Dead Island had everyone’s attention since their amazing cinematic trailer that came out of the blue and stunned us with it’s reverse girl zombie family story. After an announcement stated that such event would not actually occur in the game, claims arose to whether the game would actually be decent.

A different Dead Island slowly emerged from the chunks of gameplay released every now and then until a full picture of how the game would actually play came alive (20 mins of gameplay). An open world zombie game of epic proportions, consciously or unconsciously combining elements from successful games like Fallout, Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising and making something unique, huge and (hopefully) a lot of fun.

Issues that I see that might hold the game back from GOTY?

From gameplay we’ve seen the faces of characters in the game look good, but aren’t super realistic, they are stylised. As long as other elements of the game bring you into the game that shouldn’t be a problem.

The voice acting seen in the demo leaves a little to be desired, but to be honest Techland is a Polish developer and I respect the fact that it may have been difficult to understand the nooks and crannies of writing in English for an English-speaking audience.

Comparing a game like Dead Island with Fallout 3 or NV might become commonplace when the game launches and people figure out more about the goals of the game and how it plays in detail. The thing that kept me going back to Bethesda FO games was there were no randomly generated dungeons or houses. Everything had something to discover or a story to unravel, completely optional and engrossing usually created using a combination of voice logs, images, text or physical evidence. Hopefully Techland employs such elements in their game instead of feeding people quest lists and focusing on voice acting to tell you where to go or what to do. It’s the little details that count, and variety.

As a PS3 gamer, the co-op aspect of Dead Island is not necessarily a main draw card for my purchase of the game. So hopefully it has a co-op experience similar to Borderlands where you won’t be penalised for playing on your own. The words co-op and immersive story don’t usually go hand-in-hand, but as far as the gameplay footage shows, playing on your own should be a completely unique experience compared to playing with another.

If Dead Island is to be truly successful then it will aspire and achieve an endless gameplay experience or at the least, playability after the main campaign has finished

That’s pretty much all, I’ll leave full reservations until the game releases next week. Hopefully I’ll get it and have a full review! You can listen to three tracks from the Dead Island soundtrack at this link.

Dead Island (Pub. Deep Silver) releases on the 6th of September 2011 in North America and the 9th of September Globally

More of my reviews/ideas/thoughts/bizarre at twitter.com/warmanator

Is the PSP dead? No, screams Cecil and Kain from the world of Dragoons and Paladins! Final Fantasy IV was a major milestone in JRPGs, because it revived the Final Fantasy franchise. The series was becoming stagnant due to the constant light vs. dark theme. FFIV changed the formula by introducing new plot elements to the series which include; constant squabbling, heartbreak, betrayal, and scariest of all……..death. Yes, not everyone makes it to the end of the rainbow. Oops, should i have put in the **Spoiler Alert** tag for a 20 year old game?

Click on the jump to see some screentshots and the trailer.

FINAL FANTASY IV: COMPLETE COLLECTION will include:

• Full game of Final Fantasy IV
• 2009 sequel Final Fantasy IV: The Years After

Fans of the series will be excited. The story still holds up by today’s standards, which are lower  due to the sludge of crappy JRPGs. Cecil and Kain will keep your attention through their tear inducing journey. Don’t be intimidated by the 2D graphics. The battle system is top-notch, and the characters will draw you in with their moral ambiguity.

Just in case you were on the fence about pre-ordering Two Worlds II, this freshly released video might tip your scales. The stage shown on the video, is full of action, and gives another glance on what Two Worlds II has to offer. The Combat seems more responsive and fluid, and the game looks surprisingly good.

Two Worlds was the first game that we talked about on GamerHusbands Radio. Now, we’re on the heels of the sequel’s release date, and Two Worlds II  doesn’t invoke the same snicker it’s predecessor did. The GHR crew were treated to a behind the scenes look at Pax East 2010, and the interest has been growing since.

A lot of the interest can be attributed to the depth of customization options. Not only will players be able to craft their own spells using “spell cards,” but they will also be able to customize armor. All of these options raises the ears of this hardcore RPG fan. Infinite customization(dress-up), is something that never gets old.  This might be the game to satisfy our Dark Age appetites for a good while. Side quests are also a requirement in games of this magnitude, and that can also be a challenge. If the game has too many side quests, the player can become distracted and grow weary. If the quests are a nice dessert after some tough missions, they will be a welcomed addition. The graphics are jaw dropping, and it seems the extra time Topware Interactive had to work on this game has paid off. In the developer diary, Scott Cromie discusses the last-minute challenge of porting Two Worlds to the Xbox 360. Porting was an enormous challenge, since Two Worlds was originally developed for the PC.  Now that they’ve had time to flesh this game out we can’t wait to play the final product. Will Two Worlds II live up to the good hype surrounding it? You will be able to judge for yourself on, Tuesday January 25, 2010.

Its been nearly 400 years since the last blight and the Grey Wardens are few in numbers because no one believes that another blight is coming and they think it is just legend. You however soon find out that the Archdemon will be here in a very short time. You are recruited at a young age by one of the Grey Wardens who has been around for a long time and seen many battles.

