How are you gamers? I hope you're all doing well. As you know, I've been playing Dead Island 2, and well, I'm practically at the end of the game. I have at most two missions left to finish it, so before I finish, I decided to try the Neighborhood Watch mode, which is the most "online" mode in the game.
I think it was a good idea to play this mode long after progressing through the main story, because it gives you a basic understanding of the game's dynamics and makes it much easier to grasp how the mechanics of this mode work. This applies to weapons, blueprints, crafting, and leveling processes. One of the extra things this mode offers is the placement and crafting of traps, something not used in the main story.
Now, Neighborhood Watch is quite different from how the game unfolds, due to the exceptions mentioned above. First of all, it's a long-running game mode, since the game lasts five days, and each day is a different process leading up to the final confrontation. Obviously, you're not actually playing for five days, but the five days pass in roughly an hour and a half.
Each day is supposed to be a different process. The idea is to obtain the bonus from each deployment location each day and survive as long as possible to collect weapons and experience, and, well, level up. Here, you'll level up in the game, but you'll also level up as a character, which are two very different things. The game level is the character boost during the five-day session, but the character outside of the game has a level and a rank that you must increase to gain more items, attributes, and abilities.
The first four days are for gathering and preparing for the final day. The fifth day is when you must prepare the shelter and all the weapons you collected to face an imminent attack on the shelter by a brutal horde of zombies.
Another thing about this mode is that, first, you won't be playing as any of the story's characters; they're different characters with distinct abilities and backstories. Second, the gameplay is, we could say, much more realistic. The zombies are more aggressive, faster, and appear in much greater numbers. The game is more frantic, doesn't allow for exploration, is timed, and you often have to run to escape and complete the mission instead of killing zombies while exploring, something you can do in the main mission.
Neighborhood Watch is undoubtedly another side of the game, something to keep it alive once you finish it. It's not bad. I don't know how long the online mode will last without friends, since I haven't tried it that way, but I think it allows you to stay engaged with the game longer after you've finished. Well, gamers, see you soon in my next post about the ending of Dead Island 2.
