So, I'm a few hours in, and here's some of my impressions: after playing the game for my first hour, I've came to a conclusion: Dead Island is nothing more than a first-person Dead Rising...in fact, the only huge difference is that you're not going toe-to-toe against thousands of zombies, you can't pick up everything in sight for hilarious zombie deaths (with so many beach balls in the game, kind of depressing all I can do is kick it) and no atrocious save method (at least on the PC, there's no option for a manual save...everything's done automatically :?). Aside from that, everything's in check: a WTF storyline, RPG mechanics, taking quests from some very unstable survivors (without spoiling anything, let's just say these guys are even more zany than Dead Rising's colorful cast) as well as being able to create some pretty unique and devastating weapons....and *groan* weapons also degrade over use :roll:. I know it's for the "tension" and "realism," but it's just annoying :|.

Right now, I'm about level 7, and got to try out making a couple sweet weapons (the pre-order razor bat, and the nail bat). So far, this game needs some serious polish: some environments look like crap (even more noticable when you talk to people), for some reason, pressing Y puts me in debug mode (where you can freely pass through geometry), sprinting, attacking and jumping uses stamina...but oddly enough, the almighty Duke Nukem boot doesn't (sure, the jumping, Chuck Norris kick eats stamina, but not this one...strange)...and of course, I'm waiting for that Arena bonus...which for some very odd reason I have to wait a whole month for :?. Still, I'm having a blast. Let's just say that I won't be the least bit suprised when I see my Steam manager going crazy with the updates for this game (at least, I seriously hope so :|). Still, I've had far worse launch day game-breakers (I'm looking at you, Fallout New Vegas! :evil:.).