Dead Island - The not so official 1st impressions thread
 

It's not so official because I don't have it but was looking for feedback from anyone that may have picked it up as it should be out today if I recall correctly.

Ars Technica says it need a bit more work:

Dead Island offers flashes of fun in unfinished, buggy PC release

I read on RPS that there is supposed to be a patch with a number of significant bug fixes out later today.

Apparently, they actually uploaded the wrong version of the game. :eek:

I'll be watching this thread closely. My son is very excited about the potential, my gut keeps saying this is going to be a disappointment in terms of game play. Early reviews (of the 360 version) will carry a lot of weight on our buy/don't buy decision.

From what I've read on Steam and Gamespot it's a buggy mess. Looks really cool so I think I'll be waiting a bit on it.

That sounds like "we uploaded a really buggy game and are rushing to patch it".

I plan to wait for a sale with this one, especially with Space Marine out today and what's coming out over the next few months.

I read it was developers build in debugging mode with things like noclip enabled.

I know there was a Release Day "snafu", but the fact that there are no "official" first impression threads doesn't bode well for this title. I wonder how much business a company loses when problems like that happen...?

From everything I have read elsewhere it at least sounds fun, so I hope it does well. I think a lot of people might have been hesitant because of the trailer that got it all the attention didn't really show much of anything, and then the few prerelease reviews I saw were,positive but seemed like they could have been just positive enough to break a prerelease review embargo. Another problem is has is when its being released, it's sandwiched by Deus Ex, Space Marine and Red Orchestra 2 with several other big releases coming in the next two months. All of that has me probably waiting until it is on sale for about $25.

A few days later, and with the patch apparently correcting some (most?) of the problems, the numbers of players on Steam are interesting:

Current.... Peak
28,300.... 35,906.... Dead Island
16,366.... 21,183.... Deus Ex - Human Revolution

Obviously a small and very specific (Steam only) sample size, but Dead Island seems to have recovered.

My son couldn't hold back any longer, picked up the game yesterday afternoon.

I spent about 3 hours with it late last night, my usual slow play style. It isn't terrible overall but it's got a lot of annoying quirks & quite a few graphic issues. The game is certainly pretty enough but having zeds treat a pool float like an insurmountable wall is a buzz kill when they've been trying to kill you. Some of the mechanics are annoying as hell (trying to open a suitcase to collect the $8 or $9 inside is a precision exercise akin to trying to get something out of a Fallout 3 toilet without drinking the water by accident).

The world, so far at least, certainly feels open enough (except for all the bungalow doors that you can't open or even attempt) but more than any of the obvious game comparisons that could be made, I find myself thinking that DI reminds me of Homefront. It's not terrible by any means & there seems to be some potential here but there's enough that off that it's more like a $30 game than a $60 game. It's the kind of game where you hope there's a sequel because by then they might be able to squash all the bugs ... but there are enough bugs that you aren't completely sure a sequel is going to happen.