Let's dodge some zombie bites, go sightseeing in HELL-A, and slay our way through hordes of mutated wretches. Join us for a conversation about a first-person, over-the-top zombie slayer called Dead Island 2.
Let's dodge some zombie bites, go sightseeing in HELL-A, and slay our way through hordes of mutated wretches. Join us for a conversation about a first-person, over-the-top zombie slayer called Dead Island 2.
Welcome back to Hip Fire, a mini-series where we share our first impressions about a game after 5–10 hours of gameplay. In this episode, we discuss our co-op experience with Dead Island 2. This game is brutal and disgusting in all the right ways. It features a procedurally generated dismemberment system called FLESH that allows players to break bones and internal organs and destroy anything in their way. We dive into the diverse weapon sets, talk about the character selection screen, and Willie reveals which 70s rock band he can't stand. Joseph and Taylor break down the shortcomings of the game's dash mechanic, and we read a few reviews from Metacritic. Overall, we think Dead Island 2 is a lot of fun to play with friends and 100% worth trying out if you have a subscription to Game Pass.
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Taylor: That’s my thought too. And by the way. I looked up the image for that moment where you're selecting character and he is in fact holding-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -something that appears to be a blunt in his hand and he is very chill.
Willie: Yeah, he's just chilling at the front.
Taylor: He's not worried. [laughs]
Willie: Everyone else is like in panic mode and he's just sitting at the front.
Taylor: Just chilling, smoking potentially his last blizzy. I love it.
Willie: And I brought up the blunt because it's ridiculous that the character model has it in his mouth the entire time. He's just walking around with a blunt hanging out of his mouth, never gets smaller, doesn't do anything. He's just holding it.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: He's just like-
Joseph: Does it got smoke coming off of it?
Willie: -I don't think so.
Taylor: That would have been a dope addition. [Willie chuckles]
I'm not gonna lie, like that would have been... that would have been mind blowing to me if one, smoke came off of it and he actually, you know puffs would come out-
Joseph: Aah yeah.
Taylor: -every once in a while and two, if it just burned down until-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -maybe the character like pulls another one out and lights it or something like...
Joseph: That would be great.
Taylor: That would be like next next gen [Willie chuckles] details right there. That's the shit I need to see if I'm going to play a third one of these.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:22
Joseph: What's up everyone? Welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for tuning in for a casual conversation about video games. My name is Joseph. I'm here with my friends Willie and Taylor. And we're just three guys wondering if Kid Dynamite is going to knock out Jake Paul but I digress. How's it going y'all?
Taylor: It's going good, man. I think that he can. I believe in him. Both age is on his side and he has the perfect training video to watch, which is Mike Tyson's Punch Out. [Willie chuckles] You can see where a very small guy named Mac actually trained his way to the top and with the right coaching and person at the sticks was able to actually defeat Mike Tyson.
So I think he's, it's possible, he can do it, or he might get knocked the fuck out.
Joseph: Did y'all see the comparison photos of Jake Paul to Glass Joe?
Willie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Taylor: [laughs] Oh, no but I could see that in my head.
Joseph: Yeah, it was great. [Taylor laughs]
Taylor: Oh man.
Joseph: That's his name, right? Glass Joe?
Willie: Yeah. Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. Oh yeah.
Willie: Yeah, the first guy in, in Punch Out.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: If I remember correctly, he's not very sure of himself. [Willie chuckles] He's still figuring out if he even wants to box.
Joseph: I also saw some funny videos of Jake Paul. It was like a side by side comparison of Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. And they were both at 16 years old. And Mike Tyson is just like in the ring like, I mean, he looks like the greatest boxer of all time. And Jake Paul was like doing a dancing video with the shirt off, which I guess is probably his early YouTube days, but I've honestly never seen any of the shit he's done on YouTube like at all. So I don't even know.
Taylor: The only thing I think I ever saw was his brother when, whenever he had done something completely awful and ridiculous. That was probably just seeing it in passing and shaking my head, thinking, why?
Willie: I don't know. I don't have any, uh, any thoughts. Like I haven't, I've watched maybe like a clip or two of that guy fighting and the people who I follow like on Instagram and stuff who actually care about that at all, have been like, from the beginning skeptical and then also being like, oh no, he can actually fight.
But also like he's fighting kind of people that are like, no, this is also probably throwed, but who knows? I think everyone's just sort of down the middle on it. Some people are like, no, he's good. He can fight. But a lot of people now with this are obviously like, well, they're friends, so like...
Joseph: What does that mean?
Willie: What does that mean? Is Mike going to like take a dive for this dude just to like set this dude's career up or is this dude going to punch him the wrong way once and Mike's going to lose it?
Joseph: Right, right.
Taylor: I didn't know he fought Anderson Silva. That totally flew...
Joseph: Jake Paul did?
Taylor: Yeah, that flew under my radar. Evidently, in February of this year, he had a boxing fight-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -with Anderson Silva. So, I'm gonna go ahead and say, if you don't have fucking Anderson Silva throwing some kicks at your face, yeah, sure.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah. This is a completely different fucking bout, dude.
Taylor: [laughing] Yeah.
Joseph: Get the fuck out of here.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: He's on that bullshit, dude. He's gotta have Mike Tyson there to even sell a pay per view.
Taylor: Oh, it's all money though.
Joseph: F...yeah, for sure.
Taylor: It's all about money. It's that merger, the crossover. I mean, just take it from somebody who hasn't heard anything about boxing in years and years. And now here we are talking about this. And I knew about the Mike Tyson, Jake Paul fight.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: So that says something right there. It's going to make anybody take interest just because it's two names. And there's so many different reasons. Maybe you love Tyson. Maybe you hate Tyson and same for Paul. They're both reasons for a lot of people to tune in and watch or at least pay attention to it. So it's smart from a marketing aspect and annoying from just a normal person aspect. [Taylor and Joseph chuckle]
Joseph: I mean, it's going to be groundbreaking because of the Netflix integration and-
Taylor: Oh, what?
Joseph: -being able to watch on Netflix, man.
Taylor: What?
Joseph: Yeah. Like...
Taylor: Netflix getting into gaming and now boxing, what?
Joseph: That's why everybody knows about it dude.
Taylor: No wonder they keep going up on their price.
Joseph: Yeah, seriously.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Huh. Is there some movement? Like, is this going to be a one off thing for a long time or are they-
Joseph: I don't know.
Taylor: -trying to start a, make that part of their services?
Joseph: I think it's meant to be a part of their services like Apple TV is doing. Because Apple TV has been like showing MLB or MLS or MLS, I guess.
Taylor: That's impressive. I'm glad to see that. I'm not really into, into fighting, but it's cool that people can tune into it and in a better way and using a subscription they already have. That's pretty neat. And they've stayed away from commercials. Is that going to be when they introduce commercials on Netflix?
Joseph: Aw, fuck.
Taylor: That's the question. Everybody's doing it. It really grosses me out, man. Like all the, all the subscriptions I had, I was paying like 70 or 80 bucks a month. And I said, okay, I've got to cut these down. And, uh, so I just started getting the ads version of them whenever I need them. And it is atrocious. Just the amount of ads, and even on Disney kids shows, they're just throwing ad after ad on there, and it's pretty gross.
Joseph: On Disney? There's ads on Disney?
Taylor: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Joseph: Oh, shit.
Willie: The only thing that bugs me about ads is the fact that they just do the same ones every time you watch, and you have to watch the same ad twice-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -in the same ad break. [chuckles] It's like, what? Why are you doing that?
Joseph: Seriously, why, man? I don't know, it's the laziest fucking shit ever, dude.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Like if you're going to force us to watch ads so that we can use the service-
Taylor: At least make them good.
Joseph: -at least make it an enjoyable experience. Like, you're not going to make the ads good because most of them suck, but at least fucking sequence them in a way that they're not repetitive.
Taylor: They're getting better. There was, I can't remember the service, so I'm not even going to guess at it, but it was yesterday or the day before. I was watching something and it actually nailed it. Like maybe three out of the four ads total, I would, I laughed at, I literally fucking laughed at an ad. [Willie chuckles] I hate myself.
Joseph: Geez, dude.
Taylor: But also-
Joseph: You're a fucking sheep.
Taylor: I was glad to see that they were finally varying it up and, and the, they were actually putting some effort and money into the ads. And so that's good to see. Anyways.
Joseph: At least one of us laughed at three consecutive ads [Taylor chuckles] in our life. [Willie chuckles]
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. That's... I'm proud to say it. What about gaming?
