ended up in noclip mode. When I reloaded the last autosave, my level was reduced to 1, and I had nothing in my inventory but a paddle. Loaded up my last hard save, and same thing. I lost all will to continue playing, as I have never run up against such a malicious glitch before. The game basically shouted fuck you at me. And I only found it to be mediocre by that point. Okay, but nothing to write home about.

Shit... you too?

 

[Shadowcreed]

I liked the game - played it on PC untill the finish and did a 2nd playthrough. My 2nd play was a lot better since I've found a forum that had a very interesting thing to say. On the consoles you're able to your melee hits, just swoosh the analog stick around and your character should follow the swing as well. The PC version didn't have this working with the mouse - you just left click for a hit. It's very enjoyable certainty but its even more fun when you can aim your swings and cut off that limb with a well practiced thrust.
So yeah, for all you PC people playing Dead Island - you should really activate the analog control method! I don't have a link on how to do so at the moment but I'm sure google has a lot of info about it - if you want to activate it and really can't figure it out just quote/message me and I can help you out. [[You'll need to have a controller of some sort available to pull this off, any controller - hell I did it with a wingman rumble pad from 1994 or something]

 

[DanielBrown]

I stayed away from the game for a while due to the response, but eventually bought it when the price lowered. Found the game to be extremely fun. Felt pretty repetative by the end, though I still enjoyed the journey and will play it again soon.

However, if I recall correctly, some prettier character models wouldn't have hurt. At least the protagonists felt rather soulless.