This is a disappointing sequel to a game I sincerely enjoyed. Riptide starts where Dead Island started off; rescued on a military ship, conked out from sedatives after a medical examination. Things seem to be going well; you're on the way back to a civilization not dominated by inconveniently aggressive zombies until, boom. Monsoon. Zombie invasion. Two things which don't usually compliment one another are now two things you need to adjust to. Waking up from sedatives you find that the boat is infested with zombies and with some initially impressive waves, storm features and getting jerked about on an unsteady deck you end up getting thrown off the boat and onto another zombie inhabited island. Fantastic. Luckily, nobody's hurt and your new orange clad friend decides to come along for the ride.
This new but vapid character is awkward and weak compared to the original four due to his focus being ‘hand to hand’ combat. Unless I can start kickboxing, judo throwing and tackling enemies like a champion martial arts instructor on steroids then I really don’t care that this new guy can punch harder than everybody else. It’s boring and his perks are all useless. Besides, I already have plenty of hammers, knives and kicking/punching ability in every other character, so thanks, but no thanks.
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| Good thing Xin's capable because the others couldn't give a stuff about what she's doing. |
This new but vapid character is awkward and weak compared to the original four due to his focus being ‘hand to hand’ combat. Unless I can start kickboxing, judo throwing and tackling enemies like a champion martial arts instructor on steroids then I really don’t care that this new guy can punch harder than everybody else. It’s boring and his perks are all useless. Besides, I already have plenty of hammers, knives and kicking/punching ability in every other character, so thanks, but no thanks.
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| "Greetings! Turns out, I'm one of those incredibly rare, biologically immune, medical anomalies that you've been hearing so much about. Who'd've guessed it." |
The graphics have not been improved since the first game and, whilst not terrible, there was definitely room for improvement. The game does water and tropical landscapes really well and the first game did truly look like paradise but the zombies and people in particular have a very strange, gluey appearance. Saying that, Riptide does a great, partially drowned jungle landscape that's fun to splash about it and explore. The game remains fairly open world but there's not a lot of point in exploring as the main and side quests take you everywhere you need to go, but at least it's not linear and the choice is there to explore as you will. The problem with this game is the lack of diverse environments. Whilst Dead Island had very clear cut areas; Beach Resort, City, Jungle and Laboratory and finally a prison the Panoi islands are extremely repetitive and just all a mash of beaches and tropical, flowery looking jungles. There's a couple of nice shanty town type villages that are all held up on stilts to keep out the water and, at one point, a quaint little town with a nice cinema that mixes it up a bit but apart from that there's not really much going on in Panoi that changes the way you play. Dead Island's progression from a fairly relaxed beach resort to an extremely challenging City area was notable but Panoi doesn't have tht 'let's crank it up a notch' environmental shift which I found disappointing.
A familiar feature that appears in Riptide is it's irritating and consistent glitchyness but this time, it's less endearing. By this point it's not so much; 'kick a beachball and you'll glitch into it and die! Ha ha ha!' And more, 'guys... come on, you didn't even try to listen to feedback did you?' The weather in particular is rather bugged and given that the whole, 'we warned you a monsoon was coming, now we're in it!' was an important and heavily advertised feature means that this buggy weather engine is pretty unacceptable. Good weather in a game can be a really enjoyable component especially if it changes the way we play but, unfortunatly, Riptide's weather is simply bipolar. One minute it’s all sunshine and good tidings and then, two steps forward later, it’s overcast and pissing it down with rain. This is most noticeable around one of your main basecamps where walking forward a little in one direction is guaranteed to dramatically change the blue skies to storm and rain with no natural transitions indicating it'll start raining soon. It’s a laughably annoying feature given the hype that revolved around the promise that we’d be trekking through chest high water, battling the unpredictable and dynamic weather of the tropical isles and relying only on teamwork to get us through this whole new threat. It all sounds great, if only whomever was responsible for marketing that idea hadn't got confused between the terms ‘dynamic weather’ and ‘buggy and poorly glued together weather transitions.’ Another irritating glitch includes zombies spawning directly behind you and, somehow, managing to one-hit kill you before you've had a chance to even turn around. This zombie spawning bug is extremely frustrating when it happens with the larger zombies like Floaters and Butchers who often re-spawn directly after you've killed them if you move away from the area a tiny bit.
