First Impressions: Dead Island Riptide (PC)

This has been a combination of my experiences playing the game so far.

Images like these:

Coupled with frequent noises like this:

The noise that I recorded is only at 80 dB whereas it can jump at random (as if this isn't random enough) to 120 dB.  This is what I have read from various sources online as I do not actually own a decibel meter. No I do not have one on my phone.

My last session lasted an hour so that I could get an idea how often the screeching static noise would last and how frequently it would grace me with its presence, so in an unscientific manner, here is what I recorded:

7:07 minutes of no noise

0:43 seconds of noise

3:12 no noise

2:29 minutes of noise

0:26 no noise

3:38 minutes of noise

1:44 no noise

6:29 minutes of noise

1:13 no noise

5:21 minutes of noise

0:35 no noise

2:27 minutes of noise

0:02 no noise

0:03 seconds of noise

12:59 (unknown as the volume was turned off).

Týr knows why, but I've presently put five hours into this game even with the sound effects volume in-game turned down to practically nil and even then, the sound (120 dB) will still poke it's ugly head out of my speakers.

Last week (as 0f when I wrote this back in December) I contacted tech support at Deep Silver relating my problem to them to see if they knew what was going on.  I was then prompted to run a diagnostic tool and email them the results so they could have a better idea as to the specs of my computer and what I was dealing with.  I felt perfectly fine doing this as I did something very similar when I applied for the Elder Scrolls Online Beta request.  Within 24 hours I received a straightforward reply which suggested that I update my drivers, which I hadn't realized that I hadn't updated in a while.  So I followed the supplied links and was able to download three of the five drivers.  The two sound card drivers I was not able to download/install  as they are integrated drivers and even knowing the manufacturer and name, I could not locate the correct driver to download.

So I went back to the game with bright polished up video drivers hoping against hope that my problems were fixed.  The game played fine for about eight minutes before the screeching wail of dying souls and banished ear drums returned to mock my computer and mine own ears.  I played for maybe another 15 minutes before ultimately giving up.

I do not know if I will be going back to Dead Island: Riptide anytime soon as it is the only game that seems to have a problem with my apparently lackluster sound card.  Even games that have come out more recently than April 2013 have operated fine without any sound issues.  Maybe after I acquire my next computer (do not know what that will be) I will come back and see if my experience improves.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

Full Review: Dead Island (PC)

What says "Christmas" more than being on a tropical island?  How about killing thousands (my total came out to 3,641) of zombies and their ilk?  That's where we will spend our post (albeit a day late).

50 hours, 38 minutes later, roughly, I completed the main campaign for Dead Island, playing as the fallen copper, Purna.  For my First Impressions of the game, you can read about that here.  This however will be the more traditional full-on-review.

STORY

As I mentioned in my FI, not comparing the game to the announcement trailer from 2011, the story in the game is somewhat lacking.  The game opens with your character waking up after a night of partying/binge drinking while on the fictional island of Banoi, off the coast of Australia/New Zealand/Papua New Guinea, hence all the Australian-esque accents.  When you come to, everything has gone to shit.  Zombies have very well established themselves as being a part of this island world.  It really feels like something that would have taken at least a couple of days to happen, but it appears that events happened only over night.

Throughout the game you are able to locate articles titled "Facts" although accessing them is something that I was unable to easily figure out.  You also find audio recordings left by a journalist.  At first it seems plausible that you just happen to be following the exact same path as this journalist-man, but when you find the last recording, why he is "there" doesn't make any sense.

There were some story elements told through cut-scenes that also didn't make much sense.  Thankfully this game didn't use cut-scenes to tell the story of the game (as if you were playing a movie), but were mainly used as transitions between pseudo-key events.  Even then, there were a couple of times when I felt that the cut-scenes were revealing information that I felt like I was supposed to have known earlier or would leave me confused as to what just happened.

Throughout the game, you travel between the beach side resort area, downtown Moresby, the jungle, laboratory facilities and an offshore prison.  The frequency of changing locations is nicely paced.  There's the first stage of getting used to an area, the second stage of being familiar enough that you know where you're going and the final stage of being tired of said area and wanting to go somewhere else.  Then there's the nostalgia factor when you revisit a previous area and you're happy again.  This is done very well here.

The game ended with a boss fight that also didn't make much sense.  It felt like it was tagged on at the end to give the game a Resident Evil feel to the end after the game was finished and some executive/producer said, "There's no boss fight?  Throw in a monster that we haven't really seen yet and have it be that guy.  Now rewrite that one part in the game so it makes sense why he's a bad guy, ignoring the 90% of the game up to that point."

GAMEPLAY

As previously stated, the controls took me a little bit to get used to, having just come from playing Left 4 Dead 2 and being familiar with that control setup.  The keyboard layout was "relayouted" and axis' were inverted and all was right as rain after an hour or so.

Now, I'm sure that somewhere online there are FAQs about how to properly build your character.  Yes, build.  Dead Island is an FPS with RPG skill tree elements.  As you kill zombies (and the occasional human with a gun), you gain experience points and level up.  When you level up you have three skill trees that focus on either special attacks,  or increasing HP, types of loot drops and increasing the integrity of weapon customization.

I already stated that I felt that certain aspects of Dead Island felt like it played like an online game, a claim which I am able to make not having played m/any online games.  But the fact that there were times when I would get mauled by one or two zombies (walkers, infected) and die very quickly, only to respawn seven seconds later.  I stand by my assertion that death wasn't something so much as something to be feared as it was something that was a great inconvenience.   During the final boss battle, I stopped caring about using my health packs as I knew that I could get a couple shots in with the shotgun and do a bit of damage before I died and especially since the boss did not regain any noticeable amount of health whenever I respawned.  I was basically an immortal god who just lost consciousness frequently.

