Editorials
Six Lessons ‘Dead Island’ Can Learn From ‘Far Cry 3’
With its emphasis on co-op and light RPG elements, Dead Island is one of the more interesting takes on the popular zombie genre we’ve seen from a big budget game in some time. I enjoyed the original quite a bit, despite its flaws. The story and characters may be alarmingly dull, but there’s nothing quite as satisfying as strapping a car battery to a machete so you can mow down a horde of zombies. I recently bought Far Cry 3 (finally), and I’ve realized that the entire time I’m playing it, all I can think about is how many things it does better than Dead Island. Comparing it to the post-apocalyptic zombie game might seem a bit odd at first, but the two games are actually very similar.
Each game violently tosses you into a hostile world where pretty much everything wants to kill you, and usually in horribly brutal ways — only yesterday I was mauled by a bear as I was stalking two pirates on a beach only to jump into the ocean and get eaten by a shark. Both games are about exploration, survival, and scavenging to survive, though Far Cry 3 puts more effort into the all of that. So while they’re different, they’re also really similar. The big difference is Far Cry 3 is far superior to Dead Island in many ways. To remedy this, I’ve chosen six things Far Cry 3 does really well, so Dead Island can take notes. Check them out after the break.
Now, because Dead Island: Riptide is already pretty deep into development at this point (it releases in April), some of these ideas might not be feasible this late into production. Riptide isn’t being described as a real “sequel,” it’s more like a Dead Island 1.5, so I’m pretty sure Deep Silver has a true sequel in the works, possibly from a different developer. If they do, I totally wouldn’t mind if they “borrow” some or all of this list to help make Dead Island 2 the best damn zombie game it can be.
Memorable Characters
Can you name any character from Dead Island that wasn’t Xian, Purna, Sam B, or Logan? Could you even name those?I couldn’t name them all (thanks, Google search!), but I can name several of the people I met during the many, many hours I spent playing Far Cry 3. Though let’s be honest here, when I say playing Far Cry 3, what I really mean is setting bears on fire and stabbing sharks in the face in Far Cry 3. More on that later.
Visually, they weren’t all that special, but the excellent voice work and mannerisms made them seem like real people. They look and act like real people, while in Dead Island it was often difficult to tell the living from the dead. Unfortunately, Dead Island Riptide isn’t starting fresh, as you can import your character(s) from the first game into the pseudo-sequel, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get the voices and animation right this time around.
Satisfying Stealth
Dead Island was in no way a stealth game, though it should’ve been. Look, if you’re going to make the guns as useless as they were in the original game, forcing you to get up close and personal, then why not give me the chance to sneak up on a zombie for an execution? Sure, you could do that in Dead Island, but it was difficult, and more often than not it ended with you desperately trying to hack (or bludgeon) your way out of a crowd of newly pissed of zombies.
There’s more to this idea, too. I want a bow, and I want to be able to sneak up on the undead for silent kills, but I also want to be able to distract them. Far Cry 3 has a nifty, and beautifully simple, feature that lets you press right on the D-pad to throw a rock. This will create a noise that temporarily distracts enemies in the area, great for clearing out a heavily guarded area or for getting an enemy to turn around so you can sneak up behind them and stab them in the face.
I just noticed how much time I spent face-stabbing in Far Cry 3… kind of scary, actually.
Equipment Upgrades
Yes, Dead Island already lets you create and customize the weapons in your zombie-slaying arsenal, but I’d like to see this taken one step further. I want to be able to use the items I scavenge from the environment (more on that later, too) to make the game more enjoyable. I want to feel stronger, and I don’t only want that sense of progression to come from my current level. I want to be able to craft bigger pouches, pockets, backpacks, etc. so I can hold more items, ammunition, and other precious resources (such as the incredibly stupid energy drink and granola bar health items). Please?
I Am Jason Brody
There are first person games, and there are first person games. Dead Island falls firmly into the first group, while Far Cry 3 is definitely a card carrying member of the second. While I play Far Cry 3, I feel like I’m in the world. Jason Brody may be a too entitled and moderately unlikable guy, but I felt like I was him. When I fell and hit the ground too hard, I felt it. When I got too close to fire and had to pat out the flames, I felt it. When I was shot and I had to dig the bullet out of my arm, I felt it. When I swam across a shallow river only to get attacked by an alligator, I felt it — and my roommates heard my screams. I case areas before I go in, observing them from afar, assessing the risks, and deciding on which approach I should take to complete my objective. I feel like I’m in the game.
