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Dead Island 2, Completed
I have completed Dead Island 2 and the Haus DLC after roughly 32 hours.
In my first impressions post, I was concerned about the map being cramped, the existence of skull-level enemies that further discouraged what little exploration was possible, and how the emphasis on environmental hazards combined with the first two points led me to focus on carrying around car batteries (etc) instead of weapons. Over time and after gaining levels, the 2nd and 3rd points evaporated on their own. “Hell-A” as a general area though, remained very restricted for the entirety of the game.
What did improve was a rather hilarious (to me) and overpowered strategy to zombie combat: maiming. In most zombie games, attacks to the head are the only way to kill them. That works here too, but the problem is that different zombies walk/run with different gaits, making precise targeting difficult. Missing a Heavy Attack with a spear leaves you very vulnerable to attacks from other zombies, or even the one you’re trying to kill; I’ve been reduced to 25% HP from the flailing of even the most basic of Shamblers, after missing several times in a row. Nevermind the fact that Runner zombies actually can dodge your Heavy Attacks.
What is considerably easier than landing a head shot is a leg shot. With, say, a Claymore or Katana. With the right Perk Cards and weapon mods selected, limb hits become automatic critical hits that grant buffs to further enhance damage. Some level of which becomes unnecessary as you straight-up chop zombie legs right off with one hit. What happens then? Slowly crawling zombie. At that point, you could cut off one of their arms to instantly kill them – zombies with no arms or no legs will keep attacking, but apparently the coders couldn’t handle half-n-half – or kick them and follow-up with a head stomp for an instant kill that way. Regardless, facing a huge arena full of running undeath and reducing it to a pathetic pile of flopping undeath never stopped being funny to me.
Apex zombies, as you can imagine, didn’t lose their legs as quickly. (Un)fortunately, most of them have attack moves that leave their heads in a static position, making headshots with a hunting rifle quite easy. I’m not sure whether the devs intended you to delete the Apex ones with 2 shots from a rifle and render everything else inert with leg-chopping, but that’s what I did the whole way through.
That’s about all the good things I can say about Dead Island 2.
Yeah, that was good stuff. Everything else was extremely dumb or half-assed, at best.
The Perk Card system has to be one of the worst character progression mechanics I have seen in any game. The premise is that you can mix and match different abilities (cards) based on your play style, but you literally never know what any of the cards are until you unlock (or find!) one, so it’s all just something that… happens. Nothing to look forward to, nothing to build towards, it may as well not have existed. This isn’t even getting into the fact that most of them are incredibly weak or so hyper-focused as to be useless. Literally who gives any shits about making zombies explode in specific ways when you kill them during your “ultimate” mode? Every zombie dies at the same speed by holding down left-click in said mode.
The “economy” of the game and general gear progression is similarly disappointing. I started typing up a long explanation of the mechanics, but it’s irrelevant. Suffice it to say, there is an immense bottleneck for basic crafting components that only gets more and more ridiculous as time goes on. Like, you originally might not be able to add Electric damage to a knife because you don’t have enough Electronics. That’s cool. But when you are in the endgame and can’t mod shit because everything takes 10 Scrap, that’s dumb. Vendors will sell literally 1-2 pieces of Scrap and that’s it. What the fuck is the point? “Disassemble the weapons you pick up instead of selling them.” Let me disassemble this epic worth $7,000 and… oh cool, 6 Scrap. All this encourages is for you to settle on 3-4 weapons and upgrade them (using cash) to match your level, rendering all other drops as vendor trash you don’t bother even trying out because you can’t afford to mod them to see if they are any good.
And don’t get me started on the sidequests. Ran my ass around three different maps reconstructing the dude-bro antics of a thieving pool boy and a goddamn generic-ass blue sword popped out of the chest at the end. I understand that I completed this sidequest later than “immediately once it was available” but after I looked at the Wiki for the others, they were similarly dumb. It’s Dead Island not Fallout, I know, but if you’re designing a Looter Slasher, you might want to actually ensure there’s a reason to do all the chores you set up.
