Wow, Dead Island.

[BobTD]

Talk about a complicated love hate story. It seems that all the people that got into the hype before it was out hate it now. And I was on the other side of the fence, I was annoyed with they amount of hype before any actual game footage was released. We didn't even know it was an RPG when a lot of people where talking about how awesome it was going to be.

So here is what happened, this game came out, people were disappointed. I didnt get it, I actually played it at a friends house and he talked me into playing through it with him. I picked it up on STEAM and it absolutely blew me away. I mean seriously? They could not have hyped the merits of this game? I thought this game was absolutely brilliant. And here is why:

-First I want to point out that everyone is hating on the durability system. Doesn't matter, I actually found this refreshing. The beginning items are designed to fall apart easily and you scale so fast you would never want to keep them. Its an RPG and you should be collecting new loot, including weapons with better stats all the time. Actually swingeing a wrench hard enough to explode someones skull or blasting their head off in games like fallout3 is less realistic that an iron pipe not withstanding a lot of abuse. And if you move forward in the game at a decent pace you hit some pretty decent weapons quickly that have decent durability.

-Its hard. The zombies dont take any damage. Its only easy when I join lower level people. The guns are useless. THIS IS PERFECT! You are playing wrong if you think the game is that hard, but that aside we want something that feels like the enemy is a real threat. Every enemy encounter is a potential danger. Good. This is the way a zombie attacking you should feel. The momentum means you have to get out of the way or trade hits. Actually killing a zombie without taking damage means you are thinking about how you enter combat. Most game let you get way to lazy. Its actually a lot easier to kill a zombie once you knock it over. All of this is on purpose.

Also guns kill on headshots against living targets, its an artistic choice on the developers part to say zombies are different and are easier to kill by dismemberment. You dont really make a persons head explode with a bullet in most cases. I think its refreshing to consider a look at zombies that questions bullets being effective. And if you can stand to play games like borderlands I dont see how this could bother you.

-It was not what I expected. Well, for me that's refreshing. For anyone who got all hyped up that kinda sucks. But is it really fair to use that as criteria for judging games? I think its unfair for use to build up expectations about games, especially like what happened here. Literally I had to deal with praise over a cg teaser trailer. We didnt even know it would be in a first person perspective yet and people where hyped. Those people did that to themselves. You need to look at a game for what it is not what you wanted it to be.

And I guess I will wrap this... time of reflection, up with asking if anyone else really enjoyed this game. I mean, I hear they fixed some stuff. So when I got it all nice and polished might have been different for you.