In Dead Island, I haul ass from point A to point B, hoping I don’t run out of stamina (something they should remove from Riptide) before I reach my destination. If something tries to stop me I spam the right trigger until the bad thing falls down.
See the difference?
Scavenge To Survive
Scavenging is something that’s admittedly a little difficult to make interesting. I mean, you’re really just looking through bags, boxes, corpses, and various other containers in search of items your character needs to survive. It’s the adventure game equivalent to grinding — though there’s totally that too in Dead Island — but that doesn’t mean it can’t be satisfying. Sifting through the contents of countless briefcases isn’t fun, nor is it particularly satisfying. However, swimming through shark infested waters to that broken down ship that you just know has treasure in it, exploring ancient temples, or climbing a mountain so you can check that shack near its peak is all exponentially more satisfying.
In Far Cry 3, scavenging is moderately enjoyable. You’re still looking through containers, but the game made getting to many of those containers fun. I’d like to see more of that in the next Dead Island.
A Sense of Exploration
Now, Far Cry 3 doesn’t have the most memorable of game worlds. It’s a big, gorgeous island with few recognizable landmarks. Essentially, it looks like real life. Dead Island suffers from the same issue, in that its world isn’t all that interesting. It’s beautiful, and the contrast between a zombie apocalypse and a tropical island resort was fun to look at, but exploring it wasn’t very enjoyable. For an open world game to succeed, its world has to be interesting and unique and fun to explore. Far Cry 3 did this by making its world unpredictable. Bandit hide-outs, temple ruins, sharks, bears, tigers, big fucking birds that you really should not underestimate, you never know what’s going to happen, so you always have to be prepared. Dead Island is trying to remedy this by adding a dynamic weather system into the mix (I totally requested this last summer) that can cause flash floods. I love this idea and I can’t wait to see it in action.
Far Cry 3 also made getting around its world easy. If you’re lazy (like me, sometimes) you can fast travel, or you can drive one of the many vehicles you find scattered about the world, or you can go by foot and hope one of the aforementioned monsters doesn’t eat you along the way, or you can grab a boat or jetski and jump waterfalls, or you can paraglide above it all in relative safety, I only hope you’re good at landing (I always messed that part up). The point is, you have options, and each is fun in a different way. Riptide has added a boat, though I guess we’ll have to wait and see how that turns out.
While we’re taking pages out of other game’s books, let’s look at The Walking Dead. In Telltale’s episodic series, which I’ve recently discovered actually causes me physical pain if I go a day without talking about it, I cared about the people I interacted with, I cared about the person I controlled, and I cared about the story. I can’t say the same for Dead Island, and I wish the game had made me feel even a fraction of the emotions I felt while watching its incredible trailer.
Have a question? Feel free to ever-so-gently toss Adam an email, or follow him on Twitter and Bloody Disgusting.
The problem with filming sequels back-to-back is that, unless you can afford expensive reshoots, there’s no easy way to adjust course in between movies if fans react badly to where the story is headed. That’s why it’s important to have a complete narrative thought out well in advance lest you accidentally kill a budding franchise.
However, this isn’t always the case. Every once in a while, it seems like the cinema gods smile upon certain chaotic productions and gift moviegoers with complete franchises that feel like more than the sum of their hastily produced parts. Ted Nicolaou’s Bloodlust: Subspecies III is precisely one of these miraculous pictures, with the raw talents of the artists involved (as well as the continued support from Romania) turning the feature into an effective conclusion for a series that kind of made things up as the filmmakers went along.
That’s why I’d like to invite my fellow readers to join me on this third part of our journey through the Subspecies franchise as we look into Bloodlust and talk about how it remains a surprisingly satisfying finale to the original trilogy.
A Trilogy Planned on the Fly
Released only a year after Bloodstone found plenty of success in rental stores and mail-in VHS catalogues worldwide, 1994’s Bloodlust was produced at the same time as its predecessor in (mostly) the same locations and with the same team. This means that the movie benefited from all the same upgrades as Bloodstone, with the crew now being more experienced with the ins and outs of surviving a low-budget Romanian production and the cast really settling into their characters.
