Justin took the bullet for us and got a review out bright and early on review day for this terrible mess.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/18/7236015/escape-dead-island-review

I actually had this in my Gamefly Queue as it look kind of interesting as an zombie action/adventure that seemed like it could be Metroidvania style.

Anyways, so long turd. And thanks for Deep Silver to keeping up it's dog reputation.

You never know what you are going to get from Deep Silver. I bet everyone is working on Dying Light and a skeleton crew shat this one out.

Certainly looks like the last part of your post is true.

This was made by Fatshark, who also did War of the Roses and War of the Vikings. It wasn't made by Techland.

I'm not sure Techland actually did any of the development on this one internally. It's credited to Fatshark, which is a bit of a bummer.

Edit: ACK, BEAT TO THE PUNCH

Thank Travis for Justin (and also for Travis)

Also...

@bbalpert: Strange to reserve the 1 score to games they can't finish. If it's complete garbage it's complete garbage, regardless of whether you can actually finish the game or not. But whatever!

I would think a game that is technically unplayable would be a zero, not a one.

I don't see much difference between 1 and 2. Just like I don't really get the difference between 7 and 8 or 6 and 7. Review scales suck.

I feel like this was to be expected from this game. I have genuinely just expected these games to get bad reviews. Even the first game was hit and miss depending on the person playing it.

Jim Sterling made this his first review for his new site, too. I'm not surprised by the reception, though, as I thought it never looked that good. Least Dead Island 2 is shaping up OK.

It's super weird they chose this week to launch this. With Far Cry 4, Dragon Age 3 and GTA 5.1 they basically sent it out to die. I would be incredibly surprised if this breaks even in sales.

Justin mentions on his new(ish) mini-podcast, Quality Control, that he was brought to tears by this game, but just barely managed to drag himself across the finish line. 1 point scores are games so bad that he (or whoever is doing the review) can't even manage THAT. So I guess it's the difference between completely intolerable and juuuuuust barely tolerable.

@amyggen: To be fair they use a 10 point scale so it's safe to assume a 2 is also complete garbage.

If you're really surprised a Deep Silver game sucks you haven't been paying attention. I mean I liked parts of the original Dead Island, but that's still a mediocre game so if their A team churns out 6 or 7 point games, just imagine how bad that means their B and C teams are. The only good developer Deep Silver has is Volition, now, and that's just massively good luck on their part.

I had no idea this was coming out Patrick posted a trailer and was kind of intrigued....now I want nothing to do with it...what a turd. Justin brings up a good point in his review...Cel shading is not an excuse to have no textures!

Gameinformer too... they seem to give games pretty high scores regardless. This got a 2. Eeks.

That's reserved for games that are actually just blank discs or explode your console.

Awww Fatshark made this and I've always rooted for those guys & gals, despite not actually playing a lot of their games. Bummer about this.

Who made what is hard to know. You would think some tech & code was dumped into Fatshark's lap from Techland/Deep Silver. Maybe Fatshark needed a job. Maybe Techland was having troubel and wanted outside help. Maybe, this is just what happens when a half baked idea is tossed around to be made worse.

I dislike having to say this, but Techland/Deep Silver are really not very good developer/publishers. The have a very poor reputation for quality control on development. Who is to say whose fault that is, but they are not very good. Thus when Techland/Deep Silver then drop this game into another's lap with the 'timer' running out, I doubt anything good could come from that.

@monkeyking1969: That's kinda how I feel about Gearbox. Even at their best, Borderlands 1 and 2 are like a 7/10 for me, but everyone laps it up because it's the only loot RPG shooter other than Hellgate: London. Destiny doesn't even count, since its loot is so boring and doesn't have as many crazy modifiers as Diablo or Borderlands. And then every non Borderlands project out of Gearbox is of a questionable quality.

Borderlands took a slow hold over me but the subsequent games haven't really took the baton far from the starting blocks. Gearbox's track record is sketchy, though.

Although I'm a big fan of Eutechnyx for producing enjoyable racing games and they managed Retribution: Ride to Hell. So... nobody's record is spotless.

@flameboy84 said:

You know, to be honest, I never got this. The game looks like everything is textured to me. Low res, sure, but I didn't really see anything that wasn't textured. I mean, the game is horrible regardless, so who cares, but I don't really understand this criticism.