GRAPHICS

I had no issues with the graphics.  There were two cut-scenes that skipped a bit, but nothing too distracting.  Overall, the game looked really good.  I wasn't going in expecting life-like semblances of limbs strewn about the place.

Regarding the zombies and their types, with the exception of the Butchers and Tanks, I felt that there was enough variation in who I was killing.  I liked that I didn't feel like I was killing the same five zombies over and over.  Also, depending on which area you were in, the clothing changed, although sometimes heads were reused, but that didn't bother me.

SOUND & MUSIC

I was very pleased with both the music and the sound effects used in the game.  Specific zombie growls were easily recognizable and when wearing headphones, it was a lot easier to tell from which direction the attacks were going to come from.  There was one particular sound effect that was never explained, which I kind of like, but at the same time, I wish that I knew what was going on.  Throughout the game (I think it was present in all areas) there was the sound as if a zombie (possibly a Thug) was being broadcast over a loudspeaker, possibly after having it's legs cut off.  I found that this sound was occasionally unnerving especially while trying avoid large groups of zombies.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I think it is safe to say that I enjoyed Dead Island as I spent 50 hours playing the game.  There were times when I got frustrated with the frequency of dying and respawning seven seconds later and felt as if I should be playing with other people online, combined with the 164 times I died, that works out to dying every 18 minutes.  At times, the game really felt like it was a mash-up of Skyrim and Left 4 Dead 2, which are two games that I really love playing and Dead Island did both of those games successfully, and while not a perfect combination of both games, it certainly achieved its goal, despite the weak ending.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Destination Chaos

First Impressions: Dead Island (PC)

I picked up Dead Island during Humble's Deep Silver Bundle which included a bunch of games that I've since forgotten about, and Dead Island with Dead Island: Riptide.  I started Dead Island one afternoon last month after playing L4D2 and wanting to play something else that I already had that contained those wacky zombies.  I remembered about Dead Island and remembered that amazing trailer from two years ago.  You know the one, not the E3 trailer, but the announcement trailer.  How could a game (an FPS at that) possibly live up to that trailer?  It can't.   There's too much good stuff that belongs in a TV miniseries or in a feature length movie that will not translate well into an FPS zombie video game.

The actual game on the other hand, I've really enjoyed, but there was a brief moment when I thought I would not make it past the hotel.  I played for just under an hour, which included time to tinker with the keyboard layout (inverting the mouse, changing the keys to more towards a L4D2 scheme) and making the 'jump', 'kick', 'crouch' keys more intuitive than the default settings.  Oh yes, the game is an FPS and no, I have not suffered from FPS yet.  I was also concerned with the sluggishness of the mouse in the menu screens.  Yes, I know about altering the mouse sensitivity, but in-game the mouse is perfect.  I was also worried because I couldn't sympathize with any of the characters, which I mounted up to the fact that I've never been to an island resort so I had no memorial-emotional attachment to the setting or the people who would inhabit said setting.  Does that make me a bad person?  I don't think so.

Well, 23 hours later, you could say that I've gotten over any and all initial hang ups I thought I would have with the game.  Having now entered Act II (of V), I have some brand new hang ups.  Let's bullet list this!

• Nearly everyone (zombies and non alike) is either in swimwear or ripped.  It is hard for me to sympathize or empathize with this particular group of people.
• However, in Act II when you move into the city of Moresby, people are dressed how you would expect them to dress in a 
• Dying is too "MMO" for my tastes.
• When you die, you loose a percentage of your money and respawn 7 seconds later at a nearby checkpoint/location.  Dying isn't so much something to fear as it is an inconvenience.

Okay, that's really my only hang up, now that I'm in Act II, which takes you from the beach front resort area to the inner/downtown city area of Moresby.  It's there that groups of zombies are introduced, compared to the very few and far between groups in the resort area.  In Act I, I died twice.  In Act II, I've died a lot more.  Even on "easy" fetch quests, I died four times climbing down a ladder that seemed to constantly have fast moving infected constantly respawn after every time I respawned, which I guess is only fair, but still frustrating.

There are a couple of other small things that I don't really like, such as randomly equipping bottles of alcohol when picking them up; it is difficult to "button" switch away from a firearm after throwing a combustible (propane tank); 

As for things that I really like about the game are thus:

• Combat is based heavily on melee weapons.
• Weapons become dull and damaged over a short amount of time, each with their own durability rating, but can still be repaired.
• Granted repairing a weapon costs money, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's suspension of disbelief during a zombie apocalypse.
• There are different classes of zombies, somewhat based on their degradation.  People who have been infected but haven't turned yet are fast moving (a la 28 Days Later).
• There are a couple other "classes" such as ones who seem to be releasing a lot of smoke/fumes who are very flammable, large bro-types who do more damage and take more damage to kill and some hulking ones in straightjackets who are basically like L4D2 Chargers.
• I feel the game doesn't take itself too seriously considering that snack bars and energy drinks are the most common form of health replenishers.
• The cast of characters (both zombie and non) are very diversified.  I can't see Techland getting into hot water over having to kill any kind of ethnic group or gender.  Everyone gets the chance to die and be killed in this game.
• I like the nods to other zombie-lore, such as:

being a reference to:

And, and, and, the standard walker/roamer/zombies are slowish moving in classic Romero style.  I really like that.  This was most likely done because so much of the game (at least Act I & II) is based around melee combat so having fast moving zombies a la L4D would make the game if not impossible, then at least very frustrating.

So that's where I'm at right now.  27 hours (I've played 4 hours since starting writing this) in now and I've got to get back to Banoi (which is one of the most real sounding fictional islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea that I've ever heard) and save the day, except not.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Falling Towards Nightly Terror