So far the most powerful weapon I’ve discovered in Dead Island is Xian’s high-heeled shoe. Once I’ve knocked a zombie to the ground, I can aim at its head and tap the E key to apply my shoe (pictured). It is the equivalent of going nuclear. Let’s look at the numbers.
The early trash weapons do about 30 or 40 points of damage. More durable weapons do two or three times that amount. As you upgrade weapons and specialize with your skills, you can get that into the 300 or 400 range. At level 20, with most of her points in combat skills, my Xian has a rare bolo machete given to her by a nun. After investing considerable lucre, the machete does 700 points of damage. A molotov cocktail will apply about 150 points of burning damage every second or so, pretty much until a zombie is dead. The first homemade bomb you discover will do 5000 points of damage.
Xian’s stomp routinely does over 20,000 points of damage.
As much as I’d love to consider Dead Island a subversive commentary on women’s footwear, it’s not just the high-heeled shoe. All four characters have a stomp attack once they get about half way into the combat branch of their skill trees. Stomps are actually — get this — a part of the game’s economy. Every point of damage you do without spending some of your weapon’s durability rating is money you’ll save on repairs. Timothy Geithner has nothing on me.
You learn to listen for zombies. The walkers are the more lugubrious zombie noises, although you never know when they’re going to show up. Sometimes they stir awake at your feet. The infected are the more shrill zombie noises. They’re just yelling, really. Just someone yelling and running directly at you. You can always hear them coming. They’re the opposite of a surprise. They’re all, like, “Hey, I’m way over here and I’m on way so I’m going to give you plenty of advance notice to prepare the weapon of your choice and even to throw it at me if you’re so inclined!” If you want to illustrate the Doppler effect for someone, just drive past one of the infected.
So I’m scrounging around the streets of Moresby — this game is so very Fallout 3 — when I hear a walker. He’s close. Really close. I check the bodies at my feet. No movement. I look around the corner. Nothing. I check for nearby non-fake doors. Nope, all fake. It seems to be coming from behind a truck. I look all around the truck. No. I check in the cab. Nothing. It seems to be coming from inside the truck…
Ah, I finally notice what kind of truck it is. Audio bug? Joke? Vignette? Whatever the case, I certainly enjoyed it.
Crappy zombies movies have an inevitable scene in which a zombie lunges at someone from just outside a tightly framed shot, presenting the audience with the undead equivalent of a cat scare. It’s a cheap tactic, unbecoming of a zombie. Zombies aren’t known for their stealth. You can see them coming from a mile away. Consider the iconic scene in the original Night of the Living Dead that introduces the modern zombie. A man and a woman at a cemetery see someone shuffling towards them. If they had just strolled away, nothing would have happened. But instead, they goof around. “They’re coming to get you, Barbara. Look, there’s one now!” It leads to the world’s first zombie attack.
One of my favorite things about Dead Island is how well it avoids cheap tactics, but it still manages plenty of surprises and a wonderful sense of danger. When a zombie grapples you (pictured), it’s your fault. You either took on too many at once, or you didn’t check for nearby doorways or bushes while you were distracted, or you estimated distance poorly, or you went someplace with lots of dark tight spaces (pro tip: don’t get too accustomed to the sunny open space of Banoi’s beach resort). When a zombie gets in your face, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Dead Island developer Techland manages this partly with whatever fancy spawning tricks they’re using to populate the world. The how, where, and when of zombie spawning is every bit as impressive as the graphics engine. Look, there’s one now! You check your weapons; you quickly look around you to make sure you’re alone; you advance and hack away with your machete; you miss the swing at its head so you give it a kick and it flies backwards towards some bushes; you look around you again to make sure there are no stragglers approaching; you advance on the fallen zombie, chopping at its legs while it tries to get up; you decapitate it with a carefully aimed swing at its head; you see it’s dropped a diving knife; hmm, the knife isn’t bad, but you can’t use it until you level up, so you check the damage against the cleaver you’ve been chucking–AH, A ZOMBIE CAME OUT OF THE BUSHES AND NOW IT’S IN YOUR FACE BECAUSE YOU WERE CHECKING HOW MUCH DAMAGE THE DIVING KNIFE DID!
