Dead Island: Epidemic (Beta)

I knew Cinnamon lived through the events of the first game! Now he's on the island of Amaia spreading more disease!

I'm... not sure what happened to the Dead Island franchise here. This isn't a first person shooter like the previous games were, instead it has some top down, cartoony view where the zombies are no longer even scary. I suppose they embraced this silliness given that my chosen character has an "ultimate skill" where he shoots ducks from the air which crash down and explode in a circle, dealing massive damage to enemies. I was going to say undead, but this seems to be designed as a PvP 6 vs 6 machine which sees opposing scavenger teams fight each other for food, medicines and toilet paper.

Since I dislike PvP my opinion is obviously slanted against that, but it this was gifted to me so I thought I'd go ahead and try out the "Prototype" PvE missions which (after the single player tutorial ones) seem to be based on one map with a safety caravan in the middle guarded by solar powered turrets and one dude who sends the team to each of the four corners to do some random objective, often involving retrieving supplies (or less frequently, NPC people).

Completing said tasks awards you with various scraps and blueprints of things you can make with those scraps. Your character can only take 2 weapons with him per mission and can't switch during its course - (un)fortunately this means they don't ever break. What this really feels like though is a shop - not a game. The pay to win is strong in this one where you can buy more characters, gear, so on an so forth making what I'd think would be a pretty big gap in PvP but hey, people must like it. Maybe the curb stomp between a free player and a paid up to his eyeballs player isn't as bad as I think? I'll never know.

Cheapest prices in all of Amaia! Tell all your friends!

Keep in mind this is still in Beta as I type this though. Plenty of opportunity for it to improve, the question is when? I give Dead Island: Epidemic half a zombie hit by a duck out of five. In its current state I also can't recommend it to anyone as I'm sure there are better games that do what it offers out there.

Update: As of 23 July 2015, there are more characters for people to spend money on but not much else. Coop game is still in "Prototype" and the entire thing is still labelled as "Beta". Seems to me this game is as dead as the zombies it features.

Over, Under and Out

Dead Island journal - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

Our next task was to get all the speakers in the city working to broadcast the message of Mother Hen at the church to try get all the scattered survivors together. A very worthwhile venture in my opinion, so the three of us headed up to the rooftops to repair all the busted systems. The zombies certainly began coming out en masse at this point, especially in the "containment zone" (it obviously didn't do its job too well huh?). Rams galore have begun to turn up as well, and seem to be the only thing so far that is a threat to the party. Endless waves of sprinting infected come a close second.

Just like that "other" zombie game.
After a few other menial tasks we were sent to go get supplies from the rich district which was only accessible through the sewers. Ironically, the sewers are cleaner than the streets above. Not too far in we were introduced to Dead Island's version of the Boomer. The slow tubby isn't very dangerous though.

We emerged at the town hall smelling kinda foul, but nowhere near as putrid as the scum taking refuge there who plainly refused to help us. At least one fella sent us through a secret way (sewers) to a supermarket held by some gangsters though, and we were more than happy to break in there and kill all of them. I lost sync somewhere here and had to redo a whole bunch of things solo, but it seems the number of enemies and their HP is adjusted to supposedly balance it. I would have prefered the numbers we fought through the first time though as my individual run lent on the boring side.

Anyway, with plenty of supplies now as well as a good amount of ammo we returned to the city proper back through the overrun town hall (they had it coming) where we discover our naive helper friend decided to try supply the goons in the police station and were promptly tasked with saving her using a secret passage (aka sewers).

Jim was overjoyed as we got in and murdered the whole bloody lot of them and took their stuff for ourselves, then it was back to the greatly reduced group of Cinnamon who decided to help us get in contact with the mysterious radio man we heard at the beginning of the game. I believe it was also a good ploy to get the heroes out of his hair so he could continue his murderous rampage. It would be great if he is actually the main bad guy.

Scumbag City

Dead Island journal - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

Having finished with the resort it was a comfortable drive straight into the city for the usual task of looking for supplies. Right at the get go we find ourselves near a church whose door is being rammed by a big dude in a straight jacket. Finally a decent opponent, but alone he is still no match for the 3 of us. There are lots of survivors inside the hall but generally they begin to all blend into some faceless form that just gives silly quests and we end up not caring about them. Especially the bastard who wants us to put posters for him all over town. Who exactly would see these anyway?

"Noww we know where to finnnnd yoouuuu!"
The town itself was pretty much a big rubbish pile, and DL was beginning to have difficulty to keep track of all his thrown weapons. Fortunately it seemed there were more than a few "bad" guys who were immune to the outbreak (I suspect Cinnamon is one of them), and majority of them are equipped with firearms. Guns are nice! They work well on people, not so good on the living dead though. Ofwhich there are pleeeennnnty. Oh yeah there's an exploding version too but they're so lame I almost forgot to mention them. The rammers when combined with a good number of other things did start putting up a decent fight though.

