Dead Island

I like Techland. I think they make games with a lot of heart, even if they may have some rough edges. However, I think their track record shows that they're not exactly Quantic Dream when it comes to pushing the envelope of narrative in games. I'm looking forward to Dead Island because Techland is making it, but I don't hold out much hope that they'll equal the gut-punch despair and bleak intensity of that trailer, or even that they're trying to.

I don't see what the big deal was. Girl got bit, she turned, tried to eat her dad and he chucked her zombie butt out the window. Didn't the last dawn of the dead or whatever have a little girl zombie in the beginning scenes? She became undead, she's no longer a little girl, she's a brain eating monster.

What exactly do people think would happen in a real zombie apocalypse?

/parent
//didn't bother me in the slightest

In a real zombie apocalypse the parents would have became zombies so they could be a zombie family on vacation. Then they could eat survivors or play in the pool together like a real zombie family.

Following this one closely.

bandit0013 wrote:

I don't see what the big deal was. Girl got bit, she turned, tried to eat her dad and he chucked her zombie butt out the window. Didn't the last dawn of the dead or whatever have a little girl zombie in the beginning scenes? She became undead, she's no longer a little girl, she's a brain eating monster.

What exactly do people think would happen in a real zombie apocalypse?

/parent
//didn't bother me in the slightest

That's kinda how I felt after watching the trailer the fourth time. It's a zombie, get over it. You can call a person desensitized but the fact is as soon as their infected their no longer human and you have to do what you have to do to kill it.

Zombieland and Walking Dead both started with zombie little girls. It's the emphasis that nobody can escape it.

I know I might seem like a coin flipping around but this trailer does that. It can assert many different emotional and non emotional thoughts into ones brain.

Very good PR, not so good for those who have yet to go, oh it's just a zombie. Also good on them for making a GTA story line, L4D, Dead Rising game. It's just what we've all been waiting for!

Yeah, the more I hear about this game, the less interested I get. More like Disappointed Island, am I right?

MechaSlinky wrote:

Yeah, the more I hear about this game, the less interested I get. More like Disappointed Island, am I right?

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

And I liked the trailer.

I sort of want to give them moneyz even if the game sucks, just because I enjoyed the trailer so much. They could come right out and poop directly in my mouth, by declaring my personal anathema 'Dead Island is a co-op-based zombie survival game! No meaningful Single-player story arc at all! It's all points and achievements! win with a friend and play 'till you get bored, because sure as Jesus you'll not get any narrative resolution! and I think I would still give them money based on the trailer.

Wolfen Victrocious wrote:

Zombieland and Walking Dead both started with zombie little girls. It's the emphasis that nobody can escape it.

So did the Dawn of the Dead remake, which even had a zombie infant.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

In a real zombie apocalypse the parents would have became zombies so they could be a zombie family on vacation. Then they could eat survivors or play in the pool together like a real zombie family.

Staying together for the kids.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Wolfen Victrocious wrote:

Zombieland and Walking Dead both started with zombie little girls. It's the emphasis that nobody can escape it.

So did the Dawn of the Dead remake, which even had a zombie infant.

I'm going to take a guess that people who didn't like the trailer might not like those examples either.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Wolfen Victrocious wrote:

Zombieland and Walking Dead both started with zombie little girls. It's the emphasis that nobody can escape it.

So did the Dawn of the Dead remake, which even had a zombie infant.

So did the original. Two kids before the survivors even made it to the mall. Same scene as when the helicopter cuts off the top of a zombie's head. Classic.

I know I'm too emotional for my own good, but I can't say that this trailer makes me want the game.

I wouldn't blame over-sensitivity; I played Dead Rising and laughed maniacally while dicing zombies with a lawnmower. I loved the chainsaw too... something about dismembering the undead with gas-operated lawn equipment...

Anyhow!

