Dead Island is one of the most beloved games of all time in terms of zombies, mayhem, death, punching people, and watching them go flying also did I mention zombies? The game has gotten a re-release in the form of a definitive edition compliments of Tech-Land and Deep Silver but minus a few of the original goodies that helped make the game great.
They removed bugs, and a heap of original weapons from Dead Island: Definitive Edition and did their best to balance the game out accordingly, they even gave the game a huge graphical overhaul from the original game. But the game is still loaded with bugs. It’s true a lot of the game’s original greatness came from a few of the bugs in it, such as infinite ammo, duplication, and the rest but they went and cut all those out thinking it was a type of cancer.
Don’t get me wrong the game is still great and it is still fun to play but even with its graphical overhaul Dead Island: Definitive Edition just doesn’t live up to what it was. I get that the companies involved want to try to revitalize the series as they attempt to create a Dead Island 2 which is still in limbo and not coming anytime soon.
But not supporting the original and just wanting to whitewash a lot of the issues into a new version isn’t the way to do them. The original was good even though the graphics were a bit dated, and instead of fixing a few of the game-breaking bugs they notoriously left them unchecked. Instead, they waited, until they realized they can’t get Dead Island 2 out anytime soon and went ahead and instead of supporting the original. Just completely overhauled it into what we have now.
The problem with this is they feel like they can just stop supporting and selling the original completely, take for example people who owned the game before. People like myself that is, our old editor Professor Portal, and everyone else.
Most companies when they do a “Game of the Year” edition or a “Definitive Edition” thank their players by offering the game re-mastered completely for free assuming they bought all the DLC and the game. Deep Silver decided it was best not to do this, and instead only offered it at a discount for a few days only.
So if you played the original on Steam you can most likely still play it as it has Steam integration, but on every other console, Xbox, etc you are. How do I put this lightly, sh*t out of luck? So the company not only cared very little about its fan base to not only rectify half of the issues but also aimed to try and milk them for even more money.
The original game was good, it was enjoyable, it was fun and great to play with friends. But when you go out of your way to take a dump on the people who helped make one of your games great. You end up dishonoring the entire thing the franchise stood for. Although that may be only mine and a few other people’s feelings towards it, in the case and point you can look at the negative steam reviews.
But that won’t stop a big company like Deep Silver from doing this again, as most of their sales are positive as are the game reviews. In the end, my opinion matters very little compared to the positive feedback it gets and it does deserve it.
As I stated before the game is amazing and I will probably continue to play it. But I am just disappointed at what they did.
The writing for the game remains one of the best and most well-written games I have played, the hilarious Easter eggs, and combat remain one of the most fluid things to ever be in a zombie game and I will continue to recommend it.
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