Reviews// Dead Island: Riptide

BIT OF A SPOILER
In the first Dead Island game, we followed our four protagonists; Sam B, Xian Mei, Logan Carter and Purna as they made their way across the zombie-infested island of Banoi. As you progressed through different locations around the island, you aided a variety of other survivors and claimed rewards for doing so. Eventually, you commandeered a helicopter and set your course as far away from the apocalyptic island as possible.
END OF A BIT OF A SPOILER

Your safety isn’t as secure as you’d hoped though. The opening scene of Riptide shows the all so familiar helicopter landing on what would appear to be a military ship – helicopters don’t run on oxygen ya’know - you were out of gas.

Now, you’d imagine that the vessel would be pretty safe, right? Well, you’re wrong. Shortly after your arrival, a furious storm hits, causing the virus to spread almost instantaneously throughout the ship.

The next thing you know, you wake up on a new, unfamiliar island to a new, unfamiliar face. The woman tells you that the island’s gone to shit, hands you a knife and tells you that you should head to the Paradise Survival Camp.

This is effectively where the game starts. After clearing out a horde of undead attacking a group of survivors at the camp, you join their ranks and consider the camp your first base. Now, as we’ve seen in many other games, Riptide offers both main quests and side quests, but we also have team quests.

Unfortunately, team quests are basically ‘Fetch Quests’. Why, why are there always fetch quests? They can come in handy though; each member of your team will contribute their bit towards upgrading and defending the base as you complete team quests for them – electrifying fences, providing you with mines etc.

You’re probably wondering which fences we’re going to be electrifying, well, Riptide introduces hub defence missions – your base is under attack from horde after horde of hungry undead, so it’s defend or die. You’re able to set up barbed wire fences as a wall of defence before the zombies break through and start mindlessly flailing their arms about.

These hub defence missions are fun, don’t get me wrong, but they definitely aren’t one of the major selling factors for Riptide.

When Dead Island was first released back in 2011, I found a new love in my life. Taking a police baton and clubbing some ugly mo’fuckers ‘round the head had a somewhat beautiful feel about it, and shit, don’t get me started on the bladed weapons.

Now, a lot of people didn’t enjoy the combat and found it very repetitive – I for one was happy as Larry (whoever Larry actually is) wandering around slicing limbs left, right and centre, so some of you may be quite disappointed that the combat formula doesn’t stray too far from the original path. No complaints from me though, I’m still happy lopping off legs and stomping skulls into the ground.

As always, melee weapons are customisable – baseball bat, nails, basenailbat. Cloth, lighter fluid, shovel, fiery-deathshovel. You get the point. Disappointingly though, there’s nothing new here either. The weapons and upgrades all seem fairly similar (if not the same). At the very least, it’s still amusing to watch a zombie burning while clubbing him ‘round the noggin.