The method this video uses for capturing a single moment in this drama, and taking it out of context just bugs me. It's incredibly powerful, especially given the vacation back-story in the last few moments of the trailer. This family was happy, they'd embarked on a vacation to spend time together, and have fun. The concern and fear on the Father's face at seeing his daughter injured, the hopelessness of their situation, and nature of the tragedy, that this man was forced to end the life of his own child moments later coupled with the somber tone of the music was all a little too much for me. If this is a true advertisement of what this game will be like, I don't want it. I don't want to see things that make me feel like this.
If Dead Island is just another zombie annihilation game, bring it on. Lord knows how many hours i have logged in Nation Red, but if it's an introspective look at the heart-wrenching tragedies suffered by the victims of a ruthless pandemic, count me out.

CPLWeeks wrote:

if it's an introspective look at the heart-wrenching tragedies suffered by the victims of a ruthless pandemic...

... count me in! I don't think Dead Island will be this, but I'd buy any game that tried to do this without relying on sentimentality and cliche. Movies and books attempt (and succeed at) this kind of thing all the time; it would be interesting to see a game attempt it, too. It might not be a "fun" game to play, but it would probably be pretty fascinating. Dead State will probably be closer to the mark than Dead Island, in this regard.

I can definitely see your point ebar, I guess I'd just rather play a game that's "fun" and forgettable, rather than one that's going to keep me awake at night dwelling on what happened.

While I definitely recognize that creating a game so powerful as to be memorable after the PC / console is turned off does nothing but credit to the developer, I think the subject matter which has made recent titles memorable can bear some flexibility.
I didn't play it, but I know Heavy Rain was nominated by the guys as their game of the year more than once primarily because of the evocative nature of the way the story was told. Manipulating emotions with entertainment is always an achievement, and doubly-so with games, in my past experience it's been more by accident than deliberate that I've found something in gaming emotionally moving though, and with few exceptions. The horizon seems to contain more and more deliberate attempts to emotionally move the player with increasingly shocking or horrific subject matter.
The opening of Fallout 3, where the main character's Mother dies after childbirth was hard for me, because my Mother passed away when I was young. Brilliant start to the game, and the emotional tie was completely accidental in my case; but regardless of the players' personal connection, it was memorable. In Dragon Age: Origins, I found when Arl Howe, faced with death, verbally lashes out at the main character in one last attempt to antagonize them after his inevitable demise extremely effective. I guess my point is that typically it's the shockingly negative highlights in games that tend to have a greater chance to stick with me than the positive. I can count as many exhilarating moments in games to be sure, from the fight atop the Battlements in Neverwinter Nights 2, to the ending of Mass Effect where Shepherd emerges from the rubble being the most prominent.

I imagine the crux of what I'm getting at is that I wish developers would try as hard to manufacture positive memorable experiences, as they do negative. I don't want or need any virtual baggage when I exit the main menu.

Kind of old news, but I just read it for the first time tonight:

From the IGN preview:

Dead Island is a first-person hack-and-slash game set in the midst of a zombie outbreak in a tropical paradise. It's more Dead Rising than Resident Evil, with a focus on action over suspense. The developers themselves say they're going for "zombie zombie zombie all the time." An abundance of makeshift weapons lying around like paddles, baseball bats, and wrenches – and the fact that these can be combined and upgraded – further reminds me of Dead Rising.

A game trailer that shows no gameplay might be entertaining, but it is useless as a metric for judging a game's quality.Then there is the four-player cooperative play, also giving Dead Island a little Left 4 Dead flavor.

Tools and equipment can be jammed together to create ridiculous weapons, like an electrified machete. Is an electrified machete cool? Of course it is! But the macabre giggles it coaxed out of me are quite different than the quiet unease I felt while watching the trailer.

God damn it. I was looking forward to this one too. Co-op and a focus on action over suspense; son of a biscuit. I'm not saying that this makes it a bad game, but it's not the game I wanted, and not the game I was anticipating based on the trailer.

ebarstad wrote:

if it's an introspective look at the heart-wrenching tragedies suffered by the victims of a ruthless pandemic..
... count me in!

