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GamePro contributor McKinley Noble witnesses a paradise gone completely mad with Deep Silver's new survival horror game, Dead Island.
What we're talking about: Dead Island, a new horror title dubbed by developer Techland as a groundbreaking "zombie-slasher-action" role-playing game.
Where we saw it: Our demo session went down at the Moscone Center in the Game Developers Conference, inside a private room decked out with bloody handprints and tropical furniture.
What I knew going in: Not a single thing -- I was one of the few members of the gaming press who hadn't yet seen the trailer that was currently blowing up on the Internet.
What you need to know:
Dead Island strives to be as realistic as possible with the main adventure. Everyone on the island is a tourist, so none of the characters have stepped off the cruise ship with an armory in their pockets. In this game, the only way to defend yourself is with random things you find lying around the tropical resort, like a rowing oar or a wrench. Even finding something like a gun off a policeman's corpse is only a temporary reprieve, as you definitely won't find piles of ammunition just lying around the island.
Dead Island uses open-world gameplay that lets you decide what the best course of action is for any situation. Although you may be expected to help survivors in need, you don't always have to, and you can generally go anywhere on the island you choose -- as long as you can make it through the zombies.
Dead Island's RPG features are implemented through skill trees and abilities that can be activated up as your character gains experience throughout the game. Much of the adventure also revolves around completing hundreds of quests -- most of them being missions that play a significant role in basic survival or simply coping with the zombie outbreak on Royal Palms Resort.
Securing safe houses for survivors that aren't immune to the zombie infection is incredibly important. With each new location you acquire, more survivors will become available to give you more quests that you can undertake for rewards, experience, and other benefits.
Although you can combine items with weapons in Dead Island, don't expect to be creating things like a "rocket launcher motorcycle". Weapon upgrades will be much more subtle, like combining a diving knife with plastic explosives in order to create a throwable sticky bomb.
Unfortunately, you're not going to be carrying a crowbar through the entire game, either. Dead Island features a "weapon decay" system that will eventually render your improvised weapons useless with enough wear and tear. This means that players will have to constantly scrounge for anything they can use to level the playing field against the vicious zombies. If you can find a workbench and some tools, however, some items and weapons can be frequently repaired and reused.
Dead Island even has vehicles that can be used to get around the island faster, or perhaps to rescue survivors and transport them to safe areas.
Dead Island will include 20 to 30 hours of gameplay, and also supports four-player online co-op, where anyone can seamlessly drop in and out of a game session without having to sift through menus or loading screens.
Our single-player demo starts with "Sam B," a muscular rap artist who travels to Royal Palms Resort to perform his one-hit wonder in concert. As he wakes up from a post-party blackout, he's almost murdered by a twitchy NPC who mistakes him for a zombie amid the chaotic opening events of the game. As Sam gathers his wits, he sees other survivors crowded around the tiny hut, listening fearfully to the sounds of a struggle outside. For some currently unexplained reason, Sam is immune to zombification, and he quickly decides to rescue the lifeguard who's brawling with a gang of undead right outside the hut.
After Sam B picks up a bloodied kayak paddle and charges outside, he's immediately assaulted by zombies that claw and swipe at him. It only does so much damage though, and Sam swiftly helps the lifeguard overpower the undead attackers, mashing their heads with well-placed curbstomps and chopping off limbs with broad swings. It's incredibly gory, and the first-person perspective of the combat plays a noticeable role in maintaining the constant level of fright.
Eventually, Sam B makes his way past piles of moving corpses to a nearby lifeguard station where he clears out the zombies with a sledgehammer. After a boss encounter with an unusually huge zombie (the "Suicider") that explodes into meaty chunks upon dying, Sam secures the area for nearby survivors. Immediately, the lighthouse becomes a new home base for the NPCs, which is in a better, more defensible location than the open beach.
Dead Island features several different characters, and it's evident that Sam B is the comedy relief in this dark story. He spouts plenty of one-liners, curses incessantly, cracks some jokes, and even has a special "Berserk" ability that lets him beat down zombies in a rage-induced frenzy.
Being able to survive close combat with the zombies will require some brutal tactics. Dead Island's zombies come in "slow" and "fast" varieties, and in some cases, hacking off their legs is just as effective as stabbing them in the face. During the demo, the developers even made good use of a propane tank by chucking it into a crowd of zombies and throwing a hammer at it to cause an explosion.
Point in development cycle: Dead Island actually looks like it's ready to ship right now, but the developers were very tight-lipped when we pressed them for a release date. All we can confirm is that the game will be released in 2011 for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.
My take: Having known nothing about this game beforehand, I'm now just as excited for its launch as I've been for Mortal Kombat and Batman: Arkham City. Dead Island's graphics and art design is wonderfully macabre and the "real world survival skills" focus of the gameplay actually seems both satisfyingly familiar and refreshing unique. After today, I'm sure that I'm not going to forget those blood-stained, bikini-clad living corpses anytime soon.
http://www.gamepro.com/article/previews/218425/gdc-preview-dead-island/
What we're talking about: Dead Island, a new horror title dubbed by developer Techland as a groundbreaking "zombie-slasher-action" role-playing game.
