Logan Carter, Xian Mei, Purna and the almighty Sam B. – they are amongst the only individuals to make it off of Banoi Island alive. They would hope and pray that they were in the clear, but we know better. The nightmare will continue in 2013 as we get our grubby little hands on Dead Island Riptide. Set to immediately follow the events at the end of Dead Island, there will be plenty of fresh (or rotting) new content. Deep Silver’s August press release gave us many details on what to expect, all of which you can read at the official Dead Island website. Instead of just copying and pasting that info, I want to tell you why you should look forward to this game, based upon the sheer madness and fun that was the first.
So why should you be looking forward to this game? Let’s start at the beginning. Every gamer remembers the Dead Island reveal trailer and if for some reason you do not, slap yourself and then click here. Events played in reverse with some of the most depressing piano music ever, you wanted to save these people, especially the little girl. Fast forward to when you actually play the game and your emotions go out the window. Suddenly, you only care about yourself. It is not like the game gives you an every man for himself feeling; it is quite the opposite. The problem is the people of Banoi, whether they be tourist, native or whatever, are all idiots. Just because you are immune to the disease that is spreading, they expect you to do everything. I found myself thinking “so I won’t become a zombie….doesn’t mean these things won’t freaking eat me!” Everyone I have played with agreed that if they did not give us weapons and money, we would have left all of those people to die.
Once again going back to the trailers, old and new, you see how serious the situation is. When you pop in the game, Deep Silver decided to not take things too seriously. Yes, people are in dire situations and you do find yourself saving a lot of them. It is when you hear them speak that you cannot decide who to shoot first: them to shut them up or yourself to end your misery of hearing them. When you run into characters like Svetlana, Mick and Linda, Anne and Kim, you wonder where the hell these people’s priorities are. Many ask you for helpful things like getting the light house working to signal a ship or seeing if a crashed plane has any working communications equipment. Then you have people like the ones I mentioned asking you for champagne and teddy bears and just saying the most ridiculous things you can think of. Don’t even get me started on Jin, the absolute stupidest character in video games in recent memory. Let’s just say that it is really bad when even women agree that she got what she deserved. As much as I dump on the NPCs, they make the game hysterical, to say the least.
Ragdoll physics always make for funny moments in gaming. Combine that with glitches and you have an automatically generated gag reel. Glitches are prevalent in this game and for the most part they do not affect the gameplay (there are rare, game-freezing occurrences). Moments like this one make for much added hilarity:
Now THAT’S how you Pimp My Ride!Sometimes, you don’t even wait for the computer to mess up and you make your own madness:
Sam B chillin’ in his trash boatSorry for the image quality, these were spur of the moment shots with a cel.
Stay strong Linda. You’ve dealt with perverts before.Basically, if you are not having fun playing this game, you are seriously doing it wrong.
Dead Island had four characters to choose from that had different combat specialties. Deep Silver informs us that all four of them shall return along with a mystery fifth character. Now, at the end of the first game, there was a fifth survivor, so it could be that person, but the silhouette on the site makes the person look more like a member of the military. I do not care who it is, I just hope it means that five people can play at once instead of four. Like I said earlier, all of the new information currently available is on the website. Dead Island is scheduled to release in 2013. Preorder bonus right now is only a steelbox, but I am sure that will change. Unless the world as we know it ends in two months, I look forward to partnering up with you for online survival, be there!
