Rasgueado

Looking at a lot of the responses from people to this game, there is a common thread among many people that the initial resort area in Dead Island was the best part. I don't want to presume that everyone says this for the same reasons, but the common statement seems to be that this was the most open world part of the game with the most to explore.

Having played 4-5 hours of this game so far and roaming around the opening jungle map, I am confused at the reaction that this game doesn't have the same openness that the first game did. There is nothing about this opening area that feels small, or that doesn't let me take a number of different paths through the map. I almost feel like the opening map is bigger and covers more variety of terrain and setting than the first one did.

If you don't like the game, you don't like the game. I'm not trying to tell you that you're wrong, but the critique that (at least the opening area) this game is less open to exploration than the resort level seems like its being looked at through rose coloured glasses. Go back and play that act again... there might be a lot of paths, but they're all just as narrow as this, but with less variety.

Like everyone I really wanted them to take this idea of theirs of making a zombie based, first person, Diablo style game all the way. They need to make sure their combat is solid and doesn't bug out (Xian's special jump attack doesn't *ever* seem to land). The quests are just tasks meant to send you off and play the game, so they should let you skip the useless dialogue and have some more randomized events/encounters. I like the little dead zone tasks and bosses, but if you don't like the combat being as dangerous as it is than I can see why you wouldn't like it. They also need more items in their craft/loot system... armour or clothing... set items like Diablo 3.

They took a bit of a step in that direction by letting your character cause more damage with a certain type of weapon the more you use it to level the skill up. If they had a system where a set of armour enhanced a strength skill for example, and the strength is a modifier that enhances the force damage of weapons... that's one way they could beef up the RPG system without encumbering it with too much stat modification. They could also stand to add just a few more combat skills for each character to spice it up a bit.

So... I guess to answer the question, no I don't think it's that bad. I haven't seen the game devolve to the prison level (the only part of the first game I disliked), but to be fair I haven't played all the way through. I'm enjoying playing with other people, and when I'm not, I also enjoy taking my time and treating the combat like encounters you would have in Dark Souls. People get frustrated because they can't wade in and just win quickly I've seen, but that's not what this game is.

If you didn't like the first one, and were tired of the first one though? Yeah... don't get this game.

I only recently, finally, completed my first run through of Dark Souls after some 90+ hours of play. The only boss I left undefeated was Manus... Damn you Manus.

It'll be interesting to see how Patrick reacts if he does decide to try Dark Souls. The boss encounters should feel fairly similar to Monster Hunter. They would just be... less forgiving.

I was pleasantly surprised with how solid the game was as well. The one thing that seems to get me every time is hunger! Food seems to be a very scarce commodity but, I've only made 3 runs at it so far on normal. How deep has everyone gone so far?

Well that's incredibly useful. Recipe's are hard to come by in the playthrough's I've tried so far.

@ZHabermann: It's a comment about when a man gives away a business card, the person taking it wasn't just doing so to get his phone number to flirt with him. I'm sure it's happened to someone who was a man, but that is not normative behaviour.

To be fair, the complaints about women being perceived as receptionists or inessential to the business is not unique to the games industry, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it.

I see it happen all the time in my own job. My colleague, who is a woman, has people continually talk to *me* instead of her when standing next to each other. Only asking *me* questions. They will ignore what she says even though I will tell them the same thing.

GB Name - Rasgueado

Origin ID - Rasgueado

Time - Usually after 5:30pm GMT -8 (PST)

Yeah I'm an RPS reader as well, I just generally tend not to comment on many things. I'm going to echo what's few people have said on here already as well. There are idiots everywhere you go.

I played Dark Souls on the 360, but then just because I figured *someone* would do something like is I also got it for the PC. I've been using the fixes for awhile and they seem to work pretty well.

Bioware is a pretty big company and if you've been listening to these guys on podcasts and interviews with some people at gog.com, they've been setting up people to take their place for years now. They will have some shifts in the company, and maybe they'll evolve and survive, and maybe they won't. There will always be someone else ready to make games.

I don't have any reason to believe they're leaving for anything other than what they've said. Best of luck to them, I've had fun with their products since Shattered Steel.

This works great for me. There's no difference in performance between the two either, it just looks a lot better. Still chugs in all the same places it did on the consoles... well it's at least a little better in performance than it was on the xbox. I can't say how it performed on the PS3.