The overall story is also dumb. Again, it’s Dead Island, I’m not expecting some treatise on the human condition. But I don’t know what’s worse: how blatantly they are setting up story resolution in a future DLC (Haus did fuck-all), or that they’re pushing it off into a Dead Island 3. They didn’t leave a story thread dangling, it’s the whole goddamn shirt. This is one of those games where you’re not even sure you did anything at the end.
So… that’s that. Unless you were a super-fan of the original Dead Island, or even if you were, Dead Island 2 is not something I would particularly recommend.
Impressions: Dead Island 2
Sometimes I use “Impressions” posts as a sort of “review of a game I stopped playing halfway,” but this one is legit just some first impressions. I’m still playing! For now.
To start, I loved the original Dead Island. Some people were tired of the zombie genre, even 12 years (!!!) ago, but I don’t mind it. What’s the actual difference between the hundreds of mobs you kill being zombies, mutants, nightmares, animals, dinosaurs, or other people? I guess zombie tropes can make some of the experience kind of rote, but at the end of the day what matters is if the gameplay loop is fun for you.
So, Dead Island 2. Thus far, I’m kind of… concerned?
It’s been a while since the first game, but everything in DI2 feels cramped. The location is Bel-Air, so that may be accurate, but this definitely feels a lot more like a corridor shooter minus the guns. There are very specific routes you have to take to get around the map, and most of them run through the same houses and yards each time. Not sure if the later game opens up or not, but I have my doubts.
I also hate the environmental improvisations. Specifically, there are water jugs, cans of gasoline, car batteries, and other similar items strewn about everywhere. You can use these items to engineer environmental traps, such as dumping water in a big puddle, throwing a zombie-attracting item in it, and then starting a generator to electrocute them all. OK, cool.
The problem is that Dead Island 2 takes after the original in that zombies scale to your level such that even a few standard zombies can kill you if you’re not careful. The cramped areas in which you encounter zombies also makes it difficult (or outright dangerous) to run away if you get in over your head, especially once the special zombies start showing up. The end result is that I am thus incentivized to start lugging around car batteries or gas cans wherever I go, so as to have the materials for environmental shenanigans at the ready. There very well may be such items available in each area, but it’s hard to find them while getting swarmed.
So, yeah, instead of focusing on the one thing the series is excellent at – the meaty and satisfying melee game – I am running around one-shotting zombies by throwing car batteries at them. If the devs wanted to lean into traps-based combat ala Horizon: Zero Dawn, then do that. Preferably under a different title.
Another thing that is really irking me is how punished you are for what limited exploration is available. You will find locked shit all over the place, but you will never really know if its even possible to retrieve the key yet. See, keys are held by special zombies, and specific special zombies only start spawning after you encounter the “first” one, typically via Story quest. Before the first boss, for example, no Crusher zombies will spawn; that means the locked military chest you found at the beginning of the zone cannot be unlocked, because the key-holder is a Crusher zombie. But you won’t know that ahead of time, so you might be combing every room for a hidden key that doesn’t exist.
Plus, inexplicably, the devs allows for “skull-level” zombies to roam about. Want to head down an alleyway and explore there instead of following a quest marker? Too bad! Zombies above your level will eat your face off within two hits. I honestly do not ever remember that being a thing in the original game. In principle, I can understand the game sort of “organically” directing players via deadly foes – this happens in Fallout: New Vegas and Dark Souls and many places inbetween – but it just feels bad here. And, of course, contributes to the claustrophobia of an already-limited map.
Also, it’s funny how much the FLESH system was hyped. For the uninitiated:
“This cutting-edge technology has been designed to deliver the most gruesome zombie experience ever seen in a video game. Anatomically correct layers of skin fat and muscle can be ripped away with machete point accuracy to reveal breakable bones and internal organs that are individually destructible,” Dead Island 2’s developers said during the introductory presentation.
“Blunt weapons allow players to shatter skulls, detach eyeballs and even punch holes through the undead. Sharp weapons can dismember heads or limbs at any point and slice torsos clean in half, utilising advanced fluid and soft body physics,” they continued.
