I was really surprised by this game.

[Garrison64]

When I first saw the original DI trailer I was blown away by how wonderfully it was made. It was so emotional and scary and got me excited to see how the game would be. However when the reviews came out they were mostly lackluster and there were quite a few complaints about it. I was disappointed and decided to put it on the back burner. Honestly I wasn't even sure if I wanted to buy it.

My son had some friends who were playing it online so I picked up a used copy for him. He played a bit on and off on the PS3 version and I watched a bit of it. I finally sat down one day and started a character and as I set off on the adventure I was instantly suprised by how fun the combat was. The game setting was also very well done and I appreciated how open the game world was. But mostly the combat was what drew me in. What really hooked me for good was when I got to the city. The city is absolutely my favorite part of this game. It is so big and full of detail and all sorts of hidden alleyways and open buildings and I found it to have a very realistic feeling that just sucked me in. I ended up buying the GoTY version for the Xbox in my room so I could play when I wanted.

They did a very good job with the pacing on when more difficult enemies would show up and the introduction of each one kept the game feeling fresh. I also really enjoyed discovering all the different weapon types and the modifications that were available for them. The weapons in the game are very well done. I found the balance on most of them to be so good that I was able to make effective use of many different weapon types. Very few games get that right and I typically end up going to one or two weapons all the time but in DI I found there were all sorts of weapons that were fun to use.

The large assortment of locations in the game was another thing I found very interesting. Beach, city, sewer, interiors, jungle, lab, ect. There were lots of nice location changes and each was interesting in its own way. Obviously the beach and city areas received the most development love as both seemed well crafted and were large with tons of area to explore. Later in the game it takes on more of a linear feel and I wish the jungle areas would have been a bit more open without so many barriers but overall those areas were also fun.

Sound in the game was excellent with lots of great background noise and environmental sounds to draw the player in and make them feel like they were in a real location. The sounds each of the zombie types makes are fantastic and even on my 4th play through whenever I heard a runner start screaming I would instantly look for high ground or prepare for a fight. It always got my blood pumping. Except for Sam I never felt truely safe in this game and that kept the tension high which was great.

Mostly I just enjoyed the combat which is some of the most visceral and enjoyable melee combat that I have experienced in a game. The combat is brutal and gory and being able to target and damage specific locations on an enemy is extremely well done. I loved how bones and organs would become exposed as I assaulted the more difficult enemies. The way their bodies break down is amazing. It is so much fun slicing the arms off a Thug only to have it try to bite me. It was also very satisfying to hear bones break and see arms flopping uselessly afterwards. Nice touches are everywhere in this department. I didn't miss guns a bit as the melee fighting was really exciting and enjoyable. The deo-bombs and molotovs were also really well done with spectacular damage. I didn't use them very much in my first playthrough but on the other characters they became almost essential and I enjoyed using them at every opportunity.

I played through the whole game with all 4 characters. Sam is by far the easiest in a Single Player campaign. His strength, health, healing ability, and knock down power make him an absolute tank. I could even go through the crazy part of town without any issues while playing Sam. I feared nothing with him and had fun busting heads with huge powerful weapons. His character in the story is laughable but his survivability in the game is unsurpassed. He makes a joke out of the toughest enemies.

That said my favorite character was probably Logan. He was challenging and has probably the best set of talents in the game. My only real complaint about him is that I wish they had a way to mark his weapons so they could easily be found after combat. It was a pain to have to pick all of them up after every single fight especially when they ended up in hard to reach locations or under bodies. The ability to hold one button and have them all return to him once out of combat would have been so much better. I lost several high end weapons due to issues with clipping and just not being able to see where the weapons went. But it was so fun to take out entire groups of zombies in just a few throws and the boomarang talent was really nice when it kicked in. Logan could be very powerful but still required a good bit of finesse and proper timing to really get him to excel. I really enjoyed the challenge of playing him especially early on.

Xian was really fun and had a nice set of talents but would come 3rd on my list. She was difficult to play in tight areas because she was fairly weak physically and sharp weapons don't push enemies away. I had to rely much more on healing potions with her as she tended to take more damage. She was still very fun and by the end of the game her skills made her really powerful but there was nothing about her that made me crazy to play her again.