Where we saw it: Our demo session went down at the Moscone Center in the Game Developers Conference, inside a private room decked out with bloody handprints and tropical furniture.
What I knew going in: Not a single thing -- I was one of the few members of the gaming press who hadn't yet seen the trailer that was currently blowing up on the Internet.
What you need to know:
Dead Island strives to be as realistic as possible with the main adventure. Everyone on the island is a tourist, so none of the characters have stepped off the cruise ship with an armory in their pockets. In this game, the only way to defend yourself is with random things you find lying around the tropical resort, like a rowing oar or a wrench. Even finding something like a gun off a policeman's corpse is only a temporary reprieve, as you definitely won't find piles of ammunition just lying around the island.
Dead Island uses open-world gameplay that lets you decide what the best course of action is for any situation. Although you may be expected to help survivors in need, you don't always have to, and you can generally go anywhere on the island you choose -- as long as you can make it through the zombies.
Dead Island's RPG features are implemented through skill trees and abilities that can be activated up as your character gains experience throughout the game. Much of the adventure also revolves around completing hundreds of quests -- most of them being missions that play a significant role in basic survival or simply coping with the zombie outbreak on Royal Palms Resort.
Securing safe houses for survivors that aren't immune to the zombie infection is incredibly important. With each new location you acquire, more survivors will become available to give you more quests that you can undertake for rewards, experience, and other benefits.
Although you can combine items with weapons in Dead Island, don't expect to be creating things like a "rocket launcher motorcycle". Weapon upgrades will be much more subtle, like combining a diving knife with plastic explosives in order to create a throwable sticky bomb.
Unfortunately, you're not going to be carrying a crowbar through the entire game, either. Dead Island features a "weapon decay" system that will eventually render your improvised weapons useless with enough wear and tear. This means that players will have to constantly scrounge for anything they can use to level the playing field against the vicious zombies. If you can find a workbench and some tools, however, some items and weapons can be frequently repaired and reused.
Dead Island even has vehicles that can be used to get around the island faster, or perhaps to rescue survivors and transport them to safe areas.
Dead Island will include 20 to 30 hours of gameplay, and also supports four-player online co-op, where anyone can seamlessly drop in and out of a game session without having to sift through menus or loading screens.
Our single-player demo starts with "Sam B," a muscular rap artist who travels to Royal Palms Resort to perform his one-hit wonder in concert. As he wakes up from a post-party blackout, he's almost murdered by a twitchy NPC who mistakes him for a zombie amid the chaotic opening events of the game. As Sam gathers his wits, he sees other survivors crowded around the tiny hut, listening fearfully to the sounds of a struggle outside. For some currently unexplained reason, Sam is immune to zombification, and he quickly decides to rescue the lifeguard who's brawling with a gang of undead right outside the hut.
After Sam B picks up a bloodied kayak paddle and charges outside, he's immediately assaulted by zombies that claw and swipe at him. It only does so much damage though, and Sam swiftly helps the lifeguard overpower the undead attackers, mashing their heads with well-placed curbstomps and chopping off limbs with broad swings. It's incredibly gory, and the first-person perspective of the combat plays a noticeable role in maintaining the constant level of fright.
Eventually, Sam B makes his way past piles of moving corpses to a nearby lifeguard station where he clears out the zombies with a sledgehammer. After a boss encounter with an unusually huge zombie (the "Suicider") that explodes into meaty chunks upon dying, Sam secures the area for nearby survivors. Immediately, the lighthouse becomes a new home base for the NPCs, which is in a better, more defensible location than the open beach.
Dead Island features several different characters, and it's evident that Sam B is the comedy relief in this dark story. He spouts plenty of one-liners, curses incessantly, cracks some jokes, and even has a special "Berserk" ability that lets him beat down zombies in a rage-induced frenzy.
Being able to survive close combat with the zombies will require some brutal tactics. Dead Island's zombies come in "slow" and "fast" varieties, and in some cases, hacking off their legs is just as effective as stabbing them in the face. During the demo, the developers even made good use of a propane tank by chucking it into a crowd of zombies and throwing a hammer at it to cause an explosion.
Point in development cycle: Dead Island actually looks like it's ready to ship right now, but the developers were very tight-lipped when we pressed them for a release date. All we can confirm is that the game will be released in 2011 for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.
My take: Having known nothing about this game beforehand, I'm now just as excited for its launch as I've been for Mortal Kombat and Batman: Arkham City. Dead Island's graphics and art design is wonderfully macabre and the "real world survival skills" focus of the gameplay actually seems both satisfyingly familiar and refreshing unique. After today, I'm sure that I'm not going to forget those blood-stained, bikini-clad living corpses anytime soon.
http://www.gamepro.com/article/previews/218425/gdc-preview-dead-island/
