Biggest Letdown of 2011

Many titles, when announced, get us all excited. Our jaws drop from how awesome the upcoming game looks, we want to know more about the story and its characters and we want to see more gameplay footage. You know the drill. It happens with different titles, for different reasons, year after year. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t work out in the end as intended. That could be for various reasons – from bad promotion to fans simply expecting something else.

I think we can all agree when I say that Dead Island is that case. The initial announcement trailer, attached below, had everyone thinking this game would be somehow very special. The location seemed interesting, the characters seemed interesting and especially the emotions in this teaser were overwhelming. This game managed to do something in 4 minutes what other zombie games lacked. It felt so… real, charming, authentic. Just look for yourself, remember?

Yet in the end we are presented with something else. Something completely different that lacks most of the factors the above video has. The trailer created alot of buzz online and even though Dead Island is a good game, it’s not as good as we hoped and expected it to be. Bugs and minor technical errors aside, the gameplay itself isn’t anything revolutionary. That’s probably the core of the problem. People simply expected much more, not only in terms of story and character development. I appreciate though that Techland and Deep Silver tried to create something different and unique. More titles should have that courage and mindset.