At this point, everything from location scouting to the makeup process had been streamlined, with Wayne Toth and Norman Cabrera, the main duo behind special effects, even switching out time-consuming prosthetics for latex gloves in order to speed up Anders Hove’s monstrous transformation. The titular “subspecies” demons were also once again relegated to a mere cameo appearance due to the laborious puppetry required to bring them to life.
The only real hiccup came from the fact that actress Denice Duff had replaced the first film’s Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and was immediately expected to portray the character as both an innocent victim in part II and as a secondary villain in part III. According to behind-the-scenes interviews, the hectic production schedule that blended two different movies meant that Duff would often find herself having to alternate between two incredibly different versions of Michelle during the same shooting day – though it’s obvious that she’s having more fun with Bloodlust’s more traditionally vampiric version of her character.
In the finished film, we pick things up immediately where the previous entry left off as Rebecca (Melanie Shatner) is forced to leave her vampire sister Michelle (Duff) behind in the dungeons of Castle Vladislav due to the rising sun. This allows Mummy (Pamela Gordon) to use Michelle’s blood to revive the vicious Radu (Hove) so that he may continue his quest for the coveted Bloodstone – a magical artifact that perpetually drips the Blood of Saints.
Meanwhile, the dreamy US embassy agent Mel (Kevin Blair) agrees to help Rebecca plan a rescue mission, though they’re unaware that Radu has become infatuated with Michelle during his attempts to guide her growing bloodlust. This all culminates in a climactic confrontation meant to tie up all of the series’ loose ends in one of Full Moon Pictures’ most ambitious productions.
The Evolution of Radu
Like its predecessor, Bloodlust: Subspecies III was also warmly received by fans who argued that the series was an even bigger success than Full Moon’s other major horror franchise, Puppet Master. This praise wasn’t unanimous, however, as 1994 had seen the rise of a more modern breed of sexy vampire popularized by Anne Rice, with old-school Nosferatu like Radu being viewed as obsolete when compared to the likes of Lestat and Gary Oldman’s take on Dracula.
In a way, one might argue that Nicolaou’s film is something of a swan song for the classic vampire story, as Bloodlust combines all of the traditional elements we tend to associate with these tales into a single tragic yarn that ties a neat little bow on Radu’s story as well as the old-fashioned monster movies that he represents. The finale remains shocking despite the fact that this is the third time we see Radu get brutally killed onscreen, with the brief tease that he may one day return feeling more like a nod towards the nature of evil rather than sequel bait.
The film dabbles a bit in gothic romance and even explores the inherent power fantasy behind transforming into an immortal creature of the night, but the filmmakers never lose sight of Radu as a demonic force even when he’s willing to betray his beloved Mummy for Michelle’s sake. In fact, his twisted “love” for his fledgling makes him even creepier as we get the feeling that his passion comes from a dark and disturbing place.
Anders Hove is at his absolute best in this film, with the effects department boosting his moments of what the younger generation would call “aura farming” whenever Radu emerges from shadows like a 90s version of Count Orlok. There are even a couple of surprisingly effective jump-scares here, which is why I’d argue that Bloodlust cements Radu as one of the most memorable cinematic vampires of all time despite his humble origins.
Subspecies Saves Its Best For Last
Nicolaou and Vlad Panescu also saved the best for “last” (more on that in a bit) regarding the film’s visuals, with the cinematography and overall atmosphere of Bloodlust absolutely surpassing what we saw in the previous films. Everything feels appropriately climactic this time around (including the wonderful soundtrack that was co-composed alongside an authentic Romanian orchestra), and I appreciate how this is the fastest-paced entry in the trilogy since the film doesn’t need to waste time setting anything up.
Bloodlust still suffers from some of the same low-budget blemishes as its predecessors, but there’s so much creative passion here that no amount of wonky effects work or stilted dialogue can get in the way of appreciating the flick’s gothic grandeur. That’s why it’s not surprising that the movie’s definitive(-ish) ending would later be retconned as fans begged for more Radu.
Of course, the next entry in this series would be a different kind of vampiric endeavor altogether, with the filmmakers attempting to engage with the same trends that ultimately killed Radu and his antiquated kin. That, however, is a story for another time. For now, I’ll merely insist that Bloodlust: Subspecies III remains a highlight of Full Moon’s expansive catalogue and is definitely worth seeking out today.
You must be logged in to post a comment.