Dead Island - Riptide

Dead Island - Riptide

Dead Island Riptide is an action survival horror game, where the player has top survive the onslaught of zombies and make their way through each segment of the game. Because of it's funny attributes and a great killing of zombies, it is one of my favorite zombie games.

Released in Europe on April 26 2013 on Microsoft windows, Xbox 360 and Play station the game received mixed reviews, Metacritic gave the Play station 3 version a low score of 61% out of 100 and on the Xbox 360 version it was given again a low score 60%, but IGN's Greg Miller said that the game is great gory fun, and to be honest I have to agree with him, even though the game didn't receive the greatest reviews and scores, it is still a great game.

Now let's talk about the story of the game... Riptide takes place just after the ending of the first Dead Island, the 4 immune survivors land on a military ship where they are taken prisoners by the Australian Defense Force. When the survivors and your character depending on who you picked to play as at the start of the game, pass out from the sedatives but when they wake up the ship they are have been overrun by a zombie horde. Even though I am slightly confused from where they came from, because I assume they can't swim since they are zombies. You must fight your way through the ship and find your fellow survivors, when the ship crashes into a rock, probably taking the concept from Titanic. The survivors are washed up on the beach of Palanai and are found by a woman researcher, but a zombie horde has again took over the area which you are situated, and you can already guess that you have to fight your way through the island but you also meet several other people who will also help you on your journey throughout the game.

The characters in the game are brilliant, even though the speech doesn't seem to match their mouths, the rapper Sam B is the typical black stereotype where every sentence