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4 weeks ago
Feature: One Off The List
There are only five days left to furtively flick through your cousin’s Facebook page in a desperate attempt to understand them as a person. But you do know one thing: they love to play those videogames. That’s enough to go on, surely. You can just type “gamer gifts” into the cybervoid and see what comes out! No. Do not do that. Here are the 8…
2 years ago
Feature: A subscription for the bargain bin
Utomik promises ‘Netflix for games’ but its library is an underwhelming collection of oldies
Utomik! Sounds like a stiff drink, but no. Utomik is a subscription-based games service that launched yesterday, angling to be ‘Netflix for games’ (sound familiar?) It’s currently offering a library of approximately 750 games for either $7 or $10 per month, depending on whether you want to share the account with your little sister or not. I signed up and took a stroll through its…
4 years ago
Zombie-slaying FPS-RPG Dead Island [official site] and its 2013 expandalone Dead Island Riptide are being "remastered" in Definitive Editions - more relatively-recent games coming our way again with a new swing in their step after being prettied up for the latest consoles. Too bad someone already took the name Deathinitive Edition, huh? Out of curiosity, I went back to see what RPS said in 2011…
6 years ago
Deep Silver have had quite the couple of years. They've gone from a European publisher of quietly successful strategy games and RPGs (the X games, Gothic, others), to finding mainstream success with Dead Island, to picking up where THQ left off with Metro: Last Light and Saints Row 4. In an interview with Deep Silver's CEO, The Penny Arcade Report mention that Saints Row IV…
7 years ago
Feature: Don't Mention The Gore
As I mentioned a few days ago, a popular technique from publishers who want bad news stories to go away is to employ silence. Just pull down the shutters, switch off the lights, and sit on the floor below the window until everybody goes away. And RPS has had enough of that nonsense, so we're taking silence to be a response worth reporting. Such is…
Feature: Please Try To Remember That Zombies Are A Metaphor
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.
A purely hypothetical scenario. I announce that I'm writing a new feature on RPS and, if you so desire, you can buy a physical edition of the post. Naturally, it will be printed on a bloodied replica of a woman's trunk, limbs lopped away, but bikini and breasts thankfully intact. I say 'naturally' because the story is about a game with zombies in it and…
Dead Island Riptide is certainly now more famous for its grotty "special" edition statuette than anything in the game itself. Which might be why we're now seeing the first ever footage. A dev-narrated video shows the game in pre-alpha, disappointingly on 360. I'll never get that. You've got a version of your first-person game running in a far higher resolution, with a million billion more…
Deep Silver, in response to an enquiry from Polygon, have issued an apology for the Dead Island Riptide: Zombie Bait Edition. As we reported earlier this afternoon, the EU special edition of the game features a remarkably offensive statuette of a headless and armless bikinied figure, streaked in gore. Since the internet became aflame with the discussion, the publishers told Polygon, "We sincerely regret this…
Oh come on. After the reaction to the tawdry idiocy we saw throughout 2012, you'd imagine publishers would stop and think for half a second before launching into another vile misogynistic campaign. But oh no, Deep Silver aren't swayed. Today they have announced the abysmal "Zombie Bait Edition" of Dead Island: Riptide for Europe (the US has a whole other version), a boxed version of…
Sometimes, I think zombies are just a giant metaphor for our pervasive cultural fear of other people. And so, as Dead Island demonstrates, we keep that oh-so-frightening Other at arm's length by thwacking it upside the head with a boat paddle. Or at least, I know that's how I deal with my interpersonal problems. However, Dead Island: Riptide (Get it? It stands for "rest in…
Once upon a time, Techland made everyone cry. Then it made some people cry again when it, er, didn't make them cry again with Dead Island: The Game Based On The Hit Original Trailer. The final product was still pretty fun (if very rough-around-the-edges), mind you, but its over-the-top blend of Borderlands and zombies didn't exactly scratch the itch people were expecting it to. Fast…
8 years ago
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…