Unfortunately Purna was dead last as a character in this game. This is only because her talents were so pathetically weak. For a gun character I found it strange that the first main talents she gets are for melee and sharp weapons. Although it is possible to get some ammo and a pistol early in the game it doesn't help much as her talents don't provide any damage boost for guns at that point and they are horribly ineffective against the undead. Even with every gun talent filled in I found her to be very weak and not much fun to play. I really don't understand why they made a gun character for this game only to gimp her so badly. She never does have enough ammo and her damage is far inferior to any of the other characters even with pimped out weapons. All of the melee weapons get multiple tiers of damage enhancements but guns only get one level and that is the lowest level which barely helps at all. Even with her accuracy maxed the weapons still weave about when aiming making it hard to target properly. She didn't seem much better than the other characters in that area which was disappointing. It just feels really neglected like they didn't really want anyone to enjoy this character at all and that's a shame. One of her talents that really disappointed me was the one about finding more ammo among loot. What a waste of a talent. I never found any more ammo than on my other characters. I was expecting this talent to make ammo appear in locations where other characters would not find it but it never did anything that I could see. But then again, none of her talents were all that great. She needs a major overhaul for Riptide.

I had very few problems with this game as far as bugs or glitches. I noticed the occasional floating object especially in the jungle but I never had any crashes or lockups which was nice. My son found that it is possible to glitch through certain doors in the city by crouching and was able to get out of the map that way. But I never had anything game breaking. Probably the most annoying bug I noticed was the one regarding inventory. The game doesn't seem to know what to do when the inventory is full. I could have room for more health kits but if my inventory was maxed it would not allow me to pick them up. This also caused issues at the repair table. I lost several weapons when my inventory was full and I modified something which then simply disappeared. I learned to make certain that I had an empty slot before performing any modification or creating any new item even if I already had some in my inventory. It was glitchy and didn't always happen but why take the risk. Other than that the game seemed fairly bug free to me which is always nice.

The story overall was just average. I really wish the characters hadn't been such over the top stereotypes. I wanted something that felt more like the trailer with just average people trying to survive this thing. The characters they provided made it seem just a bit silly at times. The overall plot was the average conspiracy story with no real surprises even after playing the Ryder campaign which I also played. I would really have prefered a bit more mystery and not so much of the whole government coverup story which has been overdone in way too many movies by this point. A truely original story would have helped this game a lot. It was also really hard to get into the game emotionally due to the terrible facial animations during the cutscenes. There was almost no emotion shown. The character models in the game were all pretty bad as well. Most of the random people in the game are down right ugly. The acting, for the most part, was good but the character animations just destroyed the effect. I felt very little for any of the characters by the end.

The Ryder campaign added a bit of depth to the story, for what it was worth, and the gun play was certainly much better than it was with Purna, but it had too much of a Left 4 Dead feel with the constant rush of high level zombies that always required emptying gun clips as fast as possible. It had none of the wonderful pacing of the main game and I really missed that a lot.

Overall this game was a terrific surprise and I have had an absolute blast playing it. I'm glad I finally decided to give it a try. It's definitely the sleeper hit of the year for me. I never expected to have as much fun with it as I have. I can hardly wait for RipTide now to see what comes next. Hopefully there will be more huge enjoyable areas like the city in this game. But whatever I will have fun busting more zombie heads and seeing what new enemies they have in store for us. With a bit of work and a few changes this could really turn out to be a superb series.

[abig84]

wow you should have wrote a review for a website, i couldnt agree more. i put over 300hrs into this game and loved it. i never really go by reviews, i usually resort to youtube and watch gameplay videos or download a demo to see if i like the game. but yeah you will keep finding new weapons, missions, id cards, other easter eggs the more you play

most the glitches i discovered are usually funny, ive lost a few weapons here and there, had to restart check point cause someone got stuck in the map or something but no big deal.

ive always preferred xian over anyone else, true the sharps dont knock zombies back but when shes a level 60 with her incredible stamina you can swing that sword like 25 times before she gets tired, or run way far away to saftey. her or samb might be about tied but i like her cause im always running

[rrobb911]

I agree with most of your points, especially Purna and the guns. She should have a ton of ammo space, or at least find ammo where others don't. If I'm playing as her, I want to be able to survive by solely using guns, but they still feel like BB guns (with the exception of a shotgun to the head).

Nice review. You should definitely submit that to a website as it's better than 90% of the ones I read about it