7:42 AM
The Game Peddler
by Daemon Hatfield
Serious. Somber. Disturbing. These are words I would use to describe Dead Island's amazing debut trailer.
You saw it, right?
Today I got to see about 15 minutes of Dead Island in action. What words would I use to describe the gameplay?
Silly. Wacky. Goofy.
Oh, and fun.
Dead Island is a first-person hack-and-slash game set in the midst of a zombie outbreak in a tropical paradise. It's more Dead Rising than Resident Evil, with a focus on action over suspense. The developers themselves say they're going for "zombie zombie zombie all the time." An abundance of makeshift weapons lying around like paddles, baseball bats, and wrenches – and the fact that these can be combined and upgraded – further reminds me of Dead Rising.
The game has a very different tone than the somber trailer. It's fast and arcade-like. The plaintive piano and strings of the trailer are replaced with video game heavy metal. You can be clawed, bitten, and mauled by zombies and then be in perfect health a moment later. Tools and equipment can be jammed together to create ridiculous weapons, like an electrified machete. Is an electrified machete cool? Of course it is! But the macabre giggles it coaxed out of me are quite different than the quiet unease I felt while watching the trailer.
When developer Techland played Dead Island for me today, they chose the stereotypical "video game black guy" character. As he ran around slicing up zombies and bashing in their heads, he would exclaim things like, "Daaaaaamn, that bitch was huge!" and "You a dead bitch now!" Imagine hearing that sort of commentary over the trailer that depicted the tragic death of a young girl.
Games are about gameplay, not CGI movies. A game trailer that shows no gameplay might be entertaining, but it is useless as a metric for judging a game's quality. This should be an obvious statement, but think about how many game trailers we see these days that are bereft of gameplay footage. You can create an incredible trailer that draws attention to your game (DC Universe comes to mind), but that trailer could very well end up being more entertaining than the actual game (DC Universe comes to mind).
What if Angry Birds was really an advertisement to promote a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds? It would still be an amazing game, but it wouldn't have anything to do with that movie. Would that make any sense? It's an extreme example, but a lesser form of that bait-and-switch is happening with Dead Island.
The takeaway: Dead Island looks like good fun, even if the debut trailer was a little disingenuous. Like shooting Nazis or making robots explode, hacking up zombies really never gets old, and Dead Island seems to offer a slightly different perspective on the pastime. The level I saw today was fairly straightforward, consisting of moving from point A to point B to point C while dispatching the zombies that got in our way. But at one point I saw a plane coming in for a landing. That fascinated me: does the outside world not know of the outbreak? Did someone send help? Is a zombie flying the plane?! I look forward to finding out.
The next step is for us to actually play the game for ourselves, which we'll get the chance to do before E3.
Serious. Somber. Disturbing. These are words I would use to describe Dead Island's amazing debut trailer.
You saw it, right?
Today I got to see about 15 minutes of Dead Island in action. What words would I use to describe the gameplay?
Silly. Wacky. Goofy.
Oh, and fun.
Dead Island is a first-person hack-and-slash game set in the midst of a zombie outbreak in a tropical paradise. It's more Dead Rising than Resident Evil, with a focus on action over suspense. The developers themselves say they're going for "zombie zombie zombie all the time." An abundance of makeshift weapons lying around like paddles, baseball bats, and wrenches – and the fact that these can be combined and upgraded – further reminds me of Dead Rising.
A game trailer that shows no gameplay might be entertaining, but it is useless as a metric for judging a game's quality.
Then there is the four-player cooperative play, also giving Dead Island a little Left 4 Dead flavor. At the beginning of the game you select your character (which represents your class) and are stuck with that choice for the duration of the adventure. Whomever you choose, you are special among the survivors on the island -- you seem to be the only person immune to the zombie disease, and therefore can go toe-to-toe with the undead without fear of being converted. The game has a very different tone than the somber trailer. It's fast and arcade-like. The plaintive piano and strings of the trailer are replaced with video game heavy metal. You can be clawed, bitten, and mauled by zombies and then be in perfect health a moment later. Tools and equipment can be jammed together to create ridiculous weapons, like an electrified machete. Is an electrified machete cool? Of course it is! But the macabre giggles it coaxed out of me are quite different than the quiet unease I felt while watching the trailer.
Electrified machetes are cool, but do they fit the mood of Dead Island's debut trailer?
When developer Techland played Dead Island for me today, they chose the stereotypical "video game black guy" character. As he ran around slicing up zombies and bashing in their heads, he would exclaim things like, "Daaaaaamn, that bitch was huge!" and "You a dead bitch now!" Imagine hearing that sort of commentary over the trailer that depicted the tragic death of a young girl.
Games are about gameplay, not CGI movies. A game trailer that shows no gameplay might be entertaining, but it is useless as a metric for judging a game's quality. This should be an obvious statement, but think about how many game trailers we see these days that are bereft of gameplay footage. You can create an incredible trailer that draws attention to your game (DC Universe comes to mind), but that trailer could very well end up being more entertaining than the actual game (DC Universe comes to mind).
What if Angry Birds was really an advertisement to promote a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds? It would still be an amazing game, but it wouldn't have anything to do with that movie. Would that make any sense? It's an extreme example, but a lesser form of that bait-and-switch is happening with Dead Island.
The takeaway: Dead Island looks like good fun, even if the debut trailer was a little disingenuous. Like shooting Nazis or making robots explode, hacking up zombies really never gets old, and Dead Island seems to offer a slightly different perspective on the pastime. The level I saw today was fairly straightforward, consisting of moving from point A to point B to point C while dispatching the zombies that got in our way. But at one point I saw a plane coming in for a landing. That fascinated me: does the outside world not know of the outbreak? Did someone send help? Is a zombie flying the plane?! I look forward to finding out.
The next step is for us to actually play the game for ourselves, which we'll get the chance to do before E3.
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