A familiar feature that appears in Riptide is it's irritating and consistent glitchyness but this time, it's less endearing. By this point it's not so much; 'kick a beachball and you'll glitch into it and die! Ha ha ha!' And more, 'guys... come on, you didn't even try to listen to feedback did you?' The weather in particular is rather bugged and given that the whole, 'we warned you a monsoon was coming, now we're in it!' was an important and heavily advertised feature means that this buggy weather engine is pretty unacceptable. Good weather in a game can be a really enjoyable component especially if it changes the way we play but, unfortunatly, Riptide's weather is simply bipolar. One minute it’s all sunshine and good tidings and then, two steps forward later, it’s overcast and pissing it down with rain. This is most noticeable around one of your main basecamps where walking forward a little in one direction is guaranteed to dramatically change the blue skies to storm and rain with no natural transitions indicating it'll start raining soon. It’s a laughably annoying feature given the hype that revolved around the promise that we’d be trekking through chest high water, battling the unpredictable and dynamic weather of the tropical isles and relying only on teamwork to get us through this whole new threat. It all sounds great, if only whomever was responsible for marketing that idea hadn't got confused between the terms ‘dynamic weather’ and ‘buggy and poorly glued together weather transitions.’ Another irritating glitch includes zombies spawning directly behind you and, somehow, managing to one-hit kill you before you've had a chance to even turn around. This zombie spawning bug is extremely frustrating when it happens with the larger zombies like Floaters and Butchers who often re-spawn directly after you've killed them if you move away from the area a tiny bit.
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| Gorgeous landscape, and I suppose the people look alright from a distance too. |
Weather and glitches aside; Riptide lacks a lot of what made the first game fun. Zombie bashing is not something I usually seek out in a game due to my hatred of using guns in games but Dead Island always had a fun focus on melee weapons and the ability to target specific areas with knives and stuff, happy days. An entire game of that later though and it becomes boring so unless something changes, there’s not a lot to stick around for. Storyline, good characters, new perk abilities, more challenging combat and environments… all of these, even just one of these, would have been great. Unfortunately, 'Dead Island: Riptide' fails to deliver anything that’s an incentive to stick around for; the storyline is weak and uninspired, the characters are over levelled and whilst there are a couple of new perks they’re not interesting and just serve to overpower the character even more so. Unless there’s a degree of struggle with survival or a storyline that makes you want to find out what happens next then it’s not a game, it’s a chore. Upgrading your abilities is now pointless and there’s no element of choice any longer since you can basically have every available perk. That careful selecting of what to pick next from the three perk trees is gone, leaving you to just bang it on everything because you’ve already got what you need to bomb through hoards of zombies who are now more an irritation than a threat.
A much needed positive comment about the game is the new zombies that are now present and all of them have some form of unique quality. You can now fight 'grenadiers' which spit a sort of toxic waste, acid type substance at you and screamers who deafen you with their high pitched wailing. The game also features a vast array of drowners who lay face down in the water, playing dead and finally the elusive wrestler who are monsterously huge, deformed zombies that knock you off the ground by smashing their meaty fists into it.
A much needed positive comment about the game is the new zombies that are now present and all of them have some form of unique quality. You can now fight 'grenadiers' which spit a sort of toxic waste, acid type substance at you and screamers who deafen you with their high pitched wailing. The game also features a vast array of drowners who lay face down in the water, playing dead and finally the elusive wrestler who are monsterously huge, deformed zombies that knock you off the ground by smashing their meaty fists into it.
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| Dead Island often pulls off visually appealing envionments for you to get frustrated in. |
There’s a new system for upgrading the rest of your, unplayable, team which is nice as previously they didn’t even exist in game except for in the cutscenes. The ‘system’ is basically finding them special objects, giving them to them in return for a boatload of experience and then having them get a little stronger. It feels like progression but truly they’re only ever used for ‘hold the fort’ type missions which get quickly repetitive; an endless battle of putting fences in glowing locations and bashing any zombies that get through.
The last new feature worth mentioning is the addition of boats. You now have access to these nippy little speed boats that are difficult to get used to but, once you do, are handy for zipping along the water like a champion martial arts instructor on steroids, piloting a boat. These sound great in principle since many areas are waterlogged and it's just unreasonable to wade everywhere since it's such a slow way of getting around. Unfortunantly, once you're in the boat you cannot see where the water ends and the surrounding islands begin as the HUD map just gives us total darkness with our little 'you are here' icon displayed. In single player this is irritating and in co-op it means I have to get my girlfriend to keep the main menu map up on the other tv so I can glance over and see which way doesn't have a river dead-end. I guess it encourages co-op play but, frankly, it’s just a pain in the ass as the both of us as, for the fifth time, she gets dragged into the water by a wet and pissed off zombie because her map blocks out what's going on in the background. Overall, I guess it’s better than nothing but it’s a shame it wasn’t… better.
The last new feature worth mentioning is the addition of boats. You now have access to these nippy little speed boats that are difficult to get used to but, once you do, are handy for zipping along the water like a champion martial arts instructor on steroids, piloting a boat. These sound great in principle since many areas are waterlogged and it's just unreasonable to wade everywhere since it's such a slow way of getting around. Unfortunantly, once you're in the boat you cannot see where the water ends and the surrounding islands begin as the HUD map just gives us total darkness with our little 'you are here' icon displayed. In single player this is irritating and in co-op it means I have to get my girlfriend to keep the main menu map up on the other tv so I can glance over and see which way doesn't have a river dead-end. I guess it encourages co-op play but, frankly, it’s just a pain in the ass as the both of us as, for the fifth time, she gets dragged into the water by a wet and pissed off zombie because her map blocks out what's going on in the background. Overall, I guess it’s better than nothing but it’s a shame it wasn’t… better.
Score – 6/10
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