00:07:20
Joseph: Yeah alright so [Taylor laughs] we're back for another episode of Hip Fire which is a mini series we use to share our first impressions about a game after 5 to 10 hours of gameplay. Today's edition of Hip Fire is about a first person action rpg called Dead Island 2 this over the top zombie slayer was stuck in development hell for 8 years and eventually developed by a Dambuster Studios and published by Deep Silver.
It was released in 2023 for Windows PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and we recently found it on Game Pass. Dead Island 2 takes place in a fully quarantined Los Angeles, which they call Hell-A, about 15 years after the events of Dead Island. All right, Willie, what do you think about the game?
Willie: Uh, overall, I, I dig it. It's fun for what it is, I guess I should say. It's definitely got some good, like, zombie chopping up action. It's like their whole gore system that they have is pretty great for destroying zombies and finding new ways to, to kill them. The weapon system is great. Overall, I think it's just fun. Is it like the best zombie game ever? No, probably not. But it is still good.
It's been fun. Like the whole appeal to us, we had been talking about it for a while before it was on Game Pass. We were talking about playing something co op, and this was obviously a great fit, like three person co op, just track your story progress together. I mean, I like it. I definitely have some comparisons to make to other zombie games that I might enjoy more.
But uh, I think we'll just get into that over time. I will say up front that there will be spoilers in this episode as we start to get into a little bit of the story, if you're afraid of spoiling the story before you get into it. We'll let you know when we're about to like actually hit spoilers. This overall, overview section probably talk a little bit about gameplay and stuff before we get into it in a few minutes.
Taylor: Taylor, what'd you think? Very similar, very similar thoughts on it. I think it's a perfect Game Pass game so-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -that you can play it, enjoy it as much as you want on something you already have as a service. I think that they did some good iterating on the original game. They added a lot of weapons to it, a lot of diversity in the weapons.
There's some okay amount of modding on them as well. Um, you've got skill cards, which are neat. I'm sure we'll talk, get into those later, but yeah, they didn't really reinvent the wheel. They didn't bring me back to zombie games in general, I don't think, but it is a lot of fun. It's a playable game.
Probably will play more of it.
Joseph: I could definitely see us playing it together some more.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I think it's fun. Yeah. I mean, I played the first Dead Island. I don't think I played Riptide, but I played the first one way back in the day. And I don't think I bought it. I think my roommate at the time, he bought it and then I was just kind of piggybacking.
When he wasn't playing it, I was getting some zombie slaying in. But I think it is fun, man. I think the game looks good. I love the detail too, like record players and bongs and fucking jars of weed and like all those small details I think work really well and I like, I like the way you collect items. And I like that it's not as overwhelming as like Starfield is where you can just get weighed down way too fucking quickly and there's a weight limit and you have to manage an inventory.
This game is about slaying and the weapons are pretty cool. The weapon upgrade system is pretty interesting and it's gory as hell. And you can straight up slice off limbs. I love that. Like, you can target their legs, their arms, and you actually do slice off those limbs or-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -you can just straight up chop their body in half, you know, if you have the right weapon. But that's cool. I like those details, those kind of zombie slaying crunchy combat.
Taylor: Well, and then the other details added to that, like, um, I was having fun last night with taking a jug of water and washing away all the blood.
Joseph: Yeah, nice.
Taylor: You can [Willie chuckles] wash it all off the sidewalk and so you could commit a 20 zombie murder and then get you a bucket and clean all of it up and leave the streets cleaner than they were before.
Joseph: Word.
Taylor: I think that that's a really funny detail. They definitely did not have to add that, but I think that it's really cool that they did.
Joseph: Yeah, I'm glad they did because they did add the environmental statuses and just different like status effects. So if you have a weapon that you've modded in a way that has electricity, you can throw that in a pool or a puddle of water and it's going to electrocute anything that's in that pool.
Same thing with like the acid and the other kind of like status effects. But I feel like that. The water cleaning up the blood kind of flows into that overall, we're going to let you use the environment to affect and kill zombies, which is pretty awesome.
Willie: Yeah, cause you can throw those jugs of water or the, whatever those things are, the canisters. And then... now we got into ranged weapons, so you can use, you know, a ranged weapon with electrocution on it or electricity on it to like shock the, the water from a distance.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
00:12:14
Taylor: That's a cool thing that they added that too. I definitely assumed as soon as we got weapons, which I didn't think we were even going to get ranged weapons.
Once we got them, I definitely didn't think you'd be able to mod'em like that. That was pretty neat. And a nice surprise that you could add your-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -and the melting one we got last night, the liquification-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Liquidator.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I feel the same way about the weapons, the range weapons. I wouldn't automatically assume that you could like electrocute the rounds, you know, that, that is kind of cool.
Willie: Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, but sure. [Taylor laughs]
Joseph: Yeah, exactly.
Willie: Neither does the crafting system for the modding weapons. Like-
Joseph: Right.
Willie: -Suddenly you're just like, you're basically duct taping all these parts to a, a pike. And then suddenly it catches on fire, you know?
Taylor: Yeah. [laughs]
Willie: I will say there is this detail that Joey pointed out while we were playing. It's not ridiculous when you look at a bladed weapon. That's, a fire weapon, right? Like one of the combustion weapons or whatever they're called. It's not like just a fire blade, you know, it looks like the metal is just heated in a way that's like-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -Oh, okay. It's it's, this is a weapon that does fire damage, but it's not completely over the top.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: They treated that well, but it looks like it just came out of a furnace.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I do like the way they treated that a lot.
Taylor: The weapons are pretty cool looking. It definitely made them look like some Zombocalypse weaponry in general.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I mean, I think the combat is pretty good. I don't like the dash. I, I have a really hard time judging the timing of the dash.
And then I think it never dashes as far as I think it's going to, and I get hit anyway. And I haven't tried the block, but I think the dash is. Dash is a little cheap. I don't think you really get like a full legit dash that you can easily counter attacks.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: You may like the block then, because whenever I switched, I had been playing mostly with the dash, and then I switched over to the block instead. And, uh, I found myself clicking the button just... anytime somebody was coming at me, I was thinking I was about to dash, but instead I was putting up the block and it was actually about the right speed to either block well or even parry their attack. So pretty cool. You might actually like it.
Joseph: Also, what do you, do you block with your weapon or do you block with your arm?
Taylor: Well, if you have a bladed weapon, I think you put it up to block, but if you have claws or hand weapons, you do, you put up both arms in front of your face.
Joseph: Yeah. That seems, that seems fucking dangerous in a zombie-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -apocalypse to just be-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -guarding with your forearm.
Taylor: Yeah. Bite me here.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Here's a closer piece of fucking man flesh.
Willie: I will also point out that I'm playing on Xbox One X. While, uh- [chuckles]
Joseph: Maybe. [laughs]
Willie: -Joey and Taylor are playing on Xbox One Series X?
Taylor: Yeah. Get those names right.
Joseph: No, no, no. No Xbox One. Just the Xbox Series X.
Willie: Oh yeah. Xbox Series X. My bad. See, I don't even know. [Joseph laughs]
Taylor: Yeah. People think we have some modded up Xboxes.
Willie: Uh, so I'm playing on last gen's console for a game that came out last year, which is pretty cool, but obviously that's being phased out, right? Like all the new stuff is mostly on the newest gen right now.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: So that means some things I've been playing on PC versus playing on, on Xbox, lately, like when we do cross play stuff. But this game doesn't have cross play like that so... but luckily, if you have friends on Xbox One X and Xbox Series X, they can play together.
And I think the same is true for like PS4 to PS5, but there is no cross play. So like, PS4 can't play with Xbox One Series X or whatever. Now I'm saying'em all wrong. Fuck'em.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, dude. That's too many consoles to be naming.
Joseph: Yeah, the short story is that it's not cross platform, but it is cross gen.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Load times seem to be like a double for-
Willie: Something like that.
Taylor: -on your box. Something like that.
Willie: And so like the game to me looks good, which is why I was bringing it up, but it doesn't look as good as I think y'all see it. You know, when I've looked at gameplay, it's like, yeah, it does look really good. And all the, and the details in the environments are still cool for sure. But I just don't think there is like, you know, high res on the older generation of consoles, probably.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: I do know, like when I was looking up stuff about this game, I'm going to bring it up because Joey hates the game so much. One of the threads that I saw in Reddit was just someone being like, "Oh man, I wish Starfield looked this good" was like somebody's comment.
Joseph: Aw.
Taylor: Oh my God.
Willie: And it was funny because-
Taylor: Oh my god.