(source)
Is the game gory AF? Yep. Does it matter even a little bit? Nope. The specific problem is that there are so many zombies attacking you at any given time that you are unlikely to appreciate the fact that their eyeball is swinging outside its socket in a realistic fashion or whatever. There’s no mechanical benefit either, as even a zombie bereft of both arms will still try to headbutt/bite you. Dead Space this ain’t. I suppose this does contribute to the weight behind melee attacks and how satisfying it feels, but honestly, I would trade all of it in a heartbeat for more ragdoll-esque physics instead. Zombies tripping over each other, falling on couches, bumping into walls, etc, is infinitely more immersive to me than their jaw hanging half off or ribs flying everywhere. I saw that in Fallout 3 death animations in 2008.
If it sounds like I’m pretty down on Dead Island 2 so far, well, you’re not wrong. The game is absolutely gorgeous running at max settings, and there are insane details in every throw-away room that you manage to find. But I’m kinda concerned that perhaps the level of detail added was exactly the cause for how closed up the game is. If I wanted to kill zombies in corridors, I would play Dead Space or Resident Evil or Silent Hill or practically any of the other games in this whole genre. What made the original Dead Island stand out was the open-world nature of the map, at least in the first two Acts. Thus far, the sequel seems to me leaning more into the Dead Rising goofiness minus its openness, which isn’t all that great of a trade.
Here’s to hoping that things improve.
Review: Dead Rising 2
[Blaugust Day 9]
Game: Dead Rising 2
Recommended price: bundle
Metacritic Score: 78
Completion Time: ~17 hours
Buy If You Like: GTA Zombies, Frustrating mechanics, Improvised weapons
A very serious game for very serious people.
For the record, Dead Rising 2 is the only entry in this series that I played. Coming into this entry, my expectations were fairly minimal, and I knew only that the game featured wacky weapons and… that was it. What I discovered was a title that both exceeded my expectations wildly, and one that almost immediately squandered all the goodwill it generated.
The premise of the game is that you play as Chuck Greene, a father desperately trying to make ends meet and pay for his daughter’s Zombrex, the toxic daily prescription drug that is the only thing standing between her and undeath. Unlike many other titles in this genre, the setting takes the zombie apocalypse as a given – Chuck participates in a televised gameshow with prize money being awarded to whomever is able to kill the most zombies with their chainsaw-motorcycles. After the latest Live event, someone dressed as Chuck manages to frame him for terrorism when they release said zombies into the greater Fortune City casino area.
What follows is perhaps one of the most, if not “authentic,” certainly the most interesting takes on the zombie apocalypse. There are zombies everywhere, hundreds of them. Frankly, there are so many zombies on screen at a time that I’m honestly surprised that the devs were able to pull it off.
Submitted without comment.
Despite said zombies being of the shuffling variety, they always feel like a threat by sheer numbers alone. At the same time… it’s difficult to describe, but the zombies felt like understandable obstacles. By the midpoint of the game, I found myself not just capable of weaving through dense crowds of them without stopping or even taking damage, but it feeling correct for this to happen. In other words, it wasn’t that the zombie AI was dumb or that I “exploited” their behavior, but rather that the zombies followed natural rules in terms of range of motion and the like. If you approach a zombie from behind, for example, it had to turn to its left before it could attempt to lunge, and thus you could escape by passing on the right. And even more than that, said swiveling zombie would act as an obstacle to the zombies that were following behind you.
Another great aspect of the game was the refreshing take on narrative. The game is structured around the inexorable passing of time – your daughter needs Zombrex every 24 hours at a minimum, and your window of opportunity in clearing your name similarly closes with each passing hour. Inbetween the big events, you will get notifications about trapped survivors and such, most of whom will be dead soon without assistance. You might be having fun crafting weapons and collecting cash on one end of the Strip, for example, but unless you book it to the other side in a hurry, those survivors will be zombies themselves right quick. The clock creates a subtle tension throughout the game, without (usually) being too overwhelming.