Given that these zombies don’t occur in Dead Rising sized hordes, I couldn’t be more pleased with how Techland has made fewer zombies matter more, with whatever spawning tricks they’re using and this deeper combat model. Banoi feels unsafe, but not cheaply so.
And speaking of up close and personal, one of the most valuable commodities on Banoi is deodorant. But not for the reason you’d think. Let’s just say two cans of deodorant and some duct tape can work wonders.
I hesitate to think how many energy drinks I’ve sucked down so far. On one hand, too many. I can only imagine how much sugar is in those things. On the other hand, not enough. At the point where I am in Dead Island, I’ve already died far more times than I’ve died in a Dead Rising game.
So when I came across the above lovely piece of machinery, I was disappointed that the “F” key didn’t actually do anything (note my depleted health bar in the upper left corner). If this was Duke Nukem Forever, you can bet the use key would actually do something at this point. Although, if this was Duke Nukem Forever, I’d be playing Duke Nukem Forever. Sometimes a useless espresso machine is a small price to pay.
Speaking of prices to pay, given the achievement I just earned in that screenshot, you’d think I’d be rolling in money. No such thing is happening. Managing your arsenal during a zombie apocalypse ain’t cheap.
So many storylines run through the Battle of Britain that it’s hard to decide where to start. The evolution of airpower theory in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The secretive growth of the Luftwaffe after the Treaty of Versailles. The design and development of the main mechanical protagonists: the Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, and Messerschmidt 109, as well as the German medium bombers, at least one of which started out as an airliner. British Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, who almost singlehandedly devised and directed a coherent strategy for fighting the battle. German Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring, who did not. The ballroom at Bentley Priory, which was converted into the first real “war room” over two decades before Dr. Strangelove. The female air controllers who served there and elsewhere, constituting an irreplaceable contribution to the war effort every bit as much a part of it as the fighter pilots. Those pilots themselves, including the refugees from conquered lands who ended up being among the highest scoring aces in the battle. A lone democratic island nation against an ascendant continental tribe gripped by an abhorrent ideology. It’s no wonder that it’s one of the most written-about battles in the English language. What if any of those storylines had read differently? Would you be speaking German?
After the jump, achtung, dummkopf! Continue reading →
If you read my previous game diary about War in the East, you might be all ready for me to start playing Eagle Day and RAF, pull a few history books off the shelf, find some random paragraphs that support whatever point I’m making at the time, and still manage to lose the game. You must think that– like the people I write about — I haven’t learned anything from the last war I fought.
After the jump, sorry suckers Continue reading →
Leisure reading about history makes me want to play wargames. This is what makes wargamers “wargamers,” as has been definitively proven in at least one scholarly journal article somewhere. I’m sure of it. Michael Korda’s With Wings Like Eagles, a fast-reading, intelligent history of the Battle of Britain published in 2009, got me thinking that I’d like to, you know, play some kind of Battle of Britain simulation. That’s how it always works. But which one? SPI’s Battle Over Britain? Haha, no. That’s what you think this is, right? Another excuse to explain why boardgames are better than computer wargames, and that everything totally sucks in computer game land? I’m sorry if I seem that predictable. But I did really want to get historically involved with the subject matter in some way, and thanks to my previous search through boxes of old games looking for Rails Across America, I knew exactly where my old Talonsoft games were. So pulling out Gary Grigsby’s Battle of Britain* wasn’t hard.
After the jump, what my RPG experience over Europe taught me about the Battle of Britain Continue reading →
Well now, that’s a little bit different, isn’t it? See, when I started this playthrough of Jagged Alliance 2, one of the options I left checked in the game settings was “Sci-Fi Mode.” This adds exactly one thing to the game: the Crepitus. They being giant, nasty bugs that feed on human flesh.