Willie: -the reply to that was just like, "come on now." [Willie and Taylor chuckle] But it's like, seriously.
Joseph: "Come on now."
Taylor: And about 2,000 downvotes.
Willie: Actually, no, no, not at all. Just not that many upvotes.
Taylor: Oh god.
Willie: I don't think anyone's-
Taylor: People loved it.
Willie: -in this thread really. But it's funny that it is. It just, it does seem like it looks good in the, that gore system or whatever, like the limb ripping is pretty cool. The loading screens, even though I have to spend more time in them, are always, like, cool, but they're filled with gore. It's always a zombie being impaled with a pike or a hammer or something.
Joseph: Picture a slow motion moving zombie in just an area of dark space, and there is blood that's frozen in air from the impact of a weapon impaling a zombie face. And it's just, it's just cycles through different zombies and different weapon combinations, which is fun to look at, like it's giving us something to do while we wait, but also the load times are pretty damn fast. Obviously slower for Willie on on the One X, but on the Series X, they're fast.
Taylor: Yeah, they're totally manageable.
Willie: I feel like y'all make-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -it through two pictures whenever we're there. Like you always-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -see two pictures and I always see like three and a half or four.
Joseph: Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
Taylor: That may be one of the best looking loading screens I've ever seen, um, just as far as interesting, being super interesting to look at while you're sitting there waiting 10 seconds.
Joseph: I even tried to pay attention to when Willie shows up after I get into the game, I'll run around for a second, but I'm also paying attention to like how long it takes Willie to show up. And I think from the other side, that's been impressive too. That we're not even in the game very long and then he pops in.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Which I think is pretty impressive about the loading times in general.
Willie: I will say that's always not a fair judgment because this shit takes just long enough that I'm like not paying attention to the TV anymore. So-
Joseph: Oh yeah, to hit the button.
Willie: -to hitting the button, to like hit X, to enter the game, you know, so there is that bit of time.
Taylor: I thought that was a strange decision-
Joseph: Me too.
Taylor: -for them to do that. Not just load it because I'm the same way. I'll be looking at my phone just waiting to hear zombie noises and I look up-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -and it's the fifth fucking spinner zombie with-
Joseph: Spinner zombie. Yeah.
Taylor: -beautiful blade through its eye or something.
Joseph: A part of me appreciates that they make you perform an action to get in the game because you could just be enjoying the load screen.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Or for anyone that does, like, virtual photography, you might want it paused on there because you can control the spin and the angle and direction of the zom... not the direction of the zombie, the spinner zombie, but you can manipulate that area a little bit to get a different composition if you wanted.
So I do like that it just doesn't completely cut that off if you're fucking around like that.
Taylor: Did anybody see if there's a photo mode?
Joseph: I don't think there is.
Willie: Yeah, I didn't look. I didn't see one.
Joseph: That would suck because I kind of looked, but it would suck if it was buried in the settings and you had to turn it on to get access to it.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I don't like those, those setups where you have to like activate it for it to be available.
Taylor: Most of them seem to tout it as a, as a feature towards the top of the settings or.
Joseph: Yeah.
00:19:26
Willie: I will say, I guess even before we get into like actual gameplay or story spoilers, I will make some comparisons real quick because I don't know if you like other zombie games, I think this one's worth playing, just straight up, like, it's good, especially if you have an Xbox, you have Game Pass, there's no reason not to play a few hours and figure out if it's for you.
Joey mentioned the, the combat, and I feel like the combat's okay. It does feel a little sluggish to me sometimes, and that could be an Xbox One thing, but it doesn't feel as good as, like, Dying Light does to me. And I still haven't even really played Dying Light 2. I bought it and never played it because I was waiting for crossplay to come to that and it just never did.
Dying Light is probably one of my favorite zombie games. I feel like that gameplay is better than this game. Uh, it just is.
Taylor: Agreed.
Willie: Obviously the movement system in that game is different. Like it was built purposefully to be different, to be more parkour based. But I think even the, the melee system in that game is, is better and the-
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: -the crafting system is very similar as far as like how you mod your weapons and like picking up spare parts and all of that stuff. Those environments are pretty detailed and there is more stuff to pick up that doesn't over encumber you or anything like that as well. Like, it keeps the same system of like, I don't even remember why, but like, you have to pick up coffee grounds sometimes. [chuckles] Like, that's a thing you can loot. And it's nice.
That's just like-
Joseph: In Dying Light?
Willie: -Yeah, in Dying Light. That's a thing you can use and sell as like money-
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: -because it's like a valuable resource, you know, which makes sense. People are going to need some, uh, coffee in a zombie apocalypse, gonna to be a lot of people's downfall.
Joseph: Yeah, for sure.
Taylor: And there's a little bit of roughness to this engine too, I noticed that... it's probably not the engine, but maybe engine interaction with, uh, with the online gameplay where I was definitely noticing, you would see a zombie be going straight towards it and then it wouldn't be there anymore. Like you would maybe turn to look at teammates or see where your boys were and then turn around and that zombie's no longer there.
Not in a creepy way, but like a never existed way.
Joseph: Or it just, it teleported to a different spot in the game.
Taylor: Or yeah, or it despawned completely and there, there were definitely times where I'd be, a zombie would be coming at me and then suddenly be two feet to the left or to the right.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Or I'd go to jump kick one and suddenly they warp out of the way, but I would say that would only happen maybe a couple times per like 10 minutes or something. It wasn't bad enough to not want to play the game, but there's definitely some bugginess there that you don't see in Dying Light.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I definitely experienced that to you.
Willie: I do wonder if that's because I was hosting those times.
Taylor: It happened when I was hosting too. It was happening last night so...
Willie: Okay.
Joseph: I feel like it was happening when there were more, more things to load on screen. So, in the places where there were just a shitload of zombies, that's where it was happening most for me.
Taylor: Oh, yeah, like Amy's party or whatever that was, um-
Joseph: [chuckles] Right.
Taylor: -that one was definitely a place where two or three times I was going to swing at, at a zombie and they just suddenly weren't there.
Joseph: The setup for the game is pretty simple. I mean, I don't remember a lot of the story in Dead Island, but this game is definitely more linear. It's like semi open world, whereas the first Dead Island was like straight up open world where you could explore the map and you could basically go anywhere. This one is much more linear in the sense that you have to go to different exit points to travel to different areas of the map.
And we had just gotten to the point in the game where you unlock fast traveling, so I don't even know how exactly it works, but I assume it's just maybe a little bit more convenient than actually traveling to the exit points. And then, our overall progress on the game, we're like halfway, maybe 55, 60 percent through the, the just like straight up main story.
And then have only done two side missions. So what seemed originally like a really short game to me, I think is actually longer than I expected, at least with the side mission stuff, because I think it said there were like 30 side missions and we've only done two.
Willie: And we have one more available that I noticed last night-
Joseph: Right.
Willie: -plus another like there's a whole nother set of missions that aren't side quests. They're called something else. I'll look at it in a second to remember what the fuck it's called but uh we've done zero of the other missions and two of the side quests and I think our overall progress was like 17 or 18 percent for the entire game something like that-
Joseph: Mm hmm,
Willie: -but we had done 14 of the 26 missions in the game.
Joseph: Yeah, which seems pretty decent. I mean, we probably did play for like 10 hours.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I don't, I don't know if it was tracking it anywhere, but I feel like, well, we played three times together, right? And each time of those maybe two, three hours.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: So I think my gameplay at least is probably legit around like 10 hours.
Taylor: What did you guys think about the character select screen? I thought that that was really cleverly done.
Joseph: That was, yeah.
Willie: I do think that that's worth talking about, that intro, because it is the intro to the game. If you really don't want to be spoiled at all, we're going to talk about the intro first.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I'm going to talk about it now. So now you gotta dip, if you don't want to know anything at all but, um-
Joseph: Beware.
Willie: The intro itself. Yeah, is very cool. It's just an evacuation of LA, right? Like we're seeing all of the people who were trying to get out of LA and a lot of people loading onto a plane. Some people sneaking their way onto a plane or buying their way onto a plane to like leave. And the character select screen that Taylor's referring to is the moment, the, airplane is going down.
Shit has just gone down. A zombie has bitten somebody and everybody's freaking out while the, while the plane is crashing to the earth.
Taylor: Pilot, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Zombie bit the pilot, I think, is what caused it.
Willie: Yeah, and then you see the character select screen is the, like, fuselage, like, people sitting in seats, and you're just scrolling through each person in their seat. I think at least one of the characters, like, is killing a zombie in that moment. I think your character, Jacob, is kind of just sitting there, chillin at the front. I didn't notice if he still has his blunt in his mouth then, while he's-
Joseph: Yeah, I don't know either.
