Dead Island - Dead Already?

Dead Island was released in the USA through Steam earlier this week at 9pm PDT. Of course being a pretty big zombie fan I had preorded it. So what exactly did I buy into?
Well the launch was one of the worst I've ever participated in. The good thing is that it released on time. The BAD news is that DeepSilver somehow released a developer version of the game's build which was riddled with bugs and issues. Let's list a few of the better ones shall we?

1) No-clip/Third person mode - The one that everyone seems to fixate on the most but yet affects gameplay the least is the no-clip, third person mode. What happens is that by just pressing the letter Y on the keyboard would instantly allow you to fly through the boundaries of the game. One video on Youtube actually shows someone completing the game in 20 seconds by using this no-clip mode and flying to the end. Another video by DopeFish shows the third person mode which is seriously the funniest thing I've seen all year. The fix? This bug was patched quickly within 24 hours of the release.

2) Corrupted/deleted savegames - This is the one that annoyed me the most. After the first patch that fixed the no-clip/third person mode, all savegames appeared to be broken or corrupted. So this means that now you must restart from the beginning with no weapons. However you did keep to keep your character's level so that's a ray of hope. But I lost all progress from my first night of playing along with many others. Since I only had about two hours of playtime, it wasn't so bad. Those who played all night... I feel for you.  The fix? As far as we know it was fixed after the first patch. 

3) Coop lag/disconnect or crashes - At the moment coop is completely disabled while its being fixed but at launch you could ACTUALLY PLAY COOP. I played with a handful of folks during the first night. While it was fun while it lasted, the problem was that it never did last. The game would crash constantly or it would lag horribly as soon as someone would join your game or vice versa. The fix? Coop was completely disabled so now you can only play singleplayer unless you use a third party program to emulate a LAN connected game such as Tunnler or LogMeIn Hamachi.

4) Screen tearing - A number of folks had horrible screen tearing in their games. I never personally had this issue so I can't describe it but quite a few others did. The fix? Was fixed with a patch about two days after release.

5) Key Mapping - Remapping keys in this game is a nightmare. Certain keys insist on not becoming unmapped when you reassign them. The F key seems to be a big one. I have this issue myself. The game will rebind the key but will not unbind it from the previous function so now you can perform up to two actions in one key. While this may be awesome in world of borecraft, it certainly sucks here. The fix? Has yet to be resolved.

Yes, there are others but I just realized how long this post became so I'll stop there. There are others but they aren't as bad or important to pick at right now.

But now just one question remains - HOW IS THE GAME? My answer: EPIC... when it works

-We should be consistent with our perception of past, present and future; not only they themselves, but in relation to the others. The past keeps us within sight of lessons learned, the future keeps us within sight of our goals and the present keeps us within sight of ourselves. -TheChiaGod