Dead Island Review

Dead Island was one of those games where you saw the trailer, loved the trailer, and then feared for the production of the game.  If you recall, the trailer was outstanding and I was completely blown away by the emotional strings that it pulled yet at the same time enticed.  At first I was saying, “Oh great, another Left 4 Dead” but as I read more and more about the game it came to be that it was a free roaming RPG rather than a zombie hack ‘n slash.  So without further adieu, I bring to you my entirely unbiased review of Dead Island.

The game starts out at the resort and it’s already a quick paced game, within the first 10 minutes you’re being chased by zombies and having to run away from them.  I loved that.  I also loved the fact that I could rummage through left over suitcases and find a copious amount of money and other necessities that I would need later on in the game.  I had no idea what to expect when I put in the disc so when I discovered that I could travel virtually everywhere and anywhere I was overjoyed to say at the least.

The length of the game was surprising, mind you it’s not Skyrim (with an estimated 300 hours of gameplay) but it was still decently long.  I spent around 60 hours on the main quest without dabbling much in the side quests, which there are a lot of.  Most of the side quests that I did encounter were mostly retrieval quests (grabbing this for this person from this location).

As for the weaponry, that was the most fun aspect of the game for me.  There are weapons strewn  all over the maps, you can pick up anything from a rusty wrench to a debilitating sickle but the fun doesn’t stop there.  You can scavenge nails, blades, duct tape, oleander, soap, etc. and use those ingredients to mod your weapons.  Yes, you can mod your weapons.  I pre ordered the game so I received The Ripper mod automatically which is essentially a baseball bat with a saw blade at the end of it that pretty much gives you auto decapitation if you time the blows right.  Some other mods that you can look forward to are: nail’d mod, shock mod, deo-bombs, and molotovs.  The weapons do deteriorate fairly quickly but there is a way that you can help conserve their life, which is what I’m going to get into right now.

Most RPG’s have some sort of level tree or skill tree, as does Dead Island.  There are a certain amount of major skills and then they branch down to other skills that can aid your character in various ways such as: strength, rage, stamina, weapon deterioration and reloading time.  For example, the more skill points that I use on weapon deterioration, the longer my modded weapons are going to last.  The problem that I see with most skill trees is that it’s fairly simple to level up quickly and max out your character before you even finish the game.  Luckily with Dead Island that wasn’t the case, I actually finished the game with more room to improve my character.

Now onto the graphics…The graphics were reasonable, I don’t believe that they were much to write home about but the way that they used them, well, that was the incredible part.  When fighting a zombie, you have a stamina bar that depletes the more that you swing or the more that you run away from the fight.  As the stamina bar wears down, there is a higher chance that you can get knocked down by your enemy (which was extremely frustrating) and there is also a higher chance that a zombie will literally grab the camera.  Yes, I said grab the camera…and they will shake it too.  The water on the resort looked extremely realistic and I have to admit it made me want to go swimming more than a couple of times.

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding this game regarding the bugs and how it affects the playability.  I know that a lot of PS3 users have been experiencing delayed actions and issues with some quest characters but I honestly haven’t experienced any bugs in the game that have made it unplayable.  All issues (if any) haven’t affected my gameplay and with that being said, I cannot shed any light on any problems.  The only thing that I have yet to try is the co-op but there have been rumours that the co-op won’t even work properly until the patch comes out so you guys will have to wait for that.

Needless to say, Dead Island is going to be a game that I’m going to pick up and play again to achieve all of the challenges and to gain all of the trophies…I’m also stoked on the Bloodbath Arena which I was also granted with due to my pre order.  The main question being, should you buy it?  My answer for you is YES.  The plot is amazing and it was an extremely fun game to play but stay tuned for patch information if that’s what’s swaying your opinion.

VGL Presents: Alice Madness Returns review

Posted by: Kristastrxphe

Welcome, my Legion! Kris here, with another new review!
Today I am reviewing Spicy Horse’s sequel to American McGee’s Alice; Alice Madness Returns, published by EA for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

American McGee’s Alice made its debut when it was released in October of 2000. Since then, it has become a cult favorite and has never been forgotten. We wanted more… And it’s finally come.

Alice: Madness Returns is about Alice Liddell, who has spent most of her life in Rutledge Asylum ever since her parents were killed in a fire. She now lives in London under the care of her psychiatrist, Dr. Angus Bumby. While walking down the street, she finds a white cat and decides to follow it. Alice then returns to Wonderland where the Chesire Cat tells her that things have changed. Alice must save her Wonderland once again, while learning to cope with her being traumatized over her family’s death.

So, the story concept is pretty solid. There are many cut scenes and narration to keep the pace and story apparent in the game. The voice acting; with the exception of a few minor things; sound pretty good. Alice in specific sounds wonderful. The sound and music in the game sound great as well.

The graphics in Alice are really interesting. With all of the crazy and interesting color choices, the distorted shape of the characters and the level design, this game does look pretty incredible. The world itself is absolutely stunning, with the exception of backgrounds popping in and items like picnic baskets just popping into existence when you unlock them. It’s a little off in those departments, but the actual levels look stunning.