Willie: -like chillin.
Taylor: Damn it, he best have, or it-
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: -might have been near him, at least.
Joseph: Yeah, that was a pretty unique way to handle the character selection. I don't know if I really understood the stats. You know, like I was going through them and trying to like figure out who I was going to choose. And it's pretty obvious that each of the characters has a different ability or like a different skill set.
Some of them were much more agile and others had a much more, I don't know what word they were using for power, but-
Willie: Force.
Joseph: -they have different stats... force?
Willie: Force. I think is what that is. I don't really know.
Joseph: It definitely seems like they use that word for weapons. I don't remember if they use that for the characters, but that still makes sense. So that was a little weird. I ended up choosing Jacob because he seemed a little bit more balanced and I just didn't have any idea of like what play style I wanted to roll with. If anything, I might have gone agile with one of the other female characters that seemed a little bit more agile and faster. Just because that fucking that makes a lot of sense for a zombie apocalypse.
00:26:28
Taylor: That’s my thought too. And by the way. I looked up the image for that moment where you're selecting character and he is in fact holding-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -something that appears to be a blunt in his hand and he is very chill.
Willie: Yeah, he's just chilling at the front.
Taylor: He's not worried. [laughs]
Willie: Everyone else is like in panic mode and he's just sitting at the front.
Taylor: Just chilling, smoking potentially his last blizzy. I love it.
Willie: And I brought up the blunt because it's ridiculous that the character model has it in his mouth the entire time. He's just walking around with a blunt hanging out of his mouth, never gets smaller, doesn't do anything. He's just holding it.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: He's just like-
Joseph: Does it got smoke coming off of it?
Willie: -I don't think so.
Taylor: That would have been a dope addition. [Willie chuckles]
I'm not gonna lie, like that would have been... that would have been mind blowing to me if one, smoke came off of it and he actually, you know puffs would come out-
Joseph: Aah yeah.
Taylor: -every once in a while and two, if it just burned down until-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -maybe the character like pulls another one out and lights it or something like...
Joseph: That would be great.
Taylor: That would be like next next gen [Willie chuckles] details right there. That's the shit I need to see if I'm going to play a third one of these.
Joseph: I would have never known he even had it if y'all didn't tell me about it, because it's a first person game.
Taylor: It should obscure some of your view, damn it.
Joseph: Yeah, and it's a first person game, and there's cosplay. Like, there are different costumes, but you can't fucking see'em.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, and there's no, like, there's no mirrors, right? There's no reflections in the game that you can actually see what you're wearing. So, I don't think there's really any real opportunity to see what you look like in the game.
Taylor: Damn, that's true.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: And if you were playing by yourself, it would just not even matter.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: There would be zero reason to change your outfit. I guess in cut scenes, maybe you can see your arms. You can see your forearms.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's kind of what Cyberpunk does. Like they do a lot of this, I'm gonna put my hands in front of the screen so you can see like your fingernail paint and like tattoos or you have stuff like that, but there are also scenes in Cyberpunk where you do look in a mirror and you can actually see yourself.
Willie: I was going to say there are mirrors in that game too so you do actually get to see yourself.
Joseph: Which is cool. I like that 'cause that's-
Taylor: Digital future mirrors.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -for me, that's better than nothing.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But at least this game didn't have like a character creation and then you spent three fucking hours in character creation to play a game that's first person and you're never going to fucking see what you created.
Taylor: True.
Joseph: I do like that they're preset characters in the game and you just kind of pick one.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, and they all had cool backgrounds and, and it was all hip and meta and that's always good. Super easy to get in there and just happily pick one of those characters and roll.
Willie: Yeah. Okay. So is there anything that actually, well, Joey said he was drawn to his character because it was balanced. I was drawn to my character because they were like, I think the special move was called Mosh Pit or something. It was something to do with metal. There was another one that was like very similar.
Oh, that I was definitely not going to pick because their, their move was called Thunderstruck. And I hate-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -ACDC that much that I was like, [Taylor laughing] I'm not, there's no fucking way it was between those two. And I was like, Oh, well, that move is called Thunderstruck. And this other one is called something better than that so it's clearly the other one.
Joseph: Too close. Too close.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Willie hates ACDC. [Willie chuckles] That's good to know. I can just break out a T-N-T anytime-
Joseph: Dynamite!
Taylor: -and he's going to love it.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: [in high pitched voice like Bon Scott] And I'm in the fight.
Yeah.
Willie: I thought Joey was gonna pick Jacob because it was balanced, but also because it said something about backstab in the, uh, in [Taylor chuckles] the special move.
Joseph: Mm. Oh, shit. I don't even remember that.
Willie: I think it does. And I don't know why. So maybe you should look into that the next time we play. Maybe you do-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -way more damage when you're backstabbing stuff.
Joseph: Probably.
Willie: But I think that's why I thought you might pick that character. But Taylor, did you have any reasons that you were drawn to yours?
Taylor: It was actually similar to, to Joey's, I think, where she, I, I was like, okay, this chick is going to be agile and she looked athletic and I think one of her bonuses was like a hard jump kick or something. I, I'm not even sure. Now I have to go back and look, but also she was cute and she, I liked her little, um, kind of buns in her hair.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Like not her butt buns, but her hair buns. [Joseph and Taylor laugh]
Joseph: Yeah. Top buns, not bottom buns.
Taylor: Just edit that out, dude. Edit that part out.
Joseph: Naw, staying in, staying in.
Taylor: Yeah. I just liked her overall as a character. I thought she was cool and I knew we would be playing together. So I, uh, just wanted to get one that I vibed with.
Joseph: I do... I think she's an attractive character, but I also like that they didn't go overboard with it, you know and-
Taylor: Yeah, they made it more realistic. Yeah, dude, I don't need...
Joseph: -it's not like boobs popping out-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -and like they're-
Taylor: Don't yeah.
Joseph: -super sexy in the zombie apocalypse. I like that they didn't go overboard.
Taylor: Exactly. Yeah. They look like they just came out of a fucking glow up or something, it's just....
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah, all the characters on this one, I think they did a good job of, uh, making them fit in the world really well. And I like all of their, their mannerisms, the, the way they converse with NPCs and with each other. And as you're going, they give little bits of context, um, voice lines. And I think they did a really good job with that.
One thing we didn't touch on at all. And I didn't really think about was that the audio is pretty good on it. There's definitely some little things that, uh, if you get a crusher, like a big angry zombie and he gets stuck somewhere and he can't get to you, he'll just literally sit there and go, ah, ah, over and over. [laughs]
So some things like that get annoying, but overall I think they did a good job with the sound design, but definitely with the dialogue, uh, just personal thoughts. I don't know how y'all are feeling about it or.
Joseph: I think mostly the same. I feel like the characters do have distinct personalities. I know I haven't like experienced a lot of the other personalities beyond Jacob, but every now and then one of your characters are the main character giving dialogue in a cut scene and you can get a glimpse into their personality, but they all do sound unique and different.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I think I would say the music is the most surprising thing to me. Like it's not music that I'm a fan of, that I'm going to listen to every day, but I think they, they found music that's good for the game and the attitude of the game.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And the energy in the game. So like, I thought the music is really good. I just wish there was more of it. And like, you got to hear it way more often.
Willie: Yeah, they definitely use music to like accent when something's about to happen or when you're in a big fight scene and the like... in those fight scenes, it is, um, it's like high energy, not the type of stuff that I would listen to quite though, but it's fine. Like, it does fit the feel of the game for sure.
Joseph: I think it totally works.
Willie: I will say I was wrong about your, one of your-
Joseph: Different character?
Willie: -your skills. The... Bruno's the guy with the backstab.
Joseph: Which one's Bruno? Is that the firefighter guy?
Willie: No.
Joseph: Or is that somebody else?
Willie: The other guy. The like, he's a calculating hustler who always has a plan. That's what it says in his description.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Oh damn. That's a, that's a good description. That's somebody I want to hear the dialogue for.
Joseph: What's the firefighter guy's name? He just looked fucking bland as fuck to me.
Willie: Uh, Ryan.
Joseph: Ryan. Yeah. So he's got a basic ass name. He looks scared as hell.
Willie: Well, I think, and I could tell this from the opening, that he just, he wasn't a firefighter, right? He's just a stripper.
Joseph: Oh! [Taylor laughing]
Willie: He's just pretending, just one of his outfits is a firefighter.
