ARGHipelago?: Dead Island DLC

Dead Island released today in the EU while our American cousins have been slaycationing for a few days already. Later this month, there will be more, deader bits of island in the form of the rather unhygienic Bloodbath Arena DLC. The game first showed its rotten face at E3 in 2006 and its prolonged development cycle didn’t manage to iron out all the wrinkles, though John was suitably impressed by what he played. Now that the game may finally have stumbled through the hurdles of its difficult release, maybe the DLC will have a smoother ride. Or I might be back next week to tell you it's been delayed until 2017. Details below.

What you’ll get for your unspecified amount of monies, or for free if you preordered and have a code, is a survival game mode, with four zones to play in and endless, scantily clad corpses to reslaughter. There’s also a new weapon called the brainwave bomb. Presumably to scramble the brains of the living, making them less appealing to zombies. Or maybe just to blow things up with soundwaves or something daft like that. The BLOODBATH ARENA doesn’t tie into the campaign’s extensive story but experience and loot can be carried over. It’s an early piece of DLC, which I’m rarely fond of, but it also sounds very easy to ignore as it moves the game away from all the things I find interesting about it. In a strange way, that makes me feel like a winner.

There's a whole bunch of details on recent changes and improvements here. And we'll have more on the game and DLC soon!