I had not particularly noted Dead Island: Epidemic‘s passage into Early Access. I’d seen enough games chasing the dream of League of Legends and Dota 2‘s success with only a few small new idea. And it had the temerity to coin its own cutesy genre name, Zombie Online Multiplayer Battle Arena! However, after watching a new gameplay trailer explain what it’s up to, I’m at the very least interested. Not enough to pay for the beta of a game that’ll be free-to-play at launch, mind.
While the majority of MOBAs (do I still need to explain this dreadful name?) seem to mostly duplicate LoL or Dota, Dead Island: Epidemic takes their ideas of per-match progression and slap them into something a bit more like Diablo III with a sizeable PvE side.
In comparison to the original Dead Island trailer, Dead Island 2′s announcement video is more honest than Abe and Cherry Tree Washington combined. You remember that trailer, right? The one that broke a thousand hearts when it debuted and then broke them again when the game was more like a first-person Dead Rising than a mourning simulator? Dead Island 2 is just holding its hands in the air and admitting to the world that it’s at the dafter end of the zombie spectrum. No introspection here – it’s a game about beautiful beach bodies rotting in the sun while the world points, laughs and decapitates the poor sods.
You’ve got to get your Humble Bundles out when guests come over, haven’t you. Show them the collection, that’s right. They always say they enjoy looking, don’t they, though they do ask why you never play any of them. They don’t get get it, do they, but that’s fine. You’ve got your collection, all tidy and shiny in those pewter frames. Those frames with a gap in the middle. That dreadful, gaping gap that creeps into your dreams and you awake screaming. The Humble Bundle you missed.
Chin up, chuck! You might catch it again. The Humble folks are running a fortnight of daily pay-what-you-want Humble Bundles–some old favourites and some new hopefuls–so fingers crossed That One That Got Away comes around again.
Zombies, traditionally speaking, are slow. Not Dying Light‘s zombies, though. Once light dies and night falls, the shambling undead become spry as acrobats equipped with the most cutting-edge of Moon Shoes (Moon Shoes!). Except when they don’t. I guess Techland is developing Dying Light in a place where it’s perpetually daytime, because the parkour-infused zombo-clobberer’s been delayed into 2015.
Did you know that the costumes the Alliance soldiers wear in the Firefly episode The Train Job were originally used in Starship Troopers? That sort of recycling happens all the time in movies and TV. I’m a person of limited imagination, so when I first spotted Techland’s Dying Light, it appeared to me that they had swathes of zombie material lying around from Dead Island and decided to reshape it into a game about free-running past the undead. I still kind of stand by that. Whatever its inception, the fleet-footed zombie dodger is coming out pretty soon, and there’s a wee teaser trailer for you below. … [visit site to read more]