Joseph: Oh, damn.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: He puts on his firefighter gear to pretend to be a firefighter who's like going to help just so he can get a spot on the plane.
Joseph: Oh, okay. I was about to bring that up. Like, bro, why the fuck you dress in your stripper outfit on the plane?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But that makes sense. That's actually, it's actually somewhere clever that you're gonna be like, Hey, I'm a firefighter. I'm a first responder.
Why are you flying, bro? You need to be on the ground fighting fires, rescuing, uh, people in distress.
00:33:58
Willie: I think this is, this is probably a good point. Just give a final spoiler warning. So we can talk a little bit more about the story. We h... like, again, we're like halfway through, so I don't know how much we're going to spoil it, but if you don't want to know anything about bosses or where the story is going, probably this is a good place to stop listening before we start getting into that.
Joseph: I think, uh, the story is like what you would imagine. It's every fucking zombie show and zombie game that has ever existed.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Or at least that's how it came across to me, and I haven't played very many zombie games, but it seems pretty fucking basic in the story that they're telling.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Maybe they do it in their own way with their own kind of spin on things, but it seemed pretty fucking basic.
Willie: I do think there is, you know, there's an outbreak, and then there's always some aspect of somebody might have a way to find a cure. So you got to go to that place to figure out how-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -they might cure it. That's kind of, that's, that's the setup.
Joseph: You've got to get it to the CDC.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That's the place to take it. Oh, and guess what? You're immune. For some reason, you're immune. And the whole crew in the character selection, six people, I think, like you're all immune. So I wonder how they kind of explain that.
Willie: I know a little bit, but not all of it.
Taylor: All right, I'm going to do the first spoiler. In a world where you can't close doors, no, sorry, no, no-
Joseph: Some of them.
Taylor: -I'm gonna leave that. Yeah. Some doors close-
Joseph: In a world where some doors can be closed.
Taylor: -others don't.
Willie: Some doors just close on their own is the problem.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: In a world [Taylor and Joseph laugh]
Taylor: of auto doors
Joseph: where some doors close on their own...Hell-A.
Taylor: I thought that was a weird choice too.
Willie: It really is. You would hope during a zombie apocalypse you could close doors behind you. Just to-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -you know, make sure no zombies walk in.
Taylor: I guess if you're badass enough, maybe you just don't.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: You're always compelled to go out and whip that ass and then come back.
Joseph: That's how I'm playing for sure. It did take us about halfway through the game to get the firearms. Maybe like 40 percent through the game to actually get the first firearm. And then I feel like maybe, I don't know if weapons, if firearms are always available at the, the merchant-
Willie: No.
Joseph: -at Emma's mansion, or if it kind of like happened in step with the progress at that point.
Willie: I think it happened in step with the progress, like the first gun and first pistol rounds didn't show up until, until we had grabbed a gun the first time.
Joseph: Right. I like the way the weapons fire and the way they sound when they fire.
Willie: I don't even remember if there are guns in Dying Light. I think there are. I can't really remember.
Taylor: I can't either.
Willie: I think there are late game, so I can't really make a comparison there. I just know overall I enjoyed the combat more. I don't know what that says about not remembering guns, but I feel like there were.
Something about playing a lot of first person shooters though and then playing this game, they feel okay. But, uh, the way that I have the controls set up for melee combat definitely lead me to be more erratic with my firing of the gun, because I'm using probably a slightly higher sensitivity setting for melee than I normally would for like just a straight up first person shooter.
Joseph: Default I think this game was like, okay for me, like I didn't have to adjust any of the sensitivity, so I'm just fucking rolling default.
Willie: I adjusted it a tiny bit and then I turned on the advanced options because I hated the um, and maybe this is the problem, I hated the like ramp up time of the stick. Not the dead zone, but the like actual increase when you move to the maximum of a stick.
It would suddenly jump really far really fast if you moved it too far in one direction or the other. I really hated that, so I got rid of that. I, like, just made it so it's always the same speed, despite being at the edges.
Taylor: Yeah, that acceleration.
Willie: Yeah, that. That's the word I was looking for.
Taylor: I always find that stuff to be really weird. And maybe it's one of those things where once you get used to it, it's badass because you can really get to where you're going based on how hard you push the stick. I, for some reason, the weapons feel weird to me.
And it, it may be that I didn't go in and do any adjustments myself in the options too, but, but the one thing I'm definitely glad about with them is the customization and also that they do a good amount of damage. It gets so boring and annoying to me whenever so many zombie games you play or games in general you get and you have a gun and an enemy takes 60 bullets to kill.
You know, and this one I feel like is a little more realistic. You get heady shots, they're probably going down and the guns do good limb damage and everything. Like, and then with the mods on them, obviously that adds another cool aspect. But so overall, I like them despite the feel of them not being great to me, the way that they handled the damage and everything really compensated for that.
So I still dig'em.
Joseph: I think the selection of weapons is pretty good. Crowbars, clubs, hammers, fucking heavy wrenches, katanas. I think it's a pretty good range of different kinds of weapons. And I didn't really look into the different types of weapons very much. Whether or not it's like one of those bulldozer weapons or-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -I'm forgetting the, the rest of the categories, but that's interesting to me. And I think it's pretty cool. Like, I think the weapons look pretty good too.
Taylor: I liked that they had a variety of swords, find it some games tend to get a little bit lazy and they're like, hey, there's a sword. A sword and that is the sword. And that's the way it looks throughout the whole game so I definitely appreciate that they had at least like multiple katanas.
Joseph: They had more of a samurai style sword. They had an advanced sword or something that I picked up yesterday or-
Willie: They had an officer sword at some point too.
Joseph: Officer Sword, Claymore
Willie: Oh, right. I never even saw that Claymore. I didn't even fucking look at it. Did you ever use it?
Taylor: No, I didn't.
Willie: Damn. I would had that shit out quick.
Taylor: I haven't stopped using my, my Nux. My Spike Nux. I gotta go Vega Mode on them.
Willie: You were, instead of using the claws, you had the katar for a little bit, right? Is that what it was?
Taylor: I didn't really try it.
Willie: Oh, okay.
Taylor: I maybe used it on one or two zombies, but it was weak compared to everything else because I hadn't upgraded it yet.
I find that the, kind of that threshold, the damage thresholds are very kind of set. Like if you have a weapon that does 230 and then one that does 270 because the other one is lower level, that makes a big difference. It almost becomes unusable. Pretty quick.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. They didn't last, but I will upgrade them and try them out.
00:40:14
Willie: Well, and that is one of the, that's worth pointing out. You can level weapons with you, right? If you have something that you really like. Every level, you could pay a little bit of money to level it up, but the longer you hold on to a weapon, like if you start with a level six, You know, katana or something, and you get up to level 11 and then you decide, Oh, I'm going to level this weapon from six to 11.
It's going to cost you like 7, 000 or some shit.
Taylor: Which is a lot in this game.
Joseph: Yeah. You said a little money. I would definitely wouldn't say a little money.
Willie: So like, if you go from a six to a seven though, it's like maybe 2000, maybe 3000, which is still a lot, but it's, it's more manageable.
Joseph: I feel like it was that for like, for 10 minutes, you could get away with spending 2, 000 to match level.
Willie: I think it's just how, how far behind level you are though, because I don't think right now, like if you took an 11 to a 12, like it's not, or a 12 to a 13, it's not as much, it's not going to be 7,000.
Joseph: It is, dude. It is.
Taylor: Oh, really.
Joseph: It's like six or seven thousand.
Taylor: Oh my god.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Okay, so that ramped up..
Joseph: That's what I saw last night. And I was like, there's no, there's no fucking math that makes this make sense for me.
Willie: Sure.
Taylor: Yeah, unless you just absolutely love that weapon.
Joseph: I feel like it scales with your level.
Willie: Sure.
Joseph: Like if you hit level 12, even if you're going to match, you're going from matching 11 to 12, because you are level 12, it's everything's more expensive.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That's how I feel like it works.
Willie: Yeah, I would agree with that based on the, when we saw one last night, like two of them were 6, 000 something and the like level 8 to 11 weapon was like 400 cheaper than the like 10 to 11 weapon or whatever. So it's like definitely scales both ways.
Taylor: Can you sell weapons? Did anybody ever?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Oh, yeah.
Taylor: Oh, you can?
Joseph: Hell yeah.
Taylor: Oh, no wonder I'm so broke all the time. Okay.
Joseph: Yeah, you're broke as fuck.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I started selling all my fucking scrap. Everything we picked up.
