I didn't buy Dead Island, and I guess I never will

Sheeet, I'll just write this blog post out so that I'll have something new up here.

So, if you haven't followed my twitter updates like you should because I'm awesome, there's a few completely uninteresting things I can tell you about here and now in length.
Despite my bad habit of spending everything I have on shitty games nobody's ever liked I have actually been saving money lately so that I can buy Batman: Arkham City on the release day, BUT some weeks ago I got a little oddjob to do that paid me enough to buy one new game in addition to Arkham City, and I kept precariously teetering on the brickwall of choice between Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dead Island for quite a while. It wasn't so much that I didn't realise Deus Ex was definitely worth getting now because I have had my eyes set on it ever since I heard Spoony and Angry Joe talking about it a year back in their 2010 E3 videos, but it just seemed like Dead Island's co-op alone could be worth getting that one now and get Deus Ex: HR cheap for Christmas. I kept watching days worth of playthroughs of Dead Island and read reviews of both games like mad while trying to figure out what to buy. I even got so frustrated with not being able to make a decision that at one point I figured I'd better not buy either of them if it's this difficult. Thought I better save that money and buy something shitty, old and used instead, like Quest For Sleeping Beauty or Street Boyz. Yes, I will buy those two games someday, I'm just waiting for my loose screws to drop.

Eventually, though, I decided to buy something new for once and I came into the conclusion that although there is a chance that I could have a fantastic co-op experience in Dead Island with Gamerbomb, who I thank for offering to play it through with me, it's not a game that deserves to be paid in full for. It seem Dead Island derives all it's best qualities from other, much more successful games, and while there's nothing wrong with taking existing ideas, you still have to make the fucking game playable. Dead Island is such a lazy effort from the developers that even I get mad at it just by watching other people play it. It looks to be a game that mixes some basic ideas from bigger hits like Borderlands, Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3 but ends up being a repetitive, unimaginative 'smack mad people on the head and collect a few dollars from their corpses to rub on your weapons' type of experience covered in glitches, sometimes horrible game breaking bugs. The idea of taking the weapon level/rarity/upgrade system from Borderlands is just silly with the weapons being kitchen knives and sticks (that are relatively rare for a supposedly realistic world), the story seems to be just awful, the characters lack character, the environments seem dull, the whole game is about beating up zombies in such  a manner it doesn't seem fun after the first hour (which should be impossible to do because killing zombies is always fun), and the mechanic of fixing your weapons with nothing but money every 5 minutes is a lazy attempt to make the players feel like they're doing periodic maintenance of equipment and being self-sufficient and pro-active in the post-apocalypse.
Seriously, I got so mad at Dead Island just by watching other people play it that I dare not fathom what might happen if I actually spent any of my own money on it. I honestly feel that Dead Island with it's boring presentantion of what are supposed to be tried and true game mechanics, riddled with bugs that were only made worse with the patch that was supposed to fix everything, does not deserve to be bought at full price. I don't think I'll ever actually buy it myself, and I don't think I'll even mention the title to anyone in case someone from my family gets an idea to gift the game to me.
I don't care if the developer is a small-time studio that could use the support and I don't care if it's actually the publisher's fault for rushing the unfinished project out, because the one thing than matters is, "is it worth buying in my current situation". To me it seems like Dead Island is not.

So I bought Deus Ex: Human Revolution and have actually already beat it twice, and I can tell you now that it is one of the relatively rare games that really deserves to be paid good money for. It's a lot of fun with a lot of replay value regardless of whether you prefer gunplay or sneaking, although I think it's mandatory to enjoy things like reading stuff and listening to dialogue because half of the game is just straight up story. I'm not sure I would say it's a masterpiece or definitely the best game this year yet in terms of overall quality and polish, but it is such a solid and entertaining game that it feels greater than the sum of it's already decent enough parts, and I now have faith in Eidos Montreal's ability to make Thief 4 an entertaining experience. And let me just tell you here and now, it is NOT an RPG like some people call it, it only has vague RPG elements. It's a linear action adventure game with occasional hub-like city areas you can momentarily roam in with optional tasks to accomplish and a plethora of alternative methods of play to try out, with RPG-like elements on the top. I think I'll actually write a detailed and lengthy review of it some day, but I was thinking I'd try recording a walkthrough of it first so that I'll get at least three runs under my belt and have a more solid basis for my final thoughts, and that way I'd also be able to get screenshots for the review without relying on outside sources.
If you don't remember or didn't follow me way back when, I originally created this blog ONLY to serve as a throwaway general update page for my then website johnnydfox.com (courtesy of D. Stygle from PSDProtocol, thank you Darren for paying my bills for one year) that I could update easily without logging into my server host all the time just to update one file with two short sentences, but after being left with only this blog I have decided over the past year to aim at only posting three types of updates: full reviews of games and films, long-ish rants of individual aspects of games and films that alone would serve as good discussion points if anybody cared about what I think, and lastly as well as leastly the completely useless posts that only serve to link my walkthroughs and LPs to this blog (like the previous four posts), and I really wish to be able to provide whatever images I use in reviews myself and not have to pilfer them from MobyGames everytime. So basically, only deep thoughts or nothing with only self-took screenshots or nothing. Of course I haven't come even close to reaching this goal, like, ever, but a man can dream. Unless he's mentally unable to do so, which I think you'd have to discuss with a doctor of some kind instead if you have such problems.

Personal life updates like what the colour of the hair of the girl that gave me an embarrassing boner in the bus was or how my digestion is, like am I still crapping green nuggets or is there blood in there, I would hope to keep between me and my twitter followers.
So, in 2027 there will be nothing but insightful articles on this blog and nothing but shit in the twitter. Stay tuned till then, my deranged pals from another uncle.
This has once again been a 3 in the morning update for no reason other than me being bored while waiting for videos to upload, from your smoking hot neighbourhood adonis who shouldn't ever open his mouth in public.

Be seeing you.

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EDIT:

Regarding the suspected time of availability of the Deus Ex: HR walkthrough, it's probably going to take a while. I really like sticking to recording one game at a time and I really want to do the Thief games back to back which takes a couple more weeks to finish. I also want to try and do Batman: Arkham Asylum in anticipation of Arkham City's release. By the time Arkham Asylum is up, if it stays up and doesn't get taken down by 12-year-old kids who found out YouTube's greatest weakness, that being that the service is unreliable and often easily manipulatable crap, I'll already be playing Arkham City, unless it's release date gets pushed like it probably will. I'd say you can expect Deus Ex halfway through November, at the earliest.

If you actually read all the way through this post without skipping a single line when there aren't even any images to look at, get your head examined. I think it may be cracked. Why are you even reading my blog in the first place?