Dead Island is Dead to Us
By countstex 60 Comments
We booted up Dead Island last night having had it delivered in a timely fashion by the excellent ShopTo, however we were immediately disappointed by the game as it lacks any local co-op options what so ever! After all the hours of fun we’ve had playing the likes of Borderlands, Gears of War and Left4Dead split screen, whilst also joining up with others online this came as somewhat of a shock. The only other game to let us down in this way in recent years was Red Dead, however given that’s more of a single player game with added multiplayer modes it was less offensive.
I’ve taken the step of emailing DeepSilver over the matter but I’m doubting we’ll get much of a response. Here is the contents of that mail:
Hello, my wife and I have been looking forward to playing Dead Island together since seeing the trailer, and have had the game on pre-order for some time. Well it arrived last night to our home and we booted it up expecting to find the same sort of co-op fun we’ve enjoyed over countless hours in other largely multi player games like Borderlands, Left4Dead 1&2, Gears of War, the Halo series, and so on. We were immediately let down by the fact that the was absolutely no split-screen option! Whilst we have come across this before in other games, most recently Red Dead Redemption, they have always been largely single player games and so we can forgive them somewhat. But in a game squarely focused on multi player it seems an absurd oversight!
I realise that in the minds of many the idea of same room multi player is in decline, but the number of couples who game together is on the rise and so this is a market that really shouldn’t be over looked.Obviously this is an extreme long shot, but I don’t suppose there is any chance of Split screen being patched into the game? Would imagine retro fitting it would be difficult, which to be honest only adds to the surprise that it wasn’t considered earlier in the development cycle.
Looking forward to hearing an explanation of why this was not considered a requirement for a modern multi player game.
Should we get any kind of response I’ll be sure to share it.
Annoyingly we tested the game out a little in single player and it looks like it would have been a very fun game for the two of us. How such an option can be overlooked in a world where the number of gaming couples is on the rise is a mystery to us.
Original Source: http://playtogetherstaytogether.co.uk/?p=477
Edit : After reading through the majority of responses here the main point people have is that I should have done my research on the game. This I can not argue. I made an assumption based on an expectation I myself created, based on other games I've played, that a split screen mode would be core to a co-op game. I assumed a dev would want to allow you to play with other people in whatever way you would choose to encourage you to play. It would appear we've just been lucky in our choices of games in recent times to have not run into this problem before.
Another point was that it comes across that I am 'attacking' the devs or sounding like I was tricked into buying a game I wouldn't have otherwise bought. That was not my intent. In fact what I've seen of the game is very promising and we will be playing this a little online, and then a lot more later when we are comfortable with the price of a second copy. If anything it's the promise of the game that made me care enough to contact them about it. Had it have looked like a broken game we would have just walked away.
I guess we had just fallen into a pattern of buying a copy of a game, playing splitscreen, and then if it proved to be 'a keeper' then investing in that second copy. Something we have done many times in the past couple of years In future we will be more cautious!