Ace, will try that out later. Bedtime now!

Yeah, can generally be found for your local equivalent of about £20 or so now, so I guess a couple of months at least. Supposed to be good!

So I finally finished DI after about 90-hours of play. The ending was kind of disappointing IMO (spoiler alert)
The final 'boss battle' was easier than many of the tougher creaturers already encountered e.g. the RAM, the floaters and even the thugs. In fact the 'boss' was a glorified thug who ran around like one of the maniacal, screaming infected. He didn't even have a weapon. So with loads of ammo you have to just keep spraying him with bullets, getting knocked out, rinse and repeat. After a few such cycles, it finally succumbs, you get on a helicopter and fly off to a ship with your virtual playmates. The end.
Anyway I started into the sequel, DI Riptide. It almost overwhelmed my meagre gpu and ran in slomo until I dialed down all settings, and resolution to 1440x900. Loads more detail and taxing fx. In general apart from a protracted initial shibboard battle, it feels like a polished clone of the original, same characters, same island, same zombies. In fact based on that initial shipboard battle, I was hoping it was going to an all-guns-all-the-time kind of game, which would be really different from slowly building a cache of suitable weapons. But that was not to be...

90 hours?! :-O

Is that the level of commitment I've got to put in to completing this game? Damn. Or is the 90 hours made up of doing every sidequest and checking every nook and cranny for energy drinks?

"Or is the 90 hours made up of doing every sidequest and checking every nook and cranny for energy drinks?"

There's a 7-second delay to recover everytime you get knocked out. Do the math.

Ok.

90 hours x 60 = 5400 minutes in game.
5400 x 60 = 324000 seconds.

324000 / 7 = 46285 knockdowns.

Not sure what the point is, but if you've been constantly knocked down that many times, you have a commitment to this game I can't relate too.
 

I probably got knocked down a few hundred times. The rest was spent running from, kicking, stomping, bludgeoning, shooting, slashing, hacking, stabbing, incinerating and/or blowing up living dead; fixing, upgrading, building and selecting weapons; listening to assorted characters' monologues; hanging out at the beach catching some rays; recklessly destroying countless vehicles; surfing, girl-watching, eating in restaurants (mostly fish), and waiting at the airport to get through customs.

Oh and I picked up a gamepad (logitech f310), so I'm going to see how that works (supposedly keyboard & mouse are superior for fps, just want to try it out since I used to play original Ghost Recon with a joystick and that definitely worked better than kb+m). Interestingly, to get the gamepad to work on xp, you have to install ms xbox controller drivers: http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Logitech-G-Controllers/Logitech-F310-Windows-XP-32-bit-Service-Pack-3-My-installation/td-p/619074

Fixed.

Consider it a service.
 

If you have any trouble with it get an xbox controller (for pc). I LOVE my controller.

I find it very interesting, fascinating even. Why, don't you? (drool)

The logitech is half as expensive. I decided to try it out because this game seems to require a lot more keyboard interaction what with kicking, picking up stuff, opening doors and such like. Also driving around is a bit hurky-jerky. Thing needs cruise control.

Ooh looky:

http://www.theplaywrite.com/tools-and-utilities/tweak-visual-settings-controls-and-performance-with-dead-island-riptide-helper/

Works great with the logitech after I followed the guide. Now I have to learn a whole new skill. :-&

I was a console girl before moving on to pc, so controllers are generally more intuitive for me. I always use one when I can. Except, strangely Human Revolution and the like, where I go back and forth, or forget I could use a controller and go to mouse and keyboard automatically. Strange how your brain gets trained on the first use of something (I played the original Deus Ex with m&k) and has a hard time letting go.

I'm left handed, but acclimated to using the mouse right-handed years ago. I use a wacom tablet left-handed though (can't really handle the stylus with my right too well).

I can already see where the pad is going to work better for some functions than kb-m, not so well for others (having tried it for all of 10 minutes). Oh, and I see DI-R has a 'southpaw' controller preset, so deffo gonna try that.

So now I'm pushing 40-hours into DI Riptide, and I have to say it has turned out to be a far better game than the original (though that may be partly down to familiarity with basic game mechanics, and me doing stuff better). The plot has had quite a few interesting wrinkles, great new scenery, great weapons made better with poison and vastly superior boss battles (which staggered my pc, TBH). It started out as seeming like a retread, but it is really much more than that, it's actually kind of addictive  :-@

Got me the GOLD katana tonight, and immediately applied the deathstalker mod to it.

I can die happy now!

But before that, I can kill fuckloads of zombies.  %-)

I've played a little of Riptide, I like that you can carry on with your character from the previous game with all stats intact, though as the enemies you encounter seem to always be on a par with your level, it doesn't bring any sense of empowerment.

I got a katana towards the end of the first game, I stuck a hot rod mod on it, that was kinda cool looking. The best weapon I got was a two handed sledgehammer (called hammer of Gabriel or some such) with an electro-shock battery mod and spikes. It exploded grunt zombies and sent some of the bigger ones flying.

Yeah the enemies get harder to kill and more dangerous as your "skill" points accumulate. However they both get maxed out which is kind of a bummer.

I used the hotrod mod on a machete, it is kind of cool looking. The "magic wand" mod you described is fabulous, on a gold construction hammer it is really lethal and durable, and can send even thugs flying away and breaking apart on impact. Very good physics on that one. Blade weapons generally have low durability (unless you throw them, which is a bit risky because you can lose them outright) and are expensive to repair, not a good bet if you are goal focused on building a war chest. Mine is fluctuating between $2.5-3m. In a good session I can gain ~$40-50k, and by periodically cashing out diamonds, blades, cans of food, and souvenir photos @ $2k with certain high-paying characters, you get fairly dramatic boost. Each time you get killed, which usually only happens to me when I'm shitfaced drunk, you lose 10%. Such are the economics of zombie-hunting.