Reviews// Dead Island: Riptide

All this talk of similarities is getting boring. What’s new? As well as the four characters from the first Dead Island, we have a fifth. His name is John Morgan, a hand-to-hand brute with legs as strong as a horse.

As you level up, you earn points that can be used to upgrade your character – there are three upgrade trees; Combat, Survival and Fury. As you upgrade Morgan’s Combat tree, he unlocks some strong hand-to-hand combat moves; one of them being a sprinting super-kick. As you’ve probably guessed, it’s fun. Very fun.

Now Riptide focuses a lot on water rather than land, so boats are your best way to get about. The problem is, boats are scarce and you often find yourself wading through miles of water to get to your destination – it can get very tedious.

Even if you do manage to find a boat, it’s not all as simple as you’d like to hope – boats are very clunky and slow, and you'll often find that some of the floating dead aren't actually dead. These zombies will jump aboard the second you give them a chance, and you have to be ready for the quick-time event to kick them in the face as they lunge towards you. Thankfully though, boats have speed boosts. It’s always been fun driving around splatting zombies in a Jeep, and mowing towards them in a boat is no different.

As well as focusing on water, Deep Silver has decided to add weather changes to Riptide. That’s all well and good - a sudden storm breaking out while you’re fending off a huge horde of undead. Well, it would be all well and good if it’d been executed slightly better. I’ve literally seen the weather go from a lovely summers day to a mighty great downpour in under a second. Come on guys – even in England the weather doesn’t change that quickly.

Visually, Riptide doesn’t stand out much more than the original Dead Island did. Don’t get me wrong, the environments look a lot nicer, but graphically there’s nothing spectacular to see here.

Overall, I think Riptide will be a welcome addition to my games pile. It’s very much the same as the first Dead Island, but with a few new additions.

If you found that the combat never got old and you still enjoyed mugging off the brain-dead silhouettes of former men for the $62 they were carrying, then Riptide is definitely a must-buy. If, however, you found the combat repetitive and perhaps slightly boring, there isn’t much of anything new to hold your attention here.

Pros:
+More slicing and bashing undead heads
+Hub defence missions are fun
+Mowing down zombies in a car/boat never gets old

Cons:
-Feels more like a Dead Island DLC than a new game
-Nothing new weapon/upgrade wise
-Annoying ‘fetch quests’

SPOnG Score: 7/10