The first hour or so of the game can take place in several locations and have several different stories. This portion of the game is your origin story. You can be a man, elf, or dwarf and then you have a background as a warrior, mage, or rogue. Warriors are damage dealers, rogues are the stealthy type and can pick locks, and mages are, well, mages. I could go on for hours describing this aspect of the game but you get the idea that you have a ton of choices in the very beginning and as the game moves on, the choices keep piling up.

It is not quite the “60-80 hour minimum” game that everyone promised but it is still very long by today’s standards. I got through it in about 40-50 hrs I think. I haven’t checked my hr counter in a while but it was somewhere around 38 the last time I looked.

Overall the game is very well done in my opinion. It offers everything an RPG fan could want. You’ve got loot gathering, magic, a small amount of weapon customization and a crapload of well written and acted dialogue. Speaking of dialogue, don’t buy this game if you don’t like reading or listening to people talk because you will be doing a LOT of that during your time with this game.

Gameplay is solid for the most part but there are things that frustrate me about it. The collision detection in this game is a little too touchy. I was always getting stuck on other characters or dead bodies while in combat and if they enemy you are attacking happens to move just a little bit, your character must also readjust. Once you take the swing though, it hits the enemy no matter how far away you are from them. This might sound like a good idea but it works the other way also. Say you are fighting a huge ogre and he goes to take a swing at you so you move out of his way so you don’t get hit, well you still get hit even if you are 20 feet from him. I’m starting to realize as I’m writing this that this review is going to sound very negative but I really loved the game.

Dialogue is one of the huge draws of RPGs but in this game it takes it to a whole new level. I guess I should be accustomed to it with games like Mass Effect and Fallout but it was getting tiring by the end of the game. Through the dialogue options though you can make the story your own and the choices you make do have real consequences or benefits at times. Other times, you think you are making a choice that will change the outcome but it doesn’t. In those instances it usually boils down to “do you want to fight this person now or wait through 20 minutes of dialogue and then fight them.” There are game altering choices though and unlike most RPGs, your party members are not set in stone and you don’t necessarily have to get all of them. One of the characters you actually wont get unless you are able to persuade someone to let them out of jail. Everything you do in the game also has an impact on how your party members feel about you and if they disapprove of you too much, they will leave(note: I did not have anyone leave because I was good for the most part but I know they can leave). It was funny in one part where you have a choice to fight your way out or negotiate and I chose negotiate. Well, one of my more aggressive part members took a huge disliking to that because I chose to negotiate. Also, you can ask your party members to leave if you want to but again, I never did. On the flipside, the more that a certain character likes you, the more it helps you out in that they get bonuses to things like attack, defense, magic power and so on.

Now to the obvious flaws and dislikes of the game. I ran into several glitches that in my opinion are not something that should be there. Numerous times the game glitched right after a battle and I would have to do it over again. It seems the game does not like you advancing too quickly. On a couple occasions I had to actually fight the same boss twice because I talked to a certain character before the game registered the battle as being over and they initiated it again. I was locked in a room once for the same reason and had to reload my last save. The one nice feature is that you can save anytime, anywhere except in battle and I highly recommend it because you never know what you are going to run into. Another is that if you advance the dialogue too quickly, the game wont recognize that the dialogue occurred and wont give you the item you were supposed to get. My dog went looking for treats one time and I read the dialogue and got the items. Soon after, I realized I missed something so I reloaded my last save. The next time, I just rushed through the dialogue but the items did not show up. That is the easiest example to explain but there were many other times that things like that happened. Sometimes, it affected the quest I was trying to complete and I couldn’t complete the quest.

I would recommend this game to RPG lovers but only to people who don’t mind a lot, and I mean a LOT, of dialogue(read: Teetocks, stay away). Like was previously stated, you cant always rush through it either so its almost like they are forcing the game to be longer than it needs to be. It was very rich and well done dialogue but by the end I found myself not wanting to listen to anymore. The story is one of the best I’ve seen in a long time and you do make choices that actually affect the endgame. Something I havent seen in a while. mass Effect was different in that the choices you made only affected the next ten minutes of gameplay but they didnt really present themselves later in the game. Dragon Age, however, takes the choices you make and integrates them into future dialogue sessions with other characters.

One last thing, as much as I hate to admit it, I actually had to change the difficulty to casual for the final battle.  After dying ten times in a row and not being able to do anything about it, I just gave up and changed it to casual.  I had been playing the rest of the game on normal but I had to change it for my sanity’s sake.  I was so close to the end of the game but I couldn’t get there because they made it so insanely hard.

GiantBomb has a new piece up today on the upcoming Gearbox Software game, Borderlands. I have been looking forward to this game for a couple years now. I got nervous when they up and switched the entire art style mid-development, but looking at the video, I’m getting excited again.

Four player drop in/drop out co-op, millions of gun combinations based on the loot you acquire, RPG/shooter melded goodness. Borderlands. October. Give it a try!