The Dark Furie

I spent most of Day Three telling you about the friends I met on holiday but forgot to mention the Floater I discovered in the sewers. No, not that sort... The Floater is an infected type found mainly near water who has become bloated and swollen from the water. The toxic waste dumped in the sewers has caused them to projectile vomit flammable waste products as their main weapon. Luckily they can't do this when their swollen bellies are being relentlessly beaten with a sledgehammer, so my tactic for these guys is to get in close fast and swing like crazy. Typically they tend to come with friends who make that a little more difficult.

The fat guy is the Floater. He's late for his interview and didn't even wear a tie. Punish him with death.

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Day Four

The 1.1 patch arrived as I loaded up the game and things are running a bit smoother. Already glitched quests from early in the game have been automatically added to the finished quests list so I'll have to play through again to see if they've been fixed, but the entire game seems a little more stable now than it was before.

I finally made my way out of the cramped environments of the city and got back to the resort surrounding the hotel. It's only by being back that I realise how badly designed the city actually is. While it's probably a thrilling environment for co-op adventures, for single player it's nothing short of frustrating when you suffer countless deaths thanks to the level of challenge not being set properly in this area. The resort is much better designed and, in this open area at least, makes Dead Island stand above other zombie infestation games. After helping out the survivors in the city and resort I'm being urged to enter the jungle and find the cause of this infestation. Again I get the feeling that more has been cut from the game as cutscenes seem to reference events that I haven't discovered. A similar thing happened in the city where reference was made to the police station in a cutscene even though I'd never been anywhere near it. Either way I packed my stuff and headed into the jungle, glad to see the back of the city.

Can't think why I'm glad to see the back of this place. Can you?

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Welcome to the jungle, we've got fun and games.
We've got everything you want, and we want to eat your brains!

Rather unsurprisingly the jungle has more than its fair share of undead too, as well as a group of guerillas akin to the looters in the city. However, being back in a wide open environment suits Dead Island much more and the game settles back into its rhythm easily enough. As such I believe that the city should not have been in this game. I think that the missions and unique environments in there (trying not to give spoilers here) could have been transferred between the resort and the jungle easily enough, perhaps using the sewers to get to some of these environments. That's my opinion anyway and I believe the game could have been deeper and better paced if that were the case. Anyway, let's have a look at the jungle.

At first I loved the jungle and was having fun wandering around, until I came across the Butcher. This beast is the same size as a regular zombie and hard to differentiate in the middle of a battle. Unfortunately he hits like a tank with the sharpened bones that used to be his forearms (I have no idea who cut his arms off and sharpened the remains but the thought really creeps me out) and has a nasty habit of ducking and dodging your attacks. That's right folks, zombie fucking ninjas!!! These guys aren't fans of guns and can be taken out pretty easily from afar, so long as you have the bullets and can tell them apart from the hoard they tend to appear with.

See that mass of tumours in the back? That's a Suicider and I long for the days when they were my biggest problem after meeting the Butcher.

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Luckily I've been collecting blueprints all the way through the game and am able to not only modify my existing weapons but make all new ones too, including bombs and ammo for my guns. In the later areas of this game this becomes a much more important aspect as you'll regularly find enemies where the few extra hits of fire or electric damage are the difference between life and death. There are miscellaneous items all over the island that can be looted and these can be used to modify weapons in multiple ways. Each blueprint contains a list of the items needed to modify a weapon as well as a long list of the weapons that can be modified that way. Blunt weapons can have extra weight or blades added to them. Wooden weapons can have fire added while metal weapons are best with electricity. Each modified weapon shows the ad-hoc additions in the game with batteries duct-taped to knives and ground glass in glue covering a bat. It all adds up to more efficient and brutal zombie slaughter in the long run but is also compulsive as you try to find all of the blueprints.

My personal preference is for electric weapons as I love throwing them at the enemy and having them boomerang back into my hand while the enemy is left frying from a critical hit. There's nothing quite like that for cool factor. I also tend to build molotovs when I have a chance, as the larger enemies are easily felled by those as well as large groups of infected. Of course I've blown myself up more often than not, but that can be half the fun in a game like this.

A little fire'll show 'em who's boss!

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I've just come across a laboratory run by a Doctor West (if his name is Herbert then I think we've found our culprit - Furie points if you get the reference) so I think I'm close to the cause of this. A secret lab in the jungle and a zombie outbreak. They've got to be connected right? I don't know to be honest. The game is acting as if these people are innocent for once. We'll see, but I feel I'm reaching the end of my adventure and will be rescued from this nightmare soon. I hope...

Wish you were here...