During GamesCom our team was invited by the Deep silver guys to a exclusive presentation of the new game from the Dead Island franchise Dead Island: Epidemic. The game is a break away from the traditional Dead Island series and is in fact a new type of MOBA, using what developers call a PvPvPvE system, which basically confront 3 teams and the AI.

 

This new genre of which you speakwant to believe that what they have done is add a new faction to the battle compared with the typical two factions, and an element of PvE (which are the waves of zombies and guardians) who has always been a staple for MOBA plays from the first day, but in Dead Island: Epidemic are a neutral faction. So personally I think that the extra "PvP" is somewhat unnecessary, since it seems to only use it to separate from the herd... and is not really necessary since the game makes it on their own.

This new genre is not as unique as they’re trying to imply because they only have added an extra faction, and a new PvE element (which are the waves of zombies and guardians) which is something that has always been a staple to MOBA games from from the first day, albeit in Dead Island: Epidemic they are a neutral faction. So personally I think that the extra "PvP" is somewhat unnecessary, especially as it only really seems to be being used to separate it from the herd… and is not really necessary because the game makes it on their own.

We got to have a hands on play with 3 teams of 4 players, each led by one of the guys from Deep Silver, as we battles it out on one of the available maps, a sort of tourist resort that seemed to fit perfectly to the Dead Island environments. With dozens of available weapons, and nearly endless possible combinations that can be created we took to the field in a point capture game where the teams struggle to control these points to accumulate score.

In the game you can choose between various types of characters; tank, medic, scout and the like, each with their own skills. As soon as we were in game we had to fight against waves of zombies that could be killed with one or two hits, and sometimes against elite enemies against which we needed to fight together. The zombies are factionless, so they target whoever is closest at the time, but fighting both them and the other teams makes for an interesting battle. Allies are able to throw down package drops for heals and ammo and other resources, which all in all makes for a very fun and frantic encounter.

The only negative point that we found in our experience was that during the fight our team and the green team pretty much went head to head all the time, leaving the blue team to sit pretty and their points went pretty much uncontested. Whilst I don’t expect in a normal competitive game people would idly sit by and let this happen, it does beg the question as to how well a three way fight will work in practice.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 28th, 2013 at 3:31 pm and is filed under MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.