Quests and groups of survivors (both good and scum) are also big in number here - it's like this outbreak is a quasi-fail. If 3 of us can clear the streets just imagine what all of the survivors working together could do? Cowardly idiots. Taking control of the pump station from a group of non-zombie thugs is definitely a highlight in this section, and the most WTF moment came when we restarted once and were all kidnapped (glitched) to some military outpost in the jungle (next area?) which we had to fight our way out of and walk back to the dirty city.

Apparently some punks have taken over the police station too and keep broadcasting about it on the radio. Jim reeeeally wants to get in there and shut them up but we haven't found a way in yet. Also on the radio Cinnamon tells us to hurry up and mentions that he wants to kill a little girl in passing. So glad we're taking orders from him.

Act I: Completed

Dead Island journal - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

After helping a few more "sole" survivors who decided to hold out on their own (a.k.a.idiots), we moved on to the next task of getting a strong enough ride to break through the firey tunnel to the city. Cinnamon happened to know there was one parked in the hotel carpark and it turns out to be an armored bank van. How does a life-guard know these things? I suspect he's not one at all, and more a murderous thief.

The hotel interior is nice and pretty one way, though having to restart due to network drop outs did make it more challenging that it should have been. On one occasion it decided to start all of us out at the farthest house on diamond beach! Also it turns out, the minute someone rejoins the game every single zombie you had killed respawns out of thin air. Good to know! :P

Ofcourse we did run into some b.s. sidequests in the form of a hotel guard wanting to know the fate of his gay guard buddy. We found the fool and he made us go get drugs to kill him. Erm. I could have just head stomped him y'know?

So the remaining guard dude let us through and opted to stay in the zombie infested hotel (dedication!) and we finally got the armored van. Cinnamon seemed disappointed there was no money inside, then sent us to get it upgraded at a nearby mechanic. The helpful dude knew his time was running but upgraded it for the mere quest of defending his shop till he was done. Oh and taking his daughter with us before he turned, which is quite beneficial as apparently she has a gazillion pockets to hold our stuff.

Speaking of stuff, I do really like the weapon upgrade ideas we are coming across. Can't wait till I get the blueprints for this:

Zombies in Paradise

Dead Island diary - spoilers ahead! You can follow the whole story here!

After an interesting episode of sleeping through the start of a zombie apocalypse while on Banoi island, I found myself cautiously creeping through the resort hotel and pilfering as much random stuff as I could. A voice on the radio was giving me instructions on how to get to safety and it wasn't long before I came across a batch of angry zombified people. My first instinct was to "Fus roh dah" them off a balcony, but since that's a different game and this character can only do rap songs I high tail it to the "safe" room where I get knocked out. Thanks voice on the radio.

When I awake I am in some sort of holding room with a bunch of other people including my brothers. DL had just gotten back from rescuing some tattooed guy who I'll call Cinnamon. He wastes no time in ordering us out to get a key card from his bungalow. This place is cramped anyway so the three of us exit to the beach, and wow is it a fantastic sight. If not for the decaying and mutilated bodies lying around it sure does look like a nice place for a vacation. It isn't long before we run into small numbers of "walkers", and they are easy enough to put back to the dead state. At least temporarily. I say that because as we went off the beaten track (a lot, to go looting) the ones we previously defeated got back up. Fortunately they were kind enough to put more stuff in the lootable containers while they were at it.

Came across some interesting people on our exploration too, the first being a tied up kinky lady who I think was turning into a zombie but since she was quite immobile and being filmed and such we left her alone. FOR SCIENCE! :P Next up was some dude who was totally breaking down in a literal pool of his family's blood after he killed them all. We tried to tell him to go join the other survivors but he wouldn't listen so we just left him there and found the next idiot, some dude who locked himself in a bar. And he requests alcohol. The hell man - way to be useless. I didn't feel so bad about leaving that one out there to die. He probably wouldn't have even realized it.

Anyway, one key card later and cinnamon gets us to go clear the surf club and the whole path to it of scum so that he can relocate the survivors to a bigger space. During this fun task we meet more nimble zombies who like to run, and they seem to come in bigger numbers! Not that it matters because there's so much stuff lying around to use to kill them with. A big slow brutish zombie acts as the boss at the club proper but against three of us he is eventually brought down. Having cleared the area we signal the all clear and the rest of the gang arrives (thanks for the help guys). Cinnamon rewards us each with special cleavers, this is ontop of a blueprint to make a nasty weapon. I suspect Cinnamon is actually a murderer.

Next thing you know, we'll be getting quests from this guy.