We’ve covered the promotion of the odious and seemingly-Living Supremacist game ‘Dead Island’ extensively here on the ZRC blog, but perhaps I should mention something about its recent high profile release, and why I have no intention of buying it for review anytime soon:

They released an incomplete and unfinished game, one that is ludicrously full of bugs, to the Anti-Zombie gaming public. The PC version was out-and-out defective by the company’s own admission. Seriously:

Update Deep Silver has sent us the following statement: “We deeply regret that an incorrect version of Dead Island was inadvertently made available to players on Steam launch in North America. We are very sorry for any issues you may have experienced while playing the game—the correct, patched version will be made available to North American players ASAP. Other territories are not affected by this situation, the fully patched game will be available on Friday as announced.”

…

We were given a list of fixes that were coming in a day-one patch, and it was extensive. I haven’t had a chance to play much with this patch, but many of my issues haven’t been addressed. I have a feeling we’re going to see an extensive number of additional patches coming in the coming days and weeks. Graphical and gameplay issues plagued my time with the game to the point where I decided to walk away after ten hours or so.

Apparently a lot of the issues that make the PC game unplayable are not related to the release of the wrong, still-in-development version of the game, either; they’re just poor design decisions.

Not that they forgot to include rampant Anti-Zombie violence the same way they forgot to check their code:

The combat is nice and personal; you use blunt weapons to break the arms and legs of the undead. The aiming system is imprecise, however, and it’s hard to judge where a blow will land, even with practice. When you place your aiming reticle over a zombie it begins to slide around, as if it’s trying to lock onto different parts of the zombie’s body. This may also be a holdover from the game’s console roots, but it leads to frustration and missed shots. The slow strafe controls, rarity of health kits you can carry with you, and tricky combat systems make it hard to get out of bad situations if you are surrounded. Don’t worry, if you die you’re merely revived a few feet away, less some money. This system does a great job of sapping any tension from the game, since there is so little to be lost by your death, unless the game spawns you in another group of zombies.

Oh good, a game where you get to viscerally dismember people just because they’re not like your character. That’s healthy!

Judging from the online buzz and reviews, the developers behind ‘Dead Island’ managed to completely neutralize its cultural impact in a way that the ZRC only hoped to achieve. Good job fellows! It’s almost like you’re secretly working *for* us, to discredit the Anti-Zombie gaming movement. (Although for the record, we do not support deception as a method for changing the minds of the public re: Zombie Rights)

Based on all this, we’ll be waiting for, you know, a finished version of the game to review. Might take a while. On the other hand, prompted in part by conversations we had at a recent convention, the ZRC is currently playing through Fallout: New Vegas, which apparently will feature some very noteworthy Zombie characters!

And is probably slightly less buggy, despite Bethesda Softworks’ reputation on these matters.

Tags: Videogames

This entry was posted by John Sears on Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 at 11:16 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.