Fortunately, to fight them, I have a robot that was given to me by a mad scientist.
After the jump: Hey there, have you heard about my robot friend? Continue reading →
While on the hunt for ice cream, the Dispensables passed through San Mona. While most towns in Arulco are initially held by Queen Deidranna, San Mona is a mob-run town, led by a man named Kingpin.
The Dispensables’ first stop upon entering town was the local watering hole, run by one of Kingpin’s henchmen, named Darren. He asks if I’m there for the extreme fighting competition. Why yes, I do happen to have a mercenary trained in hand-to-hand combat.
After the jump: Mantis gets made Continue reading →
See that map up above? That’s how much of the map I uncover before I finally find Hamous and his ice cream truck. Have a seat, children, and I’ll tell you a tale.
Leaving from Cambria, the Dispensables follow the road north to San Mona. Unique among the towns in Arulco, San Mona isn’t held by Deidranna’s troops. Instead, it’s run by crime boss named Kingpin and his mob. Instead of just passing through, the Dispensables have themselves a grand old time in San Mona.
That’s an entry of its own, though, and one that I’ll deal with tomorrow. Right now, we’re still jonesing for some neopolitan.
After the jump: road trip! Continue reading →
Though I’m sitting pretty in Tixa, I can’t train militia there, and I’ve got to abandon it for Cambria to the north. There’s another S.A.M. site right nearby, as well as the Cambria mine and the hospital, right in a convenient line.
Unfortunately, you won’t see any of it, because at some point while playing, Fraps stopped taking screenshots when I told it to, and I have no screens of the S.A.M. site or the hospital. At least Cambria was relatively uneventful…except for things getting a little hairy at the hospital.
Afterwards, though, I have a run-in with Mother Nature.
After the jump, the hunt begins Continue reading →
Tixa isn’t too far away from Alma, so after resting up and training militia in the town, the Dispensables are ready to go bust the mine owner’s brother out of prison. Attacking Tixa during the day would be a huge mistake, so again, I go in at night.
In the past, I’ve often gone with a frontal assault on Tixa, because I usually don’t take the prison until I’ve progressed a bit farther in the game, and I have enough high-powered weaponry to blow a whole right into the building. However, for my second Thin-Lizzy-inspired entry, I’m going to be a bit sneakier.
After the jump, all hell breaks loose, alarms and sirens (don’t) wail Continue reading →
Normally, after capturing Drassen and securing the services of Skyrider, the next logical step is to go for Cambria, the large town at the center of the map. The hospital at Cambria is an excellent place to patch up wounded mercs, and can provide enough medical kits to last me the rest of the game, if I’m willing to pay a bit of town loyalty as a price.
I’m not going there, though. Not yet. Just to the south of Drassen is Alma, the primary military base of Arulco. While a much more difficult target, the rewards significantly outweigh the risks.
After the jump, stat-heads rejoice Continue reading →
Drassen has been successfully taken and staffed with a full complement of militia, but my team is under-geared and nearly out of ammo. Thankfully, while I’ve been training militia, the money from the mine has been building up. Time for a shopping spree!
The 1.13 patch’s most significant addition to Jagged Alliance 2 can be found at Bobby Ray’s, your online one-stop-shop for all things death-dealing. Hundreds of new weapons are added to the game, as well as a wide range of new armor, ammunition types, and other equipment. No matter how you want a merc to operate, you’ll find equipment perfectly suited to their needs.
After the jump, get your tickets to the gun show Continue reading →
After a surprisingly successful noontime operation at the farm, the Dispensables rest up for the push onto Drassen. Ira has some medical skill, so she patches everyone up while Chopshop repairs what he can before night falls.
In the wee hours of the morning, I move the team onward to the Drassen airport. It’s the very next zone to the east. It’s time for my first night op, and time for Mantis to really hit her stride.
After the jump, the drink will flow and blood will spill Continue reading →
