Dead Island: Riptide (MINOR SPOILERS)
-Jonathan
The zombie genre has exploded and everybody's trying to grab a part of the action. Deep Silver and Techland gave it their best try with Dead Island, an incredibly immersive game that brought RPG into the world of zombies. It was one of those games that had its bugs, but you didn't care too much because it was a blast to play with friends. With the announcement of Dead Island: Riptide, many people (including myself) were excited to see these bugs taken care of and the game to really reach its potential! In some ways, we got what we wanted. In others...not so much.
The mechanics of Dead Island weren't that bad to begin with. The combat was a tad bit glitchy at times and it ran off a tree system of leveling up. In Riptide, the combat was smooth and it seemed all the bugs were fixed, with a few exceptions. They also expanded on the tree system. In the first Dead Island, each level helped you improve your combat skills (ex. Weapon condition decrease rate lowered by 20%). In Riptide, they kept those little boosts, but offered cooler combat moves! Instead of just curb-stomping zombies' heads when you knock them down (which was still awesome), you could now charge into a crowd and do a special move that scattered them. Speaking of the zombies, Riptide also introduced new special infected zombies. These were well placed and added to the horror of this zombie filled island. It's one thing to see a group of infected when you turn the corner...especially when your screen tenses up and your character crumbles to the ground.
The mechanics of Dead Island weren't that bad to begin with. The combat was a tad bit glitchy at times and it ran off a tree system of leveling up. In Riptide, the combat was smooth and it seemed all the bugs were fixed, with a few exceptions. They also expanded on the tree system. In the first Dead Island, each level helped you improve your combat skills (ex. Weapon condition decrease rate lowered by 20%). In Riptide, they kept those little boosts, but offered cooler combat moves! Instead of just curb-stomping zombies' heads when you knock them down (which was still awesome), you could now charge into a crowd and do a special move that scattered them. Speaking of the zombies, Riptide also introduced new special infected zombies. These were well placed and added to the horror of this zombie filled island. It's one thing to see a group of infected when you turn the corner...especially when your screen tenses up and your character crumbles to the ground.
Another thing they improved on was communication between players. Usually people are too lazy to put on mics and join games with strangers. Riptide gives you a feature that helps you highlight things such as items, or suggest that your team might want to go a certain way. I have to give them a big thumbs up for that, being that it is incredibly useful and desperately needed.
Along with the combat came new weapons. of course! Now, there wasn't a whole new arsenal but I won't complain much. I enjoyed splattering zombie brains with a meat mallet wrapped in nails WAY more than I should have. New weapon mods were also introduced. These mods gave every item you got some purpose. You couldn't use barbed wire by itself before, and now, I wrap all my weapons in it. Nothing like smacking a zombie in the head with a barbed wire baseball bat and then just sitting back and watching blood squirt out along with some satisfying hit points.
One thing that certainly didn't need much work was the world they throw you in. In the original, they gave you plenty of island to explore. In Riptide, however, they downgraded severely. Of the three places you explored in the original (The Beach, The City and The Jungle), only two returned (The City and The Jungle). You have no idea how disappointing this was to me; I think I might've actually cried a bit. They tried to compensate this by adding caves and letting you explore buildings in the city, but this was a failure. Every cave was the exact same, and I mean the EXACT same. As were the buildings. They were just recycled areas and the developers led you to believe there were more to the buildings than there actually was. This was really lazy on their part and a HUGE minus to the game.
Along with the combat came new weapons. of course! Now, there wasn't a whole new arsenal but I won't complain much. I enjoyed splattering zombie brains with a meat mallet wrapped in nails WAY more than I should have. New weapon mods were also introduced. These mods gave every item you got some purpose. You couldn't use barbed wire by itself before, and now, I wrap all my weapons in it. Nothing like smacking a zombie in the head with a barbed wire baseball bat and then just sitting back and watching blood squirt out along with some satisfying hit points.
One thing that certainly didn't need much work was the world they throw you in. In the original, they gave you plenty of island to explore. In Riptide, however, they downgraded severely. Of the three places you explored in the original (The Beach, The City and The Jungle), only two returned (The City and The Jungle). You have no idea how disappointing this was to me; I think I might've actually cried a bit. They tried to compensate this by adding caves and letting you explore buildings in the city, but this was a failure. Every cave was the exact same, and I mean the EXACT same. As were the buildings. They were just recycled areas and the developers led you to believe there were more to the buildings than there actually was. This was really lazy on their part and a HUGE minus to the game.
Finally, we get to the story. It picks up right where the first game ended. Now, if you remember from the first game, you left the first island with two characters. They were minor characters, but they were taken away from the start with no explanation. They also introduce a new character to the game. No reason or backstory, just "Hey, there's this new guy." The characters just kind of accept him, which doesn't fit them at all; they trust no one. Anyways, you start the game on an aircraft carrier that (not really a spoiler!) sinks. This is an intense intro that really gets you pumped up for the rest of the game. Sadly, that's the most intense part of the game. The rest of the story gets so linear from then on. You end up on a beach with some survivors and go to the city to try to escape. It seems like every chance they could have made something interesting, they decided to stick to a boring and vanilla storylines that had one of the worst endings in the history of video games. Even new characters that they added had no depth and you couldn't connect at all. It was too short, too! The first game might not have had the best story, but by God it was longer than this crap!
This game was great, gameplay-wise, but the lack of interesting side quests and story really made it hard to enjoy and completely killed its replay value. It improved so much from the first installment and I really had high hopes for this game. If the developers could just work on the story side of this game, it could've become a major title and people could look forward to the next game. Since they left that to the wayside, I gotta' give this game a bad review and for me, that's a major bummer.
This game was great, gameplay-wise, but the lack of interesting side quests and story really made it hard to enjoy and completely killed its replay value. It improved so much from the first installment and I really had high hopes for this game. If the developers could just work on the story side of this game, it could've become a major title and people could look forward to the next game. Since they left that to the wayside, I gotta' give this game a bad review and for me, that's a major bummer.