Dead on Arrival: Dead Island
on September 14th, 2011 at 9:51 amDead on Arrival: Dead Island
I didn’t think it would end this way; white sand, blue water, zombies, and complete disappointment. Dead Island’s premise had so much potential with its beautiful backdrop and First Person RPG elements. Techland’s execution of said potential leaves zombie fans in a real predicament. The premise was different this time around. Dead Island was supposed to take a utopic setting and mar it with an undead horde. Instead, they released a game riddled with bugs that marred gameplay and experience.
First, I would like to clarify that this is not a review of Dead Island. I rented Dead Island from my local Redbox kiosk (I rent before I buy nowadays) and it was so bug ridden that after 2 days (10 hours) I returned it. Since I wasn’t able to experience Dead Island thoroughly it wouldn’t be fair of me to give it a review score. I’m sure one of PMG’s contributors will submit a review to be published. Rest assured that no matter if they give it a good or bad score I will still publish it on the site. This is post is rather a question of why the scores for Dead Island range so greatly and why reviewers are defending a broken product. Yes, if I waited a couple more days or weeks for Techland to fix the bugs then a review including said glitches would be unfair. However, if you played the game prior to patching then a negative score would be warranted. Right? Instead, some reviewers are scolding their peers for giving Dead Island a bad score. Why is this happening? I believe that it’s because of complacency on the part of the gaming industry. PC gamers have always received patches to so called retail ready games. Console gamers on the other hand didn’t start to receive patches until the current generation of consoles. Now we all have to suffer. I feel as though game developers are now able rush games to retail ahead of all the bugs being stamped out. I’m not sure if this saves them on QA costs or if it’s just a matter of deadline pressures to get a game out. Regardless, I don’t see why I am expected to pay full retail price for a flawed and defective product.
Yes, online exploits and glitch patches are often overlooked and often times demanded by the community because player activity can’t always be predicted. Often time’s players find the most obscure flaws and are able to exploit them rather quickly. For this reason game patching is warranted and necessary. This happens in almost every FPS but what I won’t accept are game crippling bugs that affect the single player campaign as well. In Dead Island’s case the biggest bug came in the form of an event not taking place. After an hour or so of gameplay I stumbled into a room were a cinematic was to take place and then a quick fight versus an enemy. This battle was supposed to be triggered after you have cleared the zone of all zombies and then walk into the lifeguard station. Because the event was never triggered no progress could be made and I would have to start over in order to keep playing. To top it off this occurred after the latest patch was pushed out. The game was as close to retail as it was going to get before I presume the next round of patches are released not days but possibly weeks later. Is it just me or do you also expect to have fully functioning prior to patching?
I feel as though it is not okay to sell me a defective product. If high scores are given to broken games and they sell well then it will just breed more flawed games. If you think a game deserves a low score because it was broken at launch then give it one. If you can look past the flaws and still enjoy the experience then by all means give it a good score. Just make it a point to warn your readers of what they’re getting themselves into. I for one don’t believe in censorship but I believe it is a reviewer’s responsibility to give objective warning as well as their subjective score.
I am not going to be getting Dead Island because I think zombies on a resort island are a silly premise for an entire game. Think “Snakes on a Plane.” Just because something is popular, doesn’t make it a good example of a medium.
However, on this weeks “Feedback” on G4TV.com, Blair Herter said he has been able to play the entire game without nay bugs, while two of the other speakers, Nikole Zivalich and Stephen Johnson, did encounter some bugs that gave them a difficult time.
You can easily see, from their conversation, how some people liked it and some people didn’t, and how some people had bugs and some people didn’t.
So, in conclusion, just because a game review site did not mention bugs and gave the game a high score, does NOT mean they intentionally kept their readers in the dark, and this crusade of an article you wrote does not do game journalism any justice. Instead, you make plethora assumptions about your peers and point your finger at those who don’t see things your way and didn’t have the same experience as you.
If anyone in the game journalism realm has a case of poor oversight, it is you.
However, you DID have that specific and bad experience with the game and are entitled to review the game based on your personal experience, so my advice is to just write the review, and move on.
Sorry to be a bastard about it.
Mikaeru,
Thank you very much for your input about my article. I think that either I didn’t present my argument properly or you misinterpreted what I was trying to address. My problem is not with reviewers who may not have had bug issues but is with game reviewers who were scolding journalist who gave the game bad ratings for not looking past the bugs. I don’t consider myself a journalist by any means I was just writing about what I noticed actual journalist doing to their peers. Maybe after all the patch nonsense dies down I’ll pick the game back up and try playing through to write a review. Thanks again for taking the time to leave your input!