Dead Island Trailers

Preview for Dead Island over at RPS.

Two things I didn't like about the preview. One he concentrated on co-op. Nothing wrong with that, but I'm not interested at all on how it compares to Left 4 Dead.

Second is the writing style. Either I'm really tired (which could be the case since work is hellish right now) or his writing style is confusing.

I mean what the hell:

So no, it’s not the “somehow survive as you freely explore an entire island full of zombies” that some had desperately hoped it would be when it was first hinted at. But it’s not fair to look at this as the bits left over when you drop your expectations. It’s by no means purely linear, with multiple quests available at any time, but there is a narrative, and you are going to make your way through it, and seemingly more meaningfully the fewer people there are playing. There are shops, NPCs, intricate customisation options, side-quests, and an awful lot of moving corpses. I’m certainly looking forward to 9th September (6th in the lucky US) to see how it all fits together in one coherent whole.

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There's a freaking narritive in GTA: San Andreas too and that game is as open as you can get. Pretty much in the same exact way as well. There are zones that you can't go to until later in the game.

Nevermind. If you enjoy the preview and can figure out what the hell he's talking about then more power to you. As for me I'd rather just watch another gameplay trailer.

Edit: I had to bold the "You are going to make your way through it (the narrative)" Thank you Captain Obvious. I never would have figured that out without your help.

I had my little rant and feel much better now

If you guys are still curious about Dead Island then here are a bunch of previews that Gamebanshee listed.

This totally sucks that a few weeks after my two month long vacation THIS GAME COMES OUT!!!….Oh well. That's probably a good thing since I already have more than a few games to tide me over during the break. Not the least of which is Frayed Knights which I plan on playing over and over and over again for however long Jay needs.

Some of the previews:
Thank you, Ars Technica, for writing a few sentences on the single player version of this game. It seems everyone only want to write about the coop.

The game changes depending on how you'd like to play. When I was alone in the single player game I enjoyed the more deliberate pace, and I rejected the few missions available during the demo to simply explore the island and play with the many improvised weapons while killing every zombie I saw. There is a heavy emphasis on melee weapons in this game, which means that the zombies get very close to you, and that's a nerve-wracking experience. It takes practice before you can judge the reach of the many weapons, but soon enough you'll be chopping off heads and legs, or taking out the shambling horrors with thrown weapons.

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There are other previews linked at gamebanshee's site. I skimmed them, but it seems that every previewer forgot that this can be played as a single player game as well.

relax, my friend. I'm pretty sure everything's gonna be alright from what I'm seeing. Looks really cool.

The problem w/ Left4dead and just about every other zombie game out there is that they simply cannot deliver the zombie experience that I've been looking for, derived from the traditional shambler to mid-speed zombies, you vs them. It's just an ultimately boring concept. A dumb, shambling enemy and they heap ranged weapons on you and it's shooting fish in a barrel. Go the other way with an overkill barrage of track star zombies that flog you at every turn, and it's still not what I'm looking for. Say what you will about L4D, it's just not the Romero Zombie Experience that I've been looking for. I guess Dead Rising kinda gets it right, but still I wouldnt consider it horror and it just isnt there w/ it's timed structure and all that. It's a cheap way to inject tension into what soon becomes a boring game.

This may get it more right than the rest - non-athlete zombies, and creative melee being the main focus. It's survival horror, not just a funny monster-mash em up. I dont know, I may be all wet here, but it's looking like this game is gonna deliver from where I'm sitting. Looks pretty creepy actually, I like that.

Man, you're right. I need to relax a bit. Last couple weeks at work being filled with a hundred things that need to get done really isn't good.

In any event, you're right. It looks like it isn't quite what I had hoped for, but it does look like a lot of fun. Dead Rising 2 had the Romero zombies down pat until later in the game. At least there weren't any mutant zombies with two heads or something ridiculous like that. Nope, we get psychos which are even better than anything a dev could dream up for a mutant zombie.

My expectations for this one is about on the same level as Borderlands and I had a ridiculous amount of fun with Borderlands. I don't think it'll be quite so goofy as Borderlands (which is a very good thing), but it will be goofy in some respects with the elctro-weapons you can make.

For a real zombie game (minus the first person perspective) Dead State and now, maybe, Project Zomboid look to be the front runners. This one looks to be a lot of fun and hopefully the story will be pretty good as well.

Here's another preview:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/16/dead-island-preview-2/

Again the focus is on co-op. It's sounding more like an enhanced open-world Left4Dead. Can it be played solo as survival horror?

It definitely can be played solo. But they seem to be emphasizing the co-op more and more, which can't help but weaken the solo experience.

Actually, I often find the singleplayer experience enhanced - simply because I know I can enjoy the same game again with friends.

To be able to potentially share an otherwise strong experience, makes the investment more worthwhile to me. Especially if there are multiple characters or ways to approach the game. Then I can spend time alone learning the intricacies - and be more prepared for a multiplayer experience where I can try it in a very different way. It's almost like having two games in one.

I have a hard time enjoying strictly singleplayer experiences these days - unless they're really exceptional.

I suppose it depends on whether you see game development as a zero sum thing. I do, so time spent developing co-op gameplay and features is time not spent developing single player gamplay and features.

I understand what you're getting at, though. The "replay appeal" of a game will generally be higher if it's got some kind of multiplayer component, if only because the addition of other gamers introduces far more random reactions to given situations (yielding a broader experience) than a single player is capable of.

dteowner said:

I suppose it depends on whether you see game development as a zero sum thing. I do, so time spent developing co-op gameplay and features is time not spent developing single player gamplay and features.

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I tend to see things in more colors than that.

It's easy to take apart something that went one way, and then infer what would have happened if exactly the same circumstances would be repeated - only with a few changes in design or vision. But that doesn't apply to a realistic scenario very often.

Like if you take World of Warcraft - and you remove the work they did to implement multiplayer - and they instead poured all that energy into taking the rest of the design/content and made a singleplayer game out of it. Would that singleplayer game be a better singleplayer game than the multiplayer version would have been? Perhaps so, but it would be a stupid approach to singleplayer design.

The result would be completely different if the original design hadn't been a fully multiplayer one.

Like that, I think something like Dead Island is planned to be multiplayer - and it's not a simple thing to talk about what it would have been as singleplayer only. That would mean everything about the original vision would change significantly. Not that I know their original plans - but assuming multiplayer was always a part of it.

I understand what you're getting at, though. The "replay appeal" of a game will generally be higher if it's got some kind of multiplayer component, if only because the addition of other gamers introduces far more random reactions to given situations (yielding a broader experience) than a single player is capable of.

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Yep.

The hype is really starting to get around for Dead Island. I was surprised to see that it was #8 on steam's top ten list of best-selling titles this past week.

Impressive for a game that's still six weeks out from being released.