Man I was loving this game, dealing with the technical issues, and the fact that I'm not in love with the combat mechanics, but then it became complete bullshit out of the blue. In the city, doing the mission where you have to turn off the speakers (the 3rd time, in the middle of the city), and now there are infinitely fucking respawning infected that spawn out of nowhere all the time, so I basically get raped every time I try to move, then I respawn in the middle of 5 of them. I won't profess to be good at this game, so I'm sure I could be fighting them better, but this is completely fucking stupid.

Loving the environments and the feel of the game, but man this combat pisses me off.

Running away is something you should do a lot of in Dead island, don't think its like Left 4 Dead where you can just stay put and mow down a ton of zombies, its not that type of game.

yeah, i heard there's a difficutly/zombie spike once you reach the city.  Still on the beach only about 3 or 4 missions in so i haven't personally experienced it
 
All i can say is Run Forest, Run :/

honestly i took brads advice at first and played with analog controls and played with them long after i got the achievement, but at some point in the city i decided that it was not worth the effort to plan every strike with millions of zombies on your ass, so i switched to digital. I HAVE TO SAY, digital controls are perfectly functional, you can still do the individual body parts damage, but now its not an actual pain in the ass to hit zombies. trust me, switch to digital controls if youre using analog, you wont regret it

I would love to run, but you can't run from infected, they are as fast as you are, and a lot of them are spawning in front of me, and then I get double-teamed. I guess I just feel like the game set up a specific pattern, in that you would encounter a finite number of zombies in a zone, and you could run, or take them all out, and if you did that you would be relatively safe for a while.

I switched back to digital controls early, I don't know what Brad was talking about... analog controls kinda suck.

@Hizang said:

Running away is something you should do a lot of in Dead island, don't think its like Left 4 Dead where you can just stay put and mow down a ton of zombies, its not that type of game.

yup.

lure zombies into choke points, jump on cars, use your Duke Boot.

Especially use the Duke Boot. When you do a horizontal swipe a lot of the time the zombie will get knocked around facing away from you. kick the fucker in it's ass and it'll fall to the ground. this gives you a few moments to deal with another zombz.

I've been in the city for about 4 hours and while i definitely still get rocked now and then, i'm able to manage and handle crowd control much better.

Well it must have been just that one mission... for now. Get back to me when you do the mission for garett where you turn on the speakers in the center of the city. Then you will know what I'm talking about. I can fight regular-ass zombies in town just fine.

I've started using the analog controls on PC with a 360 controller and they're definitely times when the wind up makes your attack take way longer, but the worse part I think is that it prevents you from circle strafing.

I played the game with analogue controls for 18 hours, then I switched to digital

10 minutes later I switched back.

@Hizang said:

Running away is something you should do a lot of in Dead island, don't think its like Left 4 Dead where you can just stay put and mow down a ton of zombies, its not that type of game.

solid advice

Yeah me and a friend ran into that problem earlier.. I had to of respawned at least 6-7 times in the same spot getting killed over and over.. but eventually ran for a ladder and got out of there..

There is an area in the middle of the city that's blocked of be quarantine walls, its only in there it happens as soon as you get out of there's rarely an Infected

Yeah that mission where you had to activate the speakers in the quarantine zone kicked my ass.  The rest of the city isn't as bad, I'm interested to see how hard the jungle is.

The Heads of Cerberus missions were the only ones that gave me problems when I was playing alone. The forest isn't as bad as that three part quest.

The analog controls aren't that slow when you need them to be fast.  You can let the follow through of a swing be the next swing's wind up and they come pretty fast.  Plus kicking.  Kicking saves your life because the windup doesn't seem to exist there.  it's the Thugs that really kill me.

@mfpantst: Thugs were really getting to me before I learned to dodge. As long as you don't run in while he's starting a swing, I just get in there, swing once, then jump & pull back to dodge... it's really effective. Still takes forever to get him down, but less deaths that way.

I will admit I didn't give analog controls much of a chance, and maybe I'll go back and try them with the knife woman next.

I think my real problem with the game is that by the end I feel like it just abandons all the stuff that makes it cool at the beginning. Instead of carefully planning where to go and watching out for zombies in open areas, they just start putting you on set paths a lot more and throwing infinite zombies with spawn triggers when you walk in certain places. I still like a lot about the game, but I hate it when the developers decide to ramp up an endgame by putting the player in a clusterfuck and telling him to just fight through it.

Awww, I thought this thread would be about Sam B's saying... 
 
Can't find it, but next best thing:

This answered my question as to if there's more to the island than the beach. Awesome.

Use the meat-bait and RUN... or get some co-op buddies.