The problem with Dead Rising 2 are the Psychopaths, e.g. boss fights. Along with survivor quests, you will occasionally get vague quests to head over to a specific location. Once there, some random survivor will have snapped from the stress and be out for human blood. Generally speaking, these fights are total gimmicks and stupidly, inexplicably deadly. Whereas you might be able to sustain 20+ zombie bites across a period of time, Psychopaths will kill you in a few hits or less, especially if you don’t immediately understand the gimmick.
Some weapons are more effective than others.
Compounding the problem, the Save Game structure of Dead Rising 2 is that progress is ONLY saved when you go to the bathroom. Psychopath on the other side of the Strip across four screens of zombies and nary a Porta Potty in sight? Guess what you’ll be replaying over and over? This isn’t even taking into consideration that Psychopath fights are scripted to occur at specific locations at specific times, which means you can suddenly find yourself in the middle of one while you were trying to escort some abysmally dumb survivors across a sea of zombies.
Indeed, I remember one Psychopath battle in particular as it was the most god-awful situation I have experienced in videogames. Basically, this encounter was with four redneck snipers who decide to take residence in the central open area of the game. You know, the place with the most zombies per capita? That you had to routinely cross through all the goddamn time? And they never left, even after the end of the proper game. What the literal shit, Capcom? Those snipers hounded me the rest of the game, on into the epilogue, and by that point I did not have the time or ammo to take them out.
The bottom line was that Dead Rising 2 felt and played as an innovative zombie game, with enough cool things going on to make one horribly disappointed with the superfluous bullshit tacked on for no good reason. From what I gather, Dead Rising 2 is actually uncharacteristically serious compared to the other titles in the series – a sort of Saint’s Row to, say, Dead Island’s GTA – and that’s certainly interesting trivia. I didn’t play the other games, and based on my experiences with this game, I probably never will. If you can snag the game on the cheap though, I think it’s worth trying out if only for the first ~5 hours or so, as you steep in the goodness that is a freeform zombie apocalypse.
Every Moment is a One-Time Event
Is something you never experience special to you?
Is something you experience only special when few other people experience it?
I have seen a lot of praise for ArenaNet’s one-time Halloween event. I cannot be sure whether said praise is coming from the same individuals that lament the obsolescence of last year’s raids, but nevermind. ArenaNet’s tortured logic is pretty well deconstructed elsewhere, so let us set that aside as well. What I am curious about is this fanciful notion that it is a good use of designer manpower to specifically construct one-off events.
To me, it’s redundant.
When I think about one-off content, I remember back to the plague event that lead into Wrath’s release. Players could get infected, eventually turn into zombies, and the go infect other players. The griefing in Shat was immense. As paladins, a friend and I decided to roleplay/grief the players actually trying to infect themselves and/or start those zombie raids against Stormwind. Never before has someone raged so hard at being targeted with Cleanse. “The power of the Light compels you!” Turn Evil was also liberally applied. Around this same time, there was a special boss in Kara that dropped the Arcanite Ripper, and I believe there was only the one reset where it was available. In any case, I was the only person to get it in my guild. I busted it out pretty regularly all the way up until I unsubbed.
Here’s the thing though: how different was any of that from, say, completing Ulduar when it was current?
The Wrath lead-up event was fun because it was fun, not because it was never going to happen again. Similarly, it would not bother me one iota if the Arcanite Ripper was mailed to every player that logged in once in the last four years – nor, incidentally, does it bother me that the Arcanite Ripper is now on the Black Market AH. In many ways, I consider Ulduar (or any raid) to be more “rare,” because while these places still exist, it will never been the same as when it was newly released. Even if Ulduar was still relevant to current endgame progression somehow, it would not be the same as it was when it was new.
It is not the item or the event that matters, it is the zeitgeist. And the people. ArenaNet could have looped the Mad King event like they loop everything else and it still would have been exactly as meaningful for those first players as it is now. Every moment is a one-time event. Ergo, I see little reason to layer artificial scarcity on top of temporal scarcity. The devs could have safely shared their work with a wider audience with no lack of impact to anyone worth caring about.
But, whatever. If you consider content you never see as content, then GW2 has enough content to keep you busy for quite some time.
In An Age 