Horror

Tsk, tsk. The ends little boys will go to for a brief glimpse of some video game zombie vajayjay.

(Btw, skip forward to 1:55 to get to the good stuff.)

Broken Island

HIGH Getting the timing just right and lopping the heads off of two charging Infected simultaneously.

LOW Spending two hours on the same fight because of a badly-designed save system.

WTF Headshots not only don't kill zombies, they barely even do bonus damage.

I covered this a bit in the review, but it's important to reiterate—leveling up implies things to the player that Dead Island doesn't deliver. Extra health is meaningless, extra damage is meaningless—over the course of the game zombies will always take the exact same number of hits to kill, so all the experience I'm gaining doesn't seem to serve any purpose.

Been putting some time into Dead Island, so I figured I'd throw out some random impressions for those who are curious. To start with, there is no doubt that this game is buggy.

So... Dream Team, eh?

HIGH The Moor Pu Dekcuf.

LOW The "Big Boner" and chase sequences.

WTF Justine looks like a reject from the Metal Gear Solid series.

Magnifico, Indeed

HIGH Killing six demons with a single Hot Boner.

LOW The boring switch puzzles right before the final boss.

WTF If I had to pick one, it'd be the discovery that strawberries are made of ground up tongues. Really, the entire game is a giant WTF.

I must begin with a disclaimer that I didn't like Shadows of the Damned very much, and I'm not sure if I'll bother finishing it (this coming from a man who didn't even give up on Flower, Sun, and Rain). The gameplay is standard, if unusually finicky, third-person shooting that borrows a stun mechanic from Alan Wake, the art direction is not particularly interesting, and the humor is something I'm about 20 years too old to appreciate.

More Boner Jokes than You Can Shake a Dick At

HIGH The interplay between Garcia and Johnson is often quite hilarious. I loved these characters, despite their inherent cheesiness. Oh, and the Evil Dead homage level.

LOW Avoiding a recurring enemy who instantly kills you when she touches you. The game's controls make that far more challenging than it should be at certain points.

WTF Seriously, this whole game is one giant WTF?!? moment.

We're back! Again! Join us for captivating spoiler-free discussions of Portal 2 and Dead Space 2. Plus: the merits of silent protagonists, PSN madness, Chi buys a 3DS, Mike subscribes to Final Fantasy XIV, Tim loses it over Dante's Inferno, and so much more. We were just so happy to hear each other's voices, we couldn't stop gabbing. With Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, Richard Naik, and Tim "Chance" Spaeth.

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Links:

• Dead Space 2 Review
• Portal Review
• Portal 2 Review
• Dante's Inferno Review

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

In Space, No One Can Hear Your Strings

HIGH The desperate and well-conceived opening moments of the game.

LOW The conceptually lazy final level.

WTF Why don't they just lock Clarke out of the maintenance tunnels?