Lulz! I thought the exact same thing. A game that makes me feel the same flurry of emotions as a good book or a good movie is a welcome thing indeed, even if those thoughts aren't pleasant. I want games (not EVERY game, of course), but at least *some* of them to rise above the acheivement/trophy/score mentality and present to me a compelling reason to think about them when I'm not playing them. I want to be disturbed, thrown off balance, upset, elated, scared, overjoyed, by something that happens in a game. I want to dream about a game's characters and wake up worried about their fate or eagerly hoping for their death. I also want it not to be related to headshots or score or achievements. Something that gives me the same feeling when I hit an awesome part of a book or a fantastic scene in a movie but from a game.

I imagine the crux of what I'm getting at is that I wish developers would try as hard to manufacture positive memorable experiences, as they do negative.

I think that's a damn fine point. Most of my most memorable experiences in games (from a narrative/character perspective) have been something tragic. I don't think I've been coaxed to tears in a game by a happy moment even once; any time I've felt a manly tear of manliness welling up within me it's been over a death or a tragedy that could have been avoided if only xxxx had yyyyy'd, etc. So often the attempts to construct a happy event are simply 'WHEEEE!! That character that you thought was dead is now magically alive, thus robbing his/her death of any emotional weight! How happy you as the player must feel right now!' instead of some believable, heart-warming turn of events.

Looks like they're still going with the emotional marketing campaign.

I just really want to play this game. I already know it has everything from a video game that I want.

Grubber788 wrote:

Looks like they're still going with the emotional marketing campaign.

At least that ad illustrates what made the other one impressive. It lacks any emotion at all. Love it or hate it, that first trailer was really well done. They just showed how bad it could have been.

Jayhawker wrote:
Grubber788 wrote:

Looks like they're still going with the emotional marketing campaign.

At least that ad illustrates what made the other one impressive. It lacks any emotion at all. Love it or hate it, that first trailer was really well done. They just showed how bad it could have been.

Yeah, that was pretty lame. My take-away from that: bikini zombies!

There's no better way of bringing a downer on a game on release than by drip feeding great looking videos the release does not match. See Brink on the 360.

The setting looks great on this clip but, again, this is probably meaningless for any reflection of the actual game. I'm starting to hate it already.

That was a TON of dust for a tropical island... Are Pacific islands usually so dry and windy? I mean, that was dusty and windy the same as my hometown in the Mojave Desert is dusty and windy.

WipEout wrote:

That was a TON of dust for a tropical island... Are Pacific islands usually so dry and windy? I mean, that was dusty and windy the same as my hometown in the Mojave Desert is dusty and windy.

And what's with the dead walking around. That is so fake.

Jayhawker wrote:
WipEout wrote:

That was a TON of dust for a tropical island... Are Pacific islands usually so dry and windy? I mean, that was dusty and windy the same as my hometown in the Mojave Desert is dusty and windy.

And what's with the dead walking around. That is so fake.

FINALLY SOMEONE GETS IT!

WipEout wrote:

That was a TON of dust for a tropical island... Are Pacific islands usually so dry and windy? I mean, that was dusty and windy the same as my hometown in the Mojave Desert is dusty and windy.

Is it in the Pacific? I know some of the Caribbean islands are surprisingly dry in their interiors. It's dry enough on Bonaire for example that they have salt-drying operations on a large chunk of the island.

Yeah, I'm not put off by the fact that there's dust in the wind or anything, more just wondering if they were over-using the iconic image of dusty streets to emphasize abandonment. It just seemed a slight bit excessive from a design standpoint, but that excessive noise could also have been due to the post effects of the video.

It hasn't sold me as a $60 purchase, but a preview I read sounds like a worthwhile $30 buy at least.

cyrax wrote:

Gameplay demo

I like what I see, even if isn't exactly what that cinematic trailer implied. Getting a Zombie-Melee-RPG Farcray 2 feel from it.

Rexneron wrote:
cyrax wrote:

Gameplay demo

I like what I see, even if isn't exactly what that cinematic trailer implied. Getting a Zombie-Melee-RPG Farcray 2 feel from it.

Four-player co-op; if it has easy drop-in/drop-out, that could really bump it up for me. Four-player open-world zombie apocalypse has loads of possibilities for fun.