Dead Island: Riptide Critic Reviews

Riptide’s flaws are many, but they couldn’t hold me back from having a blast. Few games nail the visceral feel of melee combat and co-op fun like Dead Island. At its worst, an annoying hiccup breaks the immersion of the grizzly trek through a zombie-infested paradise. At its best, Riptide hits the same high notes as the original.

Despite its propensity for insignificant plot points, I can’t wait to play Dead Island Riptide again. I’ll return for the desperate bid for survival, and stay for the stories that emerge as a result.

Not much has happened in terms of gameplay. If you've played Dead Island you'll know exactly what to expect, but Riptide still combines RPG elements with an action concept for a nice thrill ride.

Dead Island Riptide remains a product of moderate value, repeating in part the success of its predecessor.

While it’s got some irritating rough patches, Dead Island: Riptide’s 15-hour campaign still manages to be a lot more fun than it has any right to be.

More of the same is literally what Dead Island: Riptide has to offer. The original's strengths and weaknesses return unchanged but inside a wider open world that greatly increases exploration, quests and things to do. It's still very enjoyable, especially in multiplayer, but the original's sense of freshness is almost lost.

The game has a lot going for it when everything is working properly and the handful of new gameplay elements turns Riptide into something legitimately better than its predecessor. In some ways, Dead Island: Riptide feels like a massive content patch, but considering its smarter pacing and greater visual and gameplay variety, it's closer to what the original game probably should have been.

I seriously love Dead Island Riptide for its satisfying zombie dismemberment and co-op, but technically, it's done nothing to build itself into a great game.

If you've played Dead Island and want more of the same - Riptide is the game for you. It's smoother, better looking and less buggy, but in the end it's pretty much the same experience all over again, albeit an improved one.

Riptide offers what Dead Island’s fans were waiting for: a “more of the same” splatter-gory gameplay with some tiny additions... but not enough to give everyone else something to remember!

There’s no reason at all to play it alone, but if you can round up a consistent crew to run through the game together, it’s well worth the price of admission.

Riptide does a great job as a co-operative action game and it tastes best played with friends. If someone is still hungry for some zombie slashing after having finished the original Dead Island, Riptide will provide same fun enriched with some new equipment and fresh gameplay mechanics. Unfortunately it repeats most of the mistakes of the predecessor.

All the things that were wrong with the first island: the repetitive action, the bugs, the embarrassing voices and the mind rotting story raise their head here too.

While Dead Island: Riptide serves the zombie genre well, it doesn’t do anything new with it. You’ve killed a million enemies like this before, and the only real differences this time around are aesthetic. The developers at Techland are adamant that Riptide is more of a spin-off than a true sequel, so maybe next time they’ll find some brains for this undead series.

In the end, I found Dead Island: Riptide to be a fun stopgap in the series, despite not being a full-fledged sequel. Certain things could have been better, like the characters, story, and more innovation. There are a couple of new skills, a new character, and new locations, but it's not wildly different. The initial location is nearly identical to the starting island area from the original game, and while it might feature a different layout, it's really hard to initially tell them apart.

Despite the new enemies and other additions, Dead Island: Riptide feels too much like more of the same. Techland had the opportunity to fix many of the flaws of the first game - bad story, technical glitches, repetitiveness - but they did almost nothing about it.

The combat and weapons are fun and the levelling systems keep things interesting and give an air of replayability to the title if your Xbox is starting to get a little dusty. If we see a third instalment though, the game needs to step up a little to keep up with the competition.

Newcomers to the franchise will likely be more forgiving of many flaws, much like many of us were with the first Dead Island, considering the fun zombie-bashing core and unique dichotomy of an apocalypse in paradise has remained intact. Veterans of the first Dead Island, on the other hand, will feel cheated, as they’ll recognize the cheap carbon copy that Riptide actually is. Combine this with glitches galore and a plot with more holes in it than the sinking ship the game starts off on, and it’s hard to recommend Riptide to all but the most naïve of zombie enthusiasts.

It’s a shame that Riptide couldn’t have been a bit more given how much opportunity there was here for improvement, but as it stands, it’s basically the same flawed game we got nearly two years ago — for better or for worse.

Dead Island: Riptide is a game where enjoyment hinges entirely on personal satisfaction of repetitively killing thousands of zombies and having friends with the same passion. For these select people, Riptide can be a whole lot of fun; but for anybody going it solo or demanding more from a game than just mindless violence, however, it will prove increasingly tedious.