Weekly Report - 11/08/2013

Yeah, yeah, I missed four months. It's ridiculous. Actually, I haven't really been spending much time playing games. Ridiculous, and sad.

Cold weather is rapidly approaching again, though, so it's time to dig back in! I started gaming again a few weeks ago. I never finished Dead Island: Riptide when I bought it earlier this year, so I started where I left off, about two chapters into the main story.

Riptide is hardly different from its predecessor, except it seems enemies and items respawn every time the player turns around. It's much more difficult to play solo than the original title, but that's how I decided to roll through it. It's not that the co-op isn't fun - it most certainly is the best way to experience the game - I've just been feeling rather antisocial lately and wanted to experience the game on my own. Regardless, the game is absolutely best enjoyed with friends.

Maybe I'm just thin-skinned but the game sort of frightens me. Perhaps it's the up-close, personal, intimate nature of the gameplay. Encounters are far too invasive for my comfort. I'm used to shooting threats down before the enemy gets close enough to claw me with its diseased fingernails.

Is Riptide any good? It's fun, but the story is trite, predictable, and cheap. The "base defense" sections were my favorite: you set up defenses such as electric fences, mines, and the like and fire up some noise generator (e.g. an outrageously loud water pump) which attracts a large horde of infected. Fend them off, and you can move on to the next line of story missions that lead to the next base defense mission. You get the gist.

What's next? I'm pretty well out of titles. I finally found the DLC content in Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, so I'm playing through that but at a pretty slow pace. I'd like to pick up a few more current-gen titles before diving into the next-generation consoles (more on the PS4/XBone to come). The Last of Us, Batman: Arkham Origins, XCOM: Enemy Unknown and GTA5 are all on my list.

The Tide Comes In

As I slowly progress through my solo run of Dead Island: Riptide, a number of worthy topics pop into my head. This game is nearly identical, yet subtly different from its predecessor.

This is an extremely dangerous building. Don't go in alone!

The engine appears identical. Controls are still a bit stuttery. The audio is still pretty good. It looks to me like the animations haven’t changed at all, but otherwise the graphics seem improved. I chalk it up to improved textures. Foliage, in particular, looks fantastic. The overdone bloom effect from the original DI has been drastically scaled back, so it no longer feels like you’re staring into a light bulb while playing the game.

Gameplay-wise, character advancement and weapon customization have not changed one iota. I’ve noticed one thing over the past few hours in the game, though: zombies seem to have a much longer reach than they used to, or perhaps my kicks are shorter than they used to be. I keep finding myself taking tons of damage from weak swipes that I honestly don’t think should have hit me. Perhaps the field of view (FOV) changed on me but the zombies on my screen are, apparently, closer than they appear. And another thing: those weak swipes are capping me for upwards of 30% health. I can’t absorb more than three hits without hitting the dirt. That’s not cool when you’re playing solo.

Speaking of difficulty, enemies and items appear to respawn really fast. It seems every time I turn around, I can harvest the same huts for loot and materials over and over again. At the same time, enemies have respawned (unless you’re in a safe area). I can’t walk 100 feet down the beach and back without fighting the same overwhelmingly large (I’m playing solo) groups of zombies at least twice.

Which brings me to another point. There are a ton of zombies in this game. They apparently move in herds now, coming in tightly-knit family groups of three or so. Each family group is located ridiculously close to another family group. Woe be to the solo player who accidentally aggresses multiple groups simultaneously.

Not that I don’t enjoy the difficulty. I like hard games, but I still feel like Riptide, just like its predecessor, is a game best played with a few friends. Solo, it’s way harder than DI. Opportunities for being surrounded are numerous, and it’s just plain scarier that way. Why doesn’t Riptide scale the number of enemies with the current player count? Or perhaps provide AI teammates when humans aren’t in-game?

I played the original DI with a group of three and we facerolled the game in an almost comical fashion, with the notable exception of this one room in the middle of the city in Act 2 where raging, ludicrously fast, infinitely-spawning Infected continuously flood in to wreck you. I can only imagine how easy the game would have been with all four players. Riptide is different, though. I think it will challenge my group of three enough to make us pressure the reclusive fourth member of our gaming group into joining us.

