Relearning Learned Lessons

Admit it, we have all been the victim of great marketing for a not great game.

I bought Homefront day one and really really wanted to like it, but a short and ultimately incomplete single player and an unplayable multiplayer. I was taken by the promise of a PC focus and large player counts on dedicated servers, but just because food is catered doesn't mean that the food it edible. I was duped. The commitment was made to forego any day one purchases. I could always wait for reviews and my backlog is so full that I can wait for sales and still play a new game from now until oblivion (that's the end of the world, not the game). I would love to talk more about the awful failure that was Homefront, but this post is about Dead Island.

My buddy is really looking forward to the new game mode in League of Legends, Dominion, and to be fair, who isn't? Dominion looks great.

Riot Games is taking the large cast of characters they have created and putting them in a whole new game type. With so many new DOTA clones coming out it's nice to see something other than three lanes, eleven towers, three inhibitors, and a nexus. Anyway, back to my buddy... He is really looking forward to Dominion but what to play in the meantime? Well, Dead Island just came out why not play through that? Being a coop focused game he asked me if I would be interested in joining him on his island vacation zombie apocalypse. If I have a weakness it is being stabbed in the face and if I have two weaknesses the other is the fact that if someone wants to play a game with me, I am forced by some unknown power to say yes.

So I bought Dead Island even though there are 47 other games sitting on my Steam wishlist, most of which are less than half the price and all of which I would have rather played. Bad games are bad and great games are great, but Dead Island is meh. That is the best description I can give. The scenery is beautiful, the melee is satisfying, the gunplay (which I wholly expected to be terrible) was competent, and the game is an appropriate length for a full retail game.

The worst condemnation I can give Dead Island is that through most of the campaign I was bored. The side-quests are either fetch quests or escort missions and become tedious far too early. The commercials tout an emotionally gripping experience, but the game has none of the music that is used to such effect. It's also nearly impossible to care about any of the characters who either seem too stupid or douchey to connect with. When one of the main characters dies towards the end of the game, my friend (who I played the whole game with) and I felt more joy that the whiny pouting Patsy had died than the melancholy that the game wanted us to feel.

When Aeris died (SPOILERS!) in Final Fantasy 7, it hit home because I had spent several hours leveling her up and thinking that she may be the main love interest in the story.

When the character in Dead Island had her brains removed, I felt nothing. Some double crossing whiny character died? Meh.

"Meh" was the feeling I had more than any other while playing. Dead Island failed to engage me and was a relief when it was over so I could go onto better games.

If you have some friends, nothing else to play, and a great sale, go ahead and take a trip to Dead Island, but it's more of a game to fill a lazy afternoon than an engaging hyper emotional zombie vacation.

I have also been playing:

Dungeons of Dredmor

Limbo

Rusty Hearts

(Which I may discuss next time.)