Alice’s character design is drop-dead gorgeous. The other characters in the game haven’t changed much from the original American McGee’s Alice, but they still look more detailed and much better.

The game mechanics are pretty simple and easy to learn. Different weapons are used by a specific button on the controller. I am playing the Playstation 3 version, so for example, to attack with the Vorpal Sword, the button is Square; and I won’t go into detail about the other unique and interesting weapons in the game.

One might say Alice is a mindless button-mashing hack n slash. And while the combat pretty much is like that, certain weapons do better against certain enemies, and mastering dodging, deflecting, jumping, and etc, keeps it really engaging and fun in my opinion.

The platforming in Alice is spot on. The world layout and over all look just makes platforming, jumping, etc, just so much more interesting as you get to run around the gorgeous map designs. Speaking of platforming, one thing that is rather different, but I really enjoy it, is Alice cannot grab onto ledges. They did not ad any form of grab when at the edge of anything. To work around the lack of grabbing and also climbing, Alice has been given a triple jump. Alice may jump up to 3 times while still in the air for getting some really good distance and range. I don’t recall many platformers that do something like that, so it makes you stop and kind of look around for a moment, deciding whether or not you can make that jump or not, or need to find a different way around it.

The puzzles work out really well in levels as well. From finding invisible walkways to different areas, shooting at a clock to reset it, or even mini games such as a side-scrolling shooter game, picture puzzles, music puzzles, etc… All are well placed into the world. Some can be trickier than others to figure out. Scattered throughout the maps are collectables such as Alice’s memories to further the back story, bottles, pig-snouts, etc… In the beginning of the game, Alice bathes in a fountain labeled Drink Me, that gives her an infinite power to shrink (by holding down the L2? button). This gives Alice the ability to travel into and/or under small places such as key holes. She cannot attack nor jump while you are holding down the Skrink button, so keep that in mind.

Something I didn’t realize when I first started the game, until around the point I am at right now, is that your weapons can be upgraded by the points you collect by killing enemies, breaking open crates, etc. The points come in the form of teeth (bone and gold ones). For some reason I just didn’t question what the teeth were used for. Silly me. Anyways… Well, it turns out in the weapons section on the menu screen; you can spend the teeth for Leveling up your weapons from 1 to 2, and so on. Another fun thing is when Alice is near-death, she can go into a super-powered mode called Hysteria, where she turns completely white with blood all over her, and you can just go to town on the enemies if you are overwhelmed. Note that you need to be near death (by having only ½ of 1 flower left on your life bar). Activate Hysteria by pressing L3 (on ps3 controls).

Over all, Alice: Madness Returns is a very clever, and fantastic sequel to a great game from our past. The dark and twisted story of Alice by American McGee is a new look on a well-known tale. On top of all of that, the game is just fun as hell to play. It looks great, it plays great. Oh, and did I mention NOSTALGIA out the ass!? Those who have been waiting for this game since American McGee debuted Alice in 2000

On a final note, I pre-ordered Alice from the EA Store online, which had a (what I believe to be) exclusive deal for a code to unlock the original American MeGee’s Alice game, rescaled and recoded to run on whatever system you bought Madness Returns for. The code gave you the original game for free, but it was released on PSN and the Xbox store for $9.99 or 800 MSpoints. So that is some exciting news. Now everyone has full access to the full American McGee’s Alice story as well as the new game, to complete the story.

Most importantly, I give Alice: Madness Returns a whopping 9.75 cups of tea out of 10.

In an attempt to clear all of these demos off of my hard drive, today I'm going to talk a little bit about The UnderGarden.  I wasn't expecting much from this game but it's simplicity astounded me in various ways.

I started the demo and it enveloped me in beautiful landscapes with soothing music and vibrant colours, and then I paid attention to who I was playing as.  The first thought in my head was "What the Hell?"  The game itself is very well polished and I can certainly say that the characters are anything but generic.  The main character looks like...a cross between a Mudkip and a human baby.  Our sources say that many of the characters that you will encounter throughout the game all have the fairy tale look to them so it definitely does set up for a strange array of characters.

The UnderGarden, given to us by Atari and Vitamin G has the same skeleton as a game such as Little Big Planet but the insides are completely different.  The UnderGarden is basically a puzzle game where you navigate through different worlds attempting to pollinate fruit trees, plants, and "flora" and that's it.  You have to pollinate every tree and plant that you can find and get through the puzzles without frustration.  Prior to the plant pollination, the gardens/worlds are a dark place, very deep tones such as navy and dark blue though all of that changes once pollination occurs.

My only fear about the game is that if I were to journey deeper and deeper into the world that Vitamin G has created, I would forget that I was actually playing a puzzle game.  I'm afraid that I would get stuck and be unable to progress any further because I would be so entranced by the beauty that I would forget the objective.

For the little while that I played it, I enjoyed it thoroughly but I'm not sure if it's a game that I would be able to spend a copious amount of hours on.  Keeping in mind that I quit Little Big Planet half way through because I found it to be redundant.

Download it on the PSN/XBLA or even purchase it for the PC and experience it for yourself!

Posted by: