Please Try To Remember That Zombies Are A Metaphor
By Jim Rossignol on April 24th, 2013.
Dead Island: Riptide isn’t just one of the most tastefully marketed games of 2013, it’s also the semi-sequel to one of the best-selling games of the last couple of years. Yes, Dead Island was an absolute smash hit, because everyone wants an open-world zombie survival game. Or wanted, at least. Hmm.
Here’s wot I think.
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By Jim Rossignol on August 28th, 2012.
Techland have announced that they are currently working on a new game, currently named “Project Hell“. The game is a spin off from Dead Island, as revealed on their recent blog-post about the game, it comes out of “an internal weapon mod” for Dead Island, made by one of their own. It’s a first-person “hack and slash game in a dark fantasy setting”. Techland said that the mod “was a proof that chopping monsters frozen by magic spells using two-handed swords is brutally fun and addictive.” We had always suspected, of course, but now we have proof. Horrible proof. It’s going to be just as dark as their tropical zombie-hurter: “Our main goal is to make a game we can all enjoy playing so don’t expect unicorns and fairies – we prefer breaking through hordes of undead minions only to slaughter their devilish and loathsome masters in a bloody boss-fight.”
No other details on release or owt, but they say a small team is currently working full-time on the game.
Night Terrors
By Nathan Grayson on June 27th, 2012.
Among The Sleep‘s main character is two-years-old. In every culture except dog, that means he’s woefully under-prepared to do anything except crawl, cry, and make everything smell horrific by proxy. So then, when the game’s Internet-famous trailer threw the teetering tot into a nightmarish gauntlet of hallucinatory horrors, it provoked many a raised eyebrow. And why not? It may sound crass, but recent horror-themed games have made a rather disturbing discovery: if you want attention, put a child in a high-risk (or even fatal) situation. Just ask Dead Island’s infamous trailer and Limbo. Both games ultimately received mixed reactions, but they certainly didn’t go unnoticed. For Among The Sleep developer Krillbite, though, it’s not a matter of drawing gasps or coaxing a single tear from your eye or potentially doing both at the same time and causing you to choke hilariously. There’s a reason, after all, that this one’s first-person. We’re stepping into a child’s feet pajamas and seeing a child’s world as colored in by a child’s hyper-imaginative mind. Without its main character, Among The Sleep probably wouldn’t even exist.
By Jim Rossignol on June 6th, 2012.
Techland’s zombie game Dead Island sold especially well, so it’s hardly surprising that a sequel should have appeared on the RPS long-distance radar so quickly. There’s no information aside from the name and confirmation that it exists, (thanks VG247) but I sense this will please those of you who enjoyed the original tropical island undeath. Full details will appear in the summer, and I’m hoping to see more surfing zombies, perhaps some zombie scuba action?
By John Walker on January 17th, 2012.
It’s a frequent lament that we rarely get to play bad guys in an interesting way. There’s another hope on the horizon, with the rather good Dead Island announcing some new major DLC. Ryder White is a whole new angle on the game’s story, where you play as the titular character – the game’s main baddie. Which is a splendid idea, if it’s done right. It’s a new single-player campaign, where you’ll apparently get to understand White’s motivations for his actions, as well as see him as a loving husband and military man. Techland say it’ll be “several hours” long, and add in a couple more weapons. We’ve some screenshots of it below.
By John Walker on December 21st, 2011.
RPS is probably the most visited website on the internet, knocking Google and YouTube into an embarrassing runner-up position. I don’t have accurate data, but it was.
Meanwhile, we’ve just received an email letting us know that Techland’s Tomasz Gawlikowski says, “Dead Island is probably the best selling new IP in this year”.
Lovely at this time of year
By RPS on December 14th, 2011.
Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the… Oh, everyone is dead. Well, more Christmas presents for me, then! And they won’t be needing these mince pies, either, which is a bit of luck, because I am strangely hungry.
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A Good Year For Open Worlds
By Jim Rossignol on November 24th, 2011.
This year has been unusually rich in the kind of game that I most enjoy: those that are open-ended, or provide a sandbox world for me to mess about in. We usually get a couple of these every year, but in 2011 we seem to have run into a minor bounty of the open stuff, which is good news for explorers and meanderers alike. I’ve gone into a bit more detail about why this pleases me below.
By Alec Meer on October 12th, 2011.
Dead Island’s PC launch was a bit of a messy business, which is why we here at Fortress Shotgun gave a solemn, grim-jawed nod upon hearing that devs Techland had decided to prioritise patching it over squeaking out downloadable content. The latter was delayed in favour of the former, and today we get a peek at which of their freeform zombie game’s guts they’ve been performing surgery on.
A few of the major fuel sources for the angry tank have been successfully identified and removed, including but not limited to: weapon duping, offline mode, savegame borking, disabling unwanted voice chat and, rather sadly, floating zombie corpses (well, re-corpses). I’ll miss you, lads.
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By Adam Smith on October 3rd, 2011.
When Dead Island’s Bloodbath Arena DLC was announced I jested that it might be delayed ’til 2017. Well, I’m guessing we’ll see it before 2017, but the content has indeed been delayed. Rather than concentrating on finishing up the horde mode and extra equipment that the DLC’s set to offer, Techland are concentrating on squashing the bugs in the core game. Releasing a game with technical issues is no good thing but at least they’re working to fix things, which is far more important than shipping what sounds like a fairly negligible expansion. Using my powers of sarcastic clairvoyancy, my next prediction is that the recently announced Dead Island movie, if it does ever materialise, will not in any way resemble the video below.
By Alec Meer on October 3rd, 2011.
And again! A not entirely industry-representative yet unquestionably fascinating/depressing look at what comprised the top ten PC game sales for Steam compared to UK retail over the last week. Will The Sims’ dominance of retail continue unabated? (Obviously). Will there be any surprise returns to the Steam top ten? (Yeah, actually). Read on to find out the answers to both these questions and more, as long as those questions concern the chart-placing of contemporary PC games. If you want to find out the answer to what the Queen had for breakfast this morning or where Muammar Gaddafi is hiding, I really cannot recommend reading the rest of this post.
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