So far I have found that whoever hosts is the one who gets their story progressed if people are not at the same point in the game. And even though all side quests can be completed by anyone, the main story requires all players to be at a waypoint before the plot continues. If the host disconnects, the game does not kick you, but rather displays a message letting you know that you may continue to play, but your story will not progress if you are not at the same point.
Dead Island Problems
AHHH… the infamous PC release. Apparently Techland accidentally sent the Developer copy to Steam. Anyone who played on release night, awoke the next day to find that all their progress had been reset. Techland did apologize and patch the game the next day. Sadly though, the patch made it impossible to play multiplayer. Several patches later, the game is up and running. Smoothly for the most part.
While the item switching will be good for players who use controllers, those who use keyboard and mouse will be disappointed. You cannot use mouse scroll to switch weapons. You also cannot us the top number keys to switch. Techland could earn themselves a ton of brownie points if they fixed this.
The developer also seemed to leave out a lot of video tweaking options. There are several places where you walk into a foggy room, but the fog just looks like a glare. Now I know this could be fixed if I turned off bloom. But surprise, surprise….there is no setting to change bloom. There is actually about 20 tweaks that I feel are missing but I won’t list them all and bore the readers. And while there is “fixes” that you can make to the game, they put you at risk of being banned because they require changing game files.
Now, even though Dead Island has problems, they don’t take the fun out of the game or in anyway make it unplayable. I just feel like Techland needs to fix these (which they have been). If Techland can get these issues worked out quick, then Dead Island has the potential to be the game of the year.
Final Thoughts
If you like zombies, RPG’s, FPS’s, Borderlands, or if you have warm blood flowing through your vein and are not a zombie, then you will love this game. The environments are beautiful, the gameplay is fun, and the amount of play time that you get for your money is astounding. I have been playing close to 30 hours and I know I am not even close to half way through. I also know that when I beat it, I will just start with a different character and begin again.