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: If I have over... honestly, I was selling everything until I had, well, I would use everything I needed and then I would go to the vendor and sell all my parts, every bit of my supplies down to 10 and end up with like, you know, so if I had 60 scrap, I would sell 50 of them. Because you find so much shit everywhere that it was just like some of your things you'll have like 60 items 70 items and they're worth 30 a piece or 50 a piece in some cases.
Joseph: I thought I would be good on scrap and then fucking ran out of scrap.
Willie: I did too but it was because I sold everything down to like 10. I like literally took all of my shit and sold everything down to 10.
Joseph: That's the thing, I didn't do that and I fucking ran out. I think I sold it down to like 50. Something interesting I was doing when selling material, it was like what I was doing in Elden Ring. Like if I went somewhere where you could sell stuff, and like scrap for an example, and I had like 66 scrap, I will sell off the 6. To get it to a whole number-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -and I go through my entire inventory and do all of that. So if it's like, if I got something that's 33, I'll sell 3. If I got something that's 66, I'll sell 6. If I've got something that's like 70, I'll sell 20 to get it down to 50. And then I've caught myself doing that in this game too. I don't know if that's just like, I don't know why my brain works that way.
Like I want to see nice whole numbers in the inventory, but I want to make sure there's enough there that I'm not selling everything. So I was surprised that I ran out of scrap because I didn't sell it down to 10. I didn't sell it down that aggressively.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And I don't even know how dude, because I mean, maybe from upgrading weapons, but...
Willie: It's just, yeah, all those mods, every mod, not every mod, but like certain classes of mods take scrap, right? And some of them will take like six or eight is what I was counting up in most of them, it's like six or eight.
Joseph: I guess I am guilty of not looking at what it actually cost. I'm just like, boom, boom. Cause I know I have a lot of shit.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: So I'm just like, I'm good. I'm good.
Willie: Last night was the first night that I was actually like paying attention to how much shit costs because I got to the point that I was running out of scrap that I was like, okay, I need six scrap for this piece. I need eight scrap for this piece. I need six more scrap for this other piece. So like I was paying attention to like how much I needed to collect because I was also trying to buy some back at some point.
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: I was like, went to the vendor to try to buy some and that sort of sucked because he only had two pieces. It wasn't like-
Joseph: Oh shit.
Willie: -his inventory was unlimited. He just had two pieces.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Damn.
Willie: Which doesn't make any sense because I literally sold all my shit.
Joseph: Like, motherfucker I just sold you 40. Yeah, yeah.
Willie: Yeah, exactly [Willie and Joseph laugh]
Taylor: That's for my daughter's graduation, I'm sorry.
00:44:43
Joseph: Yeah, the upgrade system is, I, I think it works. I mean, I think the one thing that I was confused about when looking at which materials you need to spend to buy that upgrade or make that upgrade, I fucking never know which side, which column is the number that you need to spend and which column is the [Willie chuckles] number that you actually have in your inventory.
Like, I don't know what the solution is for that in all games. Like it's just crystal fucking clear and you don't have to like fucking think about it hard.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Especially when you have no idea of like how many of a certain thing you have in your inventory to begin with. I'm like, okay, which one? I was like, it's gotta be the smaller one, right? Because I got to have more than two. So then I'm like, okay, that's the one you have to spend. I just wish it was crystal clear-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -in games to be like, boom, that's on left. That's on right.
Willie: I will say the other thing that I've only done once and I didn't even see the outcome of it is that you can track too, like if you're... If there's a part that you want to make, you can hit a button while you're like crafting it. That's not make the thing, not fabricate, but it will track what you need for that particular item to be crafted. So when you go out in-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -the world, I think it probably highlights stuff for you or puts an on screen counter to be like, oh, you're only two away from this many scrap or this many electronics or whatever.
Joseph: I do remember seeing that in the bottom right corner, but never tried it.
Willie: I tried it very early on before I even knew what it meant. And then I never even paid attention to it. Like I never saw it on the HUD anywhere. I never, like, I just, I don't know. Cause it was so early in us playing. It was like after the first time we got to a work bench.
Joseph: Uh, Taylor, what was the weapon, your weapon of choice that you use, you've used the most so far?
Taylor: I think the claws I've stuck to the most. I, um, as soon as, I think you picked up like brass knuckles and I, I suddenly was like, Oh man, there's fist weapons. And so I got a pretty decent rare set of claws and upgraded those.
And I think I just put the like most, limb damage that I could possibly do on them. So I just go at people's arms and legs and just start going off like a little rabid wolverine on them and trying to take their hands and make them mine essentially. But they're a lot of fun. If you put the mod on there where you can swing faster, they get real fast.
They seem to ramp up a little bit. Like, I feel like as I start swinging on people, it gets faster and faster. So maybe, I might have some sort of mod or perk that makes me, uh, swing faster as I do damage or something. I haven't, I haven't looked into that too deeply, but.
Joseph: Yeah, I think there is something, a perk that does increase speed.
Taylor: She seems to ramp up.
Willie: Yeah, they're definitely is one that's for speed.
Joseph: The claws start off pretty fast.
Taylor: Yeah, they do.
Joseph: I like them in that they, because they are fast. I don't love that they're short range like any of those other hand weapons. But I have a lot of trouble with the depth in this game to begin with, like, judging the depth and how far, how close you need to be to actually make contact with those weapons.
And I think that's why I don't think the dash is very good for the way I play the game, is because I'm like, am I far enough away, or close enough, or what the hell.
Taylor: It feels like it could use a double, like a mod to improve it. Maybe have the dash as it is, because you can hit it pretty quick, but I think that you've got to wait a second, maybe a second or so before you can dash again. So it's usually just enough time to get whacked by a zombie. That's taking a swing
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Better yet, a mod that doubles the distance of the dash. Anything like that would probably rectify the issue for me.
Joseph: A little bit more distance, I think would be good. I think-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -I would like that if it was, it just had a little bit more distance.
Taylor: Same. It doesn't seem like enough.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Even when you go back, like say somebody is coming and taking a swing at my face. When I dash back, sometimes it's not enough to miss the swing, which seems-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -pointless, but I got used to it. I found myself dashing at the right time against two or three zombies and missing all of their swings. It makes you feel pretty badass.
Joseph: I feel like dashing earlier was more successful for me. Like just doing it sooner when I knew they were going to attack versus trying to time it and get like a counter. I felt like dashing early was way more successful to just not getting damaged.
Taylor: Might be just enough to kind of throw off the AI and make it make it have to readjust and either resume its chase on you or aggro someone else. So-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -It's not terrible, but I would like to see some some mods for those mods and maybe they exist. Maybe we just haven't gotten them yet.
Willie: I don't think I've used the dash at all because
Taylor: Really!?
Willie: My character started with the block instead. And it's definitely easier to, to block early. It does feel like if they're in the middle of a swing, you're going to get hit. If you're going to try to take a swing on them while they're swinging, you're both going to take damage. There's no getting around that unless you just, if they're swinging, you better be blocking or dashing or something, cause you're going to take that damage for sure.
Joseph: That's definitely what I've experienced too.
Willie: Apparently, Amy's skills. Are that she regains stamina when hitting a zombie with a weapon throw is her like main-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -first innate ability.
Taylor: Right, that's right. That's why I chose her and I don't even, I probably haven't [Willie chuckles] thrown a weapon in like seven [laughs] levels. I guess my mentality is, Hey, I just upgraded these and I like them.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: I'm not going to throw them because what if one of you guys picks them up.
Joseph: What's interesting is that I think some of the weapons, if not all weapons, do more damage when they're thrown than when you just swing them.
Willie: Interesting.
Joseph: I think I read that somewhere. I threw a weapon once last night and I did it accidentally and it stuck in the zombie. [Taylor chuckles]
I was like, sweet. So I fucking immediately ran up and just pulled it back out of the zombie and started attacking with it melee style.
Taylor: Uh.
Willie: Nice.
Joseph: But that's my biggest fear is that I'm going to like throw a weapon and lose it or not being able to come back to it. And then I'm going to be without it because I, and that would suck because, like Taylor said, just upgraded it and spent money on it.
Willie: I think that's one of the things that people dislike about Dead Island 2 versus, I don't know about Dead Island or Riptide, I don't know which one. But one of those, I think the first one has a throwable build where the weapons, the weapons automatically come back to you in one of the first Dead Islands.
Joseph: Hmm. I don't remember.
Taylor: Hmm, I don't either. [chuckles] That has been way too long.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: What was the year of Dead Island 1 that it came out? 2009?
Joseph: 11 I think.
Taylor: 11. Wow. It's a lifetime.
