8Bit/Digi

To be fair, using the word “again” implies that there was an actually effort made to make a new game or improve on the original. Instead gamers are given the same game only with a new title and maybe a few unnoticeable changes.The story takes place immediately after the ending of the last game with the immune survivors landing on an aircraft carrier after escaping from Banoi. In no time the ship is overrun with zombies and so the survivors flee to the island of Palanai. Its discovered that the island has also a zombie outbreak and the military is planning to nuke the island. Oh and some private contractor wants to find a way to weaponize the zombie virus.

Dead Island: Riptide has an impressive gameplay system that every gamer had hoped for. The game is played form a first-person perspective with the game-play focused around intense combat and a need for survival. All of this is set in an open world environment that is divided between large sections.

The gameplay also includes elements of an RPG as gamer will pick from five unique character that have their own special traits. As the player progresses they will acquire new skills and enhance their special traits.

At this point one might be scratching their head wondering how could such an awesome sounding game be bad? Well just because you combine horror survival with RPG and set it in open world doesn’t mean its going to be a great game. When compared to games like Far Cry 3, Fallout: New Vegas and  Skyrim; Dead Island: Riptide dose feel like a game that was developed out of laziness.

The combat seems to be a watered down version of Dead Rising‘s only it is very repetitive and dose get boring very quick. For most the game you will be just be bashing zombies with blunt objects multiple times and dying. You will find a few guns but they are useless and ammo is very limited.

Adding to the frustration is how little the RPG elements adds to the game-play. The special traits and skills don’t really impact your gaming experience while trying to level up takes a ridiculous amount of time.

Also not helping is the poor acting and dialogue that tries to be serious but ends up hurting the games quality.

Sadly these are all the same content along with problems that plagued the first game. Hence this would have to make Dead Island: Riptide a crowning achievement for laziness. Sure they did add a new character, changed the island and fixed a few bugs. But at its core it’s still the same game that most of us thought would be awesome back until we started Act 2.

Dead Island: Riptide may be a creative and original work of horror survival so long as a gamer never played Dead Island back in 2011. With an obvious lack of change would make this a game no one should bother with unless you never played Dead Island.