Dead Island: Why all the hate?

[RJ 17]

For me it just seemed like an attempt at a free-roaming Left 4 Dead...one that failed pretty hard.

One of the complaints about L4D is that it's level based and people get tired of just going from point A to B all the time. Well what is a quest system if not just a glorified "Go from point A to B" system? Yeah, the exploration and such is fun, but that ends the moment you leave the resort portion of the game and end up locked in the zombie-infested city.

Then there's all the mechanical issues that plagued the game. My personal favorite was when a couple pissed off zombies come charging you and you're standing ready with your Super Electric Fireaxe-o-Death, ready to split some heads, and then end up running through you and start wailing on your back.

Then there were the areas that randomly spawned never-ending hordes of pre-pissed off zombies that run straight for you, making it only a matter of time before you get overwhelmed.

The escort missions are absolute crap with the people unable to make up their mind as to whether they want to just utterly ignore all the zombies and make a break for it or run off to fight every single zombie within a 4 block radius. A number of them are absolutely pointless by their very nature! Escort the sewer technician so he can help you lower the water. Ok, fair enough. Show up at the sewers. "I'll stay here, you go find the lever and turn it." "..........wait, why the fuck did I have to bring you with me in the first place?"

The story got progressively worse as the game moved on. You go from a beach resort to the city to the sewers to the other half of the city - save the retarded daughter of the mechanic because she doesn't understand the meaning of "THEY WILL MURDER AND RAPE YOU!" - go back to the sewers, back to the city, then out to.........the jungle where you engage in combat with rebel militants and crimelords. Wait....what? Then we get to the prison and behold!

Spoiler: The absolute lamest boss-intro cutscene in the history of gaming!

I mean seriously...that just absolutely ruined any last remnant of a good thought that I had for the game. What the fuck happened to my super decked-out katana? Or my previously mentioned Fireaxe-o-Death? Or all my fucking guns? No. We just show up at the chopper, the dumb ***** gets shot, and the entire cast just kinda stands there like a bunch of slack-jawed idiots "Duuuuuhhh....damn. She done gone got shot.....let's just continue to stand here and watch as this single guy with a pistol mutates into a monstrosity. Oh wait! We found our weapons! Time to fight!" Even the guys in the video mention it "Where's our weapons?" "Why don't we just pull out our guns and start shooting him?"

I'd say that cutscene alone ruined the game for me more than anything else. By the time I got to the forest I was just grinding my way through to get the completion achievement and take the game back to Blockbuster. Then I get to the end and facepalmed so hard I damn near broke my glasses.

 

[SomebodyNowhere]

I played it and liked it okay but after around 20 hours I moved on to something else. The game feels like borderlands in the way that you can play pretty solidly past the first section but after a little while if you don't have the motivation of another person you're playing with to spur you on you can end up losing interest.

 

[malestrithe]

Checking Metacritic scores, it got 18 positive reviews, 6 mixed reviews, and 0 negative reviews from the critics.

Checking Amazon, 176 5 and 4 star reviews (positive), 46 3 star reviews (Mixed), and 70 1 and 2 star reviews (Negative). These are your fellow gamers who played it with you.

What is this All the Hate you speak of? Does that notion stem from the fact that not everyone was giving it As and Bs?

 

[Reevesith]

I recall the Bad save bug they had & how they blamed players who used the duplicate weapon trick was the cause of it, sucked finding out my lvl 16 guy is back to lvl 8. thought reading the wiki there were some story parts that never seemed to come up.

 

[mayney93]

Personally, i found it to be a great game. Loved the weapon making and the brutality of it, however the quests were a bit tedious. But when you ran into bandits and other humans it was good, i did like it over-all, but, and it's the thing that tips the scales. I regret getting it at release; it cost me 30 pounds and it wasn't finished in my eye's the integrated voice chat made it impossible to play with friends, and seeing as my friend guilt tripped me into getting it with my last 50 quid i was not best pleased; plus it meant i couldn't go to freshers at uni which sucked. All in all, great trailer,good game. It just needed another month in development i'd say.

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

http://www.gamerankings.com/pc/933053-dead-island/index.html

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dead-island

Okay, so I'll accept the user scores have a lot of negative reviews on there, but I don't know. 72-80 doesn't strike me as "condemned by most every reviewer and public opinion." Even the 68 from Metacritic's users seems to be "mixed" at worst.

 

[ThePenguinKnight]

The story was crap but the biggest problem people have and do still complain about was the games laundry list of glitches. It could have been fixed but because of impatient gamers and reviewers slamming the game it never got the recognition it deserved. Look how much people enjoy Borderlands and Left 4 Dead but hate this game when it's very much like those games. Look how well received Fallout New Vegas is now when it got nothing but flak for its glitch fiesta. Now I'm not saying we should ignore that the games came out with tons of problems and it's not acceptable but it is however salvageable.


Me and my uncle have beaten it numerous times and we still play it regularly till this day. It's just a fun game to speed run through or just go play around in.

 

[Aprilgold]

Well lets see here, I have a list of reasons.

-Players were told from the first trailer that this would be a more human look on the zombie apocalypse rather then the same old dead rising, while the actual game was essentially dead rising with none of the silliness and a shaky FPS camera.
--The fact that the PC version was a Dev Version and full of glitches.
-The first room you get into on the island after the elevator bit gave me a headache.
--Voice acting is stereotypical and bad.
-Characters were all either dumb-ass AI or non-likable player characters.
--No variation in combat except for kick down then stomp on head, unless its a brute then its wail on it with a paddle.
-Weapons degraded way to god damn fast to be any use upgrading.
--Island idea for a zombie game, very interesting. Boring street and sewer levels for a game, not interesting.
-In a way, its a worse, way worse version of L4D.
--Nothing was satisfying.

Overall, it was such a flawed gem that the only thing it possibly had going for it was its CG trailer.

The story was crap but the biggest problem people have and do still complain about was the games laundry list of glitches. It could have been fixed but because of impatient gamers and reviewers slamming the game it never got the recognition it deserved. Look how much people enjoy Borderlands and Left 4 Dead but hate this game when it's very much like those games. Look how well received Fallout New Vegas is now when it got nothing but flak for its glitch fiesta. Now I'm not saying we should ignore that the games came out with tons of problems and it's not acceptable but it is however salvageable.


Me and my uncle have beaten it numerous times and we still play it regularly till this day. It's just a fun game to speed run through or just go play around in.

Well lets see, because those games bloody worked when they were released. They were fun and maybe not innovative but started the trend. People agree that Call of Duty 4 is better then any other Call of Duty after it because it started the trend and the newer one followed it to closely.

Overall, sure it makes sense, combine two awesome games and it should work but in reality the only thing, the only thing keeping Dead Island afloat was promises of greatness when it simply isn't.

 

[BernardoOne]

It was fun, its a okay game. But what I hate is the graphics. I mean, they are not bad, but there is so much bloom/gamma/brightness. I turn every single one of those settings to the minimum, nd the game its still way to bright and shiny.