00:51:02
Joseph: Dude, yeah. It's fucking. And this game, it does overall, like it's DNA is very, very much Dead Island, except the fact that it's much more linear and not completely open world, but like it plays the same way to me.
Taylor: I agree.
Joseph: I don't feel like there is any real innovation happening. Maybe the card system, like the deck building system and how you assign skills is different from what happened in Dead Island. But overall, it's like the same game just done a decade later,
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: You know,
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And just looks better with better visual graphics.
Taylor: I agree. And, and the storytelling was pretty good in the first one. And definitely this one is on par with that as just in reference to like being as compelling as it needs to be for a zombie game. Which is-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: As we've mentioned earlier, there's a lot of repetition to it and just barely changing small details, but it's a game where the people left during the Zompocalypse are partying hard and having a good time in the afterlife.
Joseph: The storytelling seems okay to me. There are some parts that are like on the verge of being too cringy for me, but I think it straddles and kind of toes the line between being cringy, but also being funny, like, like the panties man-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -like that scene in their kitchen, like borderline, this is just straight up cringe. But then something happened that kind of brought me back in just enough to think it's like, okay, it's okay. It's not great. It's not complete trash. It's somewhere lost in the middle. And it has moments. That I think are, are better than others.
Taylor: Yeah, I agree with that. If you look at the overall sum of each scene, they were all watchable and had some redeeming factor that would happen. Maybe if you started off and didn't like it at some point through it, somebody would say something ridiculous or something would happen that draws you in because it's an unexpected amount of drama in that moment or something. It was a nice little variety in the scenes that we've seen so far.
Willie: Yeah, it's definitely a campy zombie thing without being like being somewhere in the middle like not fully campy like something like Dead Rising, which is pretty weird. It's not the same kind of camp for sure.
Taylor: Yeah, it's more shit is really, really scary. And minimal camp or humor to it.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, I wonder if they considered changing the name of the sequel from Dead Island to Dead something, Dead Hell-A, just because you're no longer on an island.
Willie: I was going to say Dead City, just because that's the-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -one of the Walking Dead spinoffs is, I'm pretty sure.
Taylor: I didn't even consider that they're not on an island. [Taylor and Joseph laugh] It didn't even-
Willie: I assume what we're supposed to be seeing from the beginning is an earthquake that is like causing LA to like fall off of the fucking rest of California.
Joseph: Oh, Fracture off?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Oh wow.
Willie: I think. That's a guess. Because the story didn't tell us that there was like some sort of earthquake happening and we have felt rumbles every now and then-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -you know, we're just walking -
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -around like early on. There were just like suddenly shit was shaking for no reason.
Taylor: Yeah, I forgot about that.
Joseph: I don't know, that feels like a stretch.
Taylor: Yeah, I thought that was a zombie.
Joseph: Because like you had to have a mega fucking earthquake to break off.
Willie: I mean, but we're going to have one of those, like, that's not unrealistic.
Taylor: [laughing] Yeah.
Willie: That's going to happen to California at some point.
Joseph: Yeah, but that's not what's happening in the game. You get like these little bitty aftershock tremors. Like there's nothing that communicates the magnitude on that level in the game.
Taylor: Not that I remember. It's a little bitty fucking baby earthquake.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Unless there was something in the intro scene that I just don't remember at all, but that would be a good way to tie it back into the word island, I guess.
Willie: I think there are people, even whenever, uh, [chuckles] even when the game came out, I guess, or like eight months ago, people were like, why is the DLC not like, if the game doesn't end with the coast breaking off and it becoming an island, like that, I'm pissed.
Taylor: [laughs] That's right. That's a good point. I wonder if it does now. We almost have to finish it so that we can see if they justify the use of island in their title.
Willie: Spoiler. I don't think, I don't think so.
Taylor: Oh damn it. So that person was super disappointed. I feel bad for'em.
Willie: This person's also just like, it's incredible how many people don't understand what a metaphor is cause it's just like, obviously like all the ways out of LA are like blocked off.
Taylor: That's true.
Willie: There's just no way to get out anymore. So they're like cut off from everything else.
Joseph: Sure, maybe, but also reaching. I think they didn't do it because they just have fucking equity in the name.
Willie: Sure.
Joseph: I mean, you don't have to, you don't have to change it.
Taylor: No, it makes sense. So people like me who played the first one, it's been forever. You're just going to see that-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -title and pick it up and say, okay, this is going to be just like the first one, but it's in LA and not even second guess the fact that it is literally island in the name.
Joseph: I mean, cause the first thing you do is like, oh, that's cool. It's in LA. That's awesome. Like it's-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -a city setting.
Taylor: Yeah. Kind of like when we hit Venice, that was a really cool, like opening up. Was that after the sewer?
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, that was where it really opened up a little bit and you got to see kind of the little mini malls beside Venice Beach and then the beach itself. It's pretty surreal going out there and seeing Joey running from 10 to 15 zombies. Claiming that he has cleared out the city for us.
Joseph: I mean, that was the area where I cleared out the-
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Joseph: -uh, fucking hair salon, and the tattoo parlor, and y'all were fucking around with some gate that didn't even operate-
Taylor: I was over there helping you.
Joseph: -or have any use in the game.
Willie: You mean like-
Taylor: I heard you crying.
Willie: -playing the game? Trying to like do the mission that was at hand? [Taylor laughing]
Joseph: I don't know what y'all were doing.
Taylor: Half the time Joey's commenting that I don't know how I got so far from you guys. I'm halfway across the map.
Joseph: I was dude. I like went all the way...
Taylor: You took off running and never stopped.
Joseph: I'm like in Silicon Valley and then I have to come back and fucking regroup with y'all because I can't advance the story on my own because y'all are playing around with some locked case. [Taylor and Willie chuckle]
Taylor: That was the mission.
Willie: I was literally doing the mission. Helping those people unlock the new safe zone. Which is that what they're called? They're just called safe zones.
Joseph: Probably. Yeah.
Willie: So early on, the first one you get to is Emma Jaunt's house, and that's a place where you can go and, you know, use a workbench, store, some weapons, see a trader about selling some stuff.
And then we just unlocked the one that's in Venice beach. Which like Joey said is also the first fast travel point and we haven't used it yet so I'm not sure where it goes if you do that. Like if it takes it directly back to the other safe zone.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: I think it probably just goes to other. Yeah. Yeah, you're probably right. Like it would go to. Emma Jaunt's house, because that's like a main kind of safe hub area and travel between those. I assume there's one in every location, like every map location or map area.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: I mean, I don't know how you get to the sewer. Maybe you just fast, fast travel to like the entrance of the sewers or something, but I bet there's at least one in each one of those different larger map areas.
Willie: I do want to go back through the sewer at some point, if possible. I want to check on that guy, Peyton or Patton, sorry. I don't know if Patton's going to come back at some point and we need to see if his arcade cabinet is playable.
Joseph: That was the same, I think it was Cosmic Invaders-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -is the name of it-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -But that was the second time that specific arcade was in the game. Cause I think one of the other times it was in one of the house game rooms-
Willie: Mm.
Joseph: -but it was the same. I saw the, the marquee, it was the same name. I walked up to the first one and it didn't do anything. So I'm assuming none of them are playable.
Willie: Sure.
00:58:35
Joseph: Anyway, overall, as we're kind of wrapping up here, I think the game is pretty damn fun. I could imagine myself playing through all of the main story missions, but probably not all of the side missions, unless I was looking for, uh, some, just like a brainless, [laughs] a brainless game to play.
Willie: Yeah. I do think the game is obviously then going to stay linear. I, well, I don't think the game is completely open world. I think the setting of the suburb area that we were in at first definitely made it feel closed off more because there are only certain paths you can travel to get to and from places because the, all of the, the streets are just blocked off by cars, right? Like they purposefully made it so that you have to go through certain areas to unlock certain doors to get from one place to another.
So it definitely feels more cramped early on. And then when we got to Venice Beach the neighborhood is open because there's like... there's not as many cars blocking the streets so you can go any way around a specific building or whatever.
Joseph: That was nice to have more space.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I do wonder if, you know, it's going to continue to be that way the rest of the time, or if it will go back to being like, there's only one path through.
Joseph: Taylor, how much of the game do you think you would want to play?
Taylor: I would finish it. I would finish it. I think they've got enough good things going for it that, and the, the fact, so you said we're about 50 percent through it right now.
Willie: Through the main story. Yeah. Just over.
Taylor: That seems about right. Like, there's still some things to unlock and keep it interesting, but the pacing definitely seems right.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: So, I would finish it. I don't know if I would do all the side missions and all that. I just don't care that much, but I would definitely, at the very least, finish the game.
Joseph: I did pull up, just randomly, not randomly, but I selected these reviews at random from Metacritic, but the first one I have is from Tigers_Blood_18, and it's a 5. But here's the review:
Dead Island 2 suffers from an identity crisis. It can't decide if it wants to be open world or linear. In turn, the game became a mix of both, and it does not mix well. Next, the story is not very engaging. You do not care about anyone in the story. None of the characters ever help to join the player... or help or join the player which really makes it hard for me to care about them.
The main character, at least Amy, was boring and somewhat annoying. The game also gets really repetitive especially considering it doesn't bring anything new to the table. The gameplay also feels very dated. If you told me this was a remastered game from 20 or from 2009, I would believe it. I think there's some truth to that.
Taylor: I haven't totally disagreed with any of the comments [laughs] yet.
Joseph: Yeah, one other issue the game suffers from are zombies being far tougher than they need to be.
I disagree with that.
You'll find yourself beating the absolute crap out of a normal enemy with upgraded weapons. The weapons and character feels weak. Even towards the end, my character was still dying quickly. I would rate Dead Island 2 higher if it had a much shorter campaign. But it somehow was a 20 hour story, which is way too long. The game also lacks the ability to drive, which I did not [laughing] appreciate if you can get the game [Taylor chuckles] on clearance for 10, 15 bucks, do it otherwise don't waste your time or money.
Taylor: I'm not mad at any of those points whatsoever. Like, like you were thinking though, as we have progressed and as we got to this level, I do feel like the zombies are way more manageable.
Joseph: Oh, shit. Are you still there, Willie?
Willie: Yeah, I am.
Taylor: Oh, can you not hear me?
Joseph: Are you there, Taylor?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: You froze up.
Taylor: Yeah, I'm here.
Willie: Yeah, you froze. Now we can hear you.
Joseph: All right, what were you saying?
Taylor: Well, I do agree with what you were saying about the part about the zombies, the zombies being too tough. I feel like at this point we are leveled up enough that they do seem like they're going down pretty easily, especially the normies.
Joseph: I thought the way since the beginning, but maybe it's just because I'm playing with co op with other players.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: It's just all too easy.
Taylor: That is very true. The little bit that I played of it on my own, I didn't find nearly, not even 20 percent as enjoyable as playing it with other people. I think this is a game that definitely benefits from having multiple people.
Also, when you throw in the fact that everybody has their own little dialogues that they throw into the conversation as you're playing, while you're playing that really fills in the spaces, the silence-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -uh, between fights and missions.
Joseph: I've got a, another review from Metacritic that I just selected at random, but this one's a good review. It's a 90 from Finger Guns. [Taylor mimicks the sounds of guns shooting from his fingertips] Great name.
Taylor: Yeah, that is a great name.
Joseph: Throwing out the dour and the drab, Dead island 2 is all about killing in style. From the beautiful rendered wastelands of Hell-A, to the equally visceral limb destruction system, there's endless fun to be had here. With enough to do solo or with friends slash strangers, not to mention the upcoming expansions, Dambuster Studios has rewritten how to enjoy yourself in the face of Armageddon.
Taylor: And that's it?
Joseph: Yep, that's it.
Taylor: Pretty good. That sounds like a paid review if I've ever heard [Willie chuckles] one, but still that's, uh-
Willie: Yeah, that's not a-
Taylor: That is pretty good.
Willie: -not a lot a detail, but I do agree with all of that. Like it feels-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -it's fine. It's good. It's fun. There aren't any things that are like making it unenjoyable, right? There's nothing in it that's like-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -game breaking or nothing in it. That is like, Oh, I really don't like this aspect of it. So I don't. I'm not having fun playing it.
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Willie: I don't know if I was playing it on my own if I would want to go, like I don't know if I would go through and do all the side quests.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: There is a part of me that is a completionist that wants that, but I'm also totally okay with just like going through the story, finishing it out, and being done with it, and move on to some other thing. Because the thing is, there are so many good games to play right now, still.
Taylor: Yeah. We've got Diablo 4 coming to the Game Pass pretty soon. I believe.
Willie: Tomorrow?
Taylor: Oh yeah.
Willie: Tomorrow or the next day, I think.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: I'm going to finally get to check that out. I'm pretty pumped. That's not one that I necessarily wanted to buy it, so.
Joseph: Going back to that bad review for a second, the thing that person was complaining about, I think are some of the things that actually make me enjoy this game, not caring about the characters too much. Like this isn't a game that I'm super invested in, like not the story, not the individual characters, not the combat.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Nothing really is like going to keep me wanting to play this game instead of sleeping.
Taylor: Sounds like that person wanted a Fallout. They wanted something-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -or Starfield. Have they heard of Starfield? [Willie and Joseph chuckle]
You can care about your companions so much that you sex them.
Joseph: [laughs] Right. [Taylor laughs] But I think that that allows me to play this game without many strings attached, which I think is going to make this game more fun because the game also isn't taking itself too seriously, like it's not trying to be Red Dead Redemption-
Taylor: Yeah*.*
Joseph: *-*you know, it's trying to be a fucking zombie slayer that is fun to play with other people and not going to consume a hundred fucking hours.
Taylor: Yeah. And it's playing on meta and pop culture and, and all those elements. So it's, to me, it seems like the type of zombie game where if maybe Dying Light was too granular for someone, uh, because Dying Light has like that interesting melee system where you can melee different directions and break arms and do all kinds of crazy shit.
If somebody wants more of a drop in and just have a good time smashing, which I think you mentioned earlier, Joey, but just wrecking zombies and having a good time with some braindead element to it, then this is a good one.
Willie: Yeah.
01:05:55
Joseph: It's worth playing. I wouldn't pay for it. I'm glad it's on Game Pass because I, well, I probably would have never even played it if it wasn't on Game Pass.
Taylor: Same.
Joseph: So if you have Game Pass absolutely worth playing, if you want something that, you know, isn't going to require a lot of brain power and is fun, right? Especially if you love like a hack and slash kind of 1st piece, 1st person experience.
Willie: And to just jump on something that was said earlier. And we won't won't get into it now so we can wrap up. But the skills that you get are separated into, like, your abilities and like. What a survival skill and then like a slayer skill and then something called Numen which we didn't really unlock yet but we... I do know what that is now it's just the fact that we haven't died to the virus without going into like too far of spoilers for any of y'all. We are Numen because we don't die because we're immune to the virus basically.
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: That's the thing I was gonna say earlier is like apparently like one in like six million people are that or something like that?
Joseph: Oh, wow.
Willie: I think it's one in 6 million. I don't think it's one in 1 million. I'm pretty sure it's one in 6 million.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: Man, this fucking math doesn't add up that all six of us are on the same fucking plane [Willie chuckles] and it's one [Taylor chuckles] in 6 million people.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: It's destiny, damn it.
Joseph: That's absurd.
Willie: It is. But anyway, those abilities are cool. They can help you care... like change how your character fights and how, you know, give them more damage, give them, make them faster, do a cool sidekick instead of the drop kick, and that's worth playing with, that system is worth playing with.
Uh, and like Joey said, if you've got Game Pass, definitely check it out if you like zombie games. I'm probably, I'm not gonna like play the DLC. I'm not gonna like complete all the side quests but it's fun, especially co op, that's what I will say too. It's been fun to just get together and, you know, wreck some shit and, you know, just be silly together, pretty much.
Taylor: I agree. Yeah, low pressure hang with the homies and if you need to catch up with your buds, uh, over a game sesh, this is a good one to do it on.
Willie: Cool. Well, yeah, with that then I think, thank you for listening. Thank you for being with us and, uh, we'll see you next time.
Taylor: Appreciate ya.
Joseph: Peace. Move, glitch. [Taylor laughs]
Taylor: Reset the box.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
No, that's not it.
Joseph: Introducing T-Boz, Left Ear, [Taylor chuckles] and Ludacris.
Taylor: Don't go chasing water balls. [chuckles] Don't do it. Ridiculous.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
01:08:20
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in, and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades. Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Taylor: Oh, that sucks man. Cause he was, [laughs] he was like, he was like and we got bad news Sam, Michael's dead. And he was like, Oh no,
Joseph: Not Michael-
Taylor: Ah.
Joseph: -shit.
Taylor: [laughing] It was [Joseph and Willie laughing] like the most, like this dude doesn't give a shit [all laughing] or was like real happy about it. One of the two.