@bcjohnnie: I know what you mean. That quarantine area is complete crap by yourself.

Just beat the final boss... died on him like 15-20 times. I'm sure someone is going to come here and say they had no problem with it, but as far as I see it if you make a boss fight where it is expected you will die, then you have failed to make a good boss fight.

Fun game, completely fucking unraveled for me, gameplay wise, in the final third.

@wealllikepie said:

honestly i took brads advice at first and played with analog controls and played with them long after i got the achievement, but at some point in the city i decided that it was not worth the effort to plan every strike with millions of zombies on your ass, so i switched to digital. I HAVE TO SAY, digital controls are perfectly functional, you can still do the individual body parts damage, but now its not an actual pain in the ass to hit zombies. trust me, switch to digital controls if youre using analog, you wont regret it

wtf are digital controls lol

@NobodyHIFI: the default controls that aren't analog and offer less precision and control

@bcjohnnie: I know what you mean. That quarantine area is complete crap by yourself.

Omfg, so glad it's not just me. I understand that it's a game not completely set in reality, I understand there must be a set amount of challenge, I even understand that you have to grind most of your later levels, but zombies popping out of the ether? that's where I became disgusted and as soon as I finished that fucking quest (speakers in town center) I made sure it saved and turned it off. No, no no no no no NO!!!!! Sorry, but they completely fucked up (programmers, game designers) when they thought it would be completely fun and logical to have mob after mob of super fast, ultra violent gangs of zombies pop out of fucking NOWHERE and gang rape your ass, even in places where you wouldn't think of them appearing (in my case it was a small room with 2 entrances, which if you looked before you came in, there were NO zombies anywhere, on either side.) That's bullshit and they fucked up. I know how people love a challenge and odds they can conquer, but when you've got a mob of five infected, popping out of nowhere, while "hey!!, here comes Mr. Ram!!!!", it's crap, pure fucking crap, reminded me why I didn't play this game again before, when I beat it the first time. At least then I had co-op and some fairness, and even then 3 out 5 times I got raped and horribly killed. Even if I were to have armed myself to the teeth, with purple colored weapons, tons of ammo and molotovs and deo-bombs, I still would have gotten gang raped. If they were to make some kind of sequel, 360 or not, toggable difficulty settings.

@emondai said:

Omfg, so glad it's not just me. I understand that it's a game not completely set in reality, I understand there must be a set amount of challenge, I even understand that you have to grind most of your later levels, but zombies popping out of the ether? that's where I became disgusted and as soon as I finished that fucking quest (speakers in town center) I made sure it saved and turned it off. No, no no no no no NO!!!!! Sorry, but they completely fucked up (programmers, game designers) when they thought it would be completely fun and logical to have mob after mob of super fast, ultra violent gangs of zombies pop out of fucking NOWHERE and gang rape your ass, even in places where you wouldn't think of them appearing (in my case it was a small room with 2 entrances, which if you looked before you came in, there were NO zombies anywhere, on either side.) That's bullshit and they fucked up. I know how people love a challenge and odds they can conquer, but when you've got a mob of five infected, popping out of nowhere, while "hey!!, here comes Mr. Ram!!!!", it's crap, pure fucking crap, reminded me why I didn't play this game again before, when I beat it the first time. At least then I had co-op and some fairness, and even then 3 out 5 times I got raped and horribly killed. Even if I were to have armed myself to the teeth, with purple colored weapons, tons of ammo and molotovs and deo-bombs, I still would have gotten gang raped. If they were to make some kind of sequel, 360 or not, toggable difficulty settings.

Dead Island is one of those games where character load outs really matter so fucking bad especially if you're playing alone. One of Sam B's special abilities is to automatically push zombies down when running into them. That way you can full on charge at a pack of zombies and run past them while they're still getting up. After that you can get a special ability that is literally an instant kill. Stomping their head in while they're down all with one button press. Though it does make you vulnerable from other zombies during the animation. Rage is also super important every time you get surrounded and has saved me from death countless times. Another ability Sam has during Rage is to not take damage during it making you basically invincible.

Generally, I've found the easiest way to kill infected are grenades. Throw them down in the direction they're charging at you and jump back. Deo-bombs are too expensive to craft and Molotovs fucking suck. The amount of times I've burned myself because I had to kick or bash some zombies on fire out the way is fucking bullshit. You can buy a bunch of grenades at some vendors in the city for $350 a pop. So worth it.

Also, there are 2 trucks at the city. One at the gas station in the middle of town and another outside a water pump that's one of the missions the Sister at the Church gives you. Mr. Rammy dies instantly when you run him over after ramming him but with only a third of XP. Usually I like to get out after knocking him down and kill him personally. Shotgun to the face works well.