Rapid Release

The stated benefit of releasing the follow-up to Half-Life 2 in episodic installments was so the developer could push more content to the consumer, quicker. That only held through Episode 2, but that's not what I want to discuss here. Valve's point was they could release short episodes, perhaps 1/3 length of a "real" game, every few months to keep gamers involved in and excited about Half-Life. Not to mention selling three episodes for $20 yields $60 revenue versus (at the time) a standard retail title selling for $50.

The biggest value to Valve, however, was unstated at the time: they were not developing true sequels; the game engine and, indeed, the vast majority of gameplay code was not changing. Graphics slowly improved via minor rendering upgrades (note these are ongoing for the Source engine from many related titles, e.g. Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress) but aside from that, developers were creating new maps, story events, voice acting, and other content. The Episodes are not true sequels, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. We don't need a new engine with every new game, right?

With Dead Island: Riptide due out April 23 from developer Techland and producer Deep Silver, this discussion has arisen once again. It's a bit soon for a sequel; many gamers were expecting a new game either this fall or early in 2014. Early 2013 is a real surprise to me. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that I recently discovered Riptide is not a full sequel. In fact, the developers are referring to it internally as Dead Island 1.5 rather than 2.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? I don't think so - not for a newer developer like Techland. They needed a release within two or three years of the original Dead Island launch. By keeping the same game engine they have been able to produce such a release in time. According to the available gameplay footage and screenshots, the graphics are largely unchanged. My hope is that they at least devoted enough effort to the engine and gameplay mechanics in order to clean up some of the quirks that plagued Dead Island. The loose movement and abhorrent menu interfaces, at least, deserve some attention.

Dead Island: Riptide Trailer

Dead Island: Riptide Steelbook case

Techland's followup to the 2011 hit Dead Island is a something a lot of gamers are looking forward to. It promises revamped physics for easier head-stomping, sharper controls, and clearer graphics - all very welcome improvements.

The Dead Island: Riptide trailer was released recently, go take a look. Like last time, the trailer is very produced and doesn't include any actual gameplay. No new gameplay features are displayed or discussed, nor does the trailer feature any of the main Dead Island characters, a decision I question at this point. Still, it's an interesting trailer for all the same reasons as the original Dead Island trailer: it's well produced and tells a clear, however short, story.

I think Dead Island was a sleeper hit, with many gamers finding it "better than expected." Riptide, as a result, is likely to be held to much higher standards upon release. Let's hope Techland rises to the challenge.

RPG Elements in Dead Island

By biggest gripe with Dead Island is that many of the traditional RPG elements seem largely unnecessary. Do I really need to see large, floating numbers appear around every zombie every time I attack to indicate damage?

What makes a level 30 rusty pipe so much more powerful than a level 2 rusty pipe? What makes a revolver spiteful and how is it any different from any other revolver? I can’t help but think the gameplay could have been accomplished without all this emphasis leveling, numbers, and experience, leaving your character’s player-chosen abilities to do all the talking. As it stands, many of these elements only detract from the player’s immersion in the game world.

Vacationing on Dead Island

Dead Island from developer Techland and publisher Deep Silver was first announced at E3 2006, but it first came to my attention in 2010 with its innovative slow-motion, nonlinear cutscene trailer. The trailer is brief, unabashedly violent, and somewhat confusing, but it tells a story - and that’s something most trailers simply fail to accomplish. Interestingly, Techland did not produce the trailer. It was contracted out to a third-party firm.

As it turns out Dead Island is not at all what I expected. It’s an open world action-RPG where I had anticipated a first-person action game a la Left 4 Dead 2. That’s not a bad thing by any means; it features a quest-based, sandbox-like feel similar to Fallout 3 but at the same time it remains action-packed due to the density of the game world.

Atop this initial surprise comes the shockingly visceral gameplay. Encounters with the infected are uncomfortably, nail-bitingly intimate. You are thrust into your first battle armed only with a broken oar. Throughout the game you’ll discover that melee combat with sticks, pipes, knives, and clubs is the most effective and, often, the only plausible method of engaging the enemy. The game requires you to get up close and personal. Guns don’t become available until the second act, and even then they simply cannot dish out enough damage to become very useful.

Played solo, the game is rather challenging. There isn’t much you can do in terms of crowd control, so you must play strategically in certain areas to avoid being overwhelmed. The game is a co-op home run with my gaming group. It’s less nerve-wracking when you know someone’s got your back. I highly encourage playing with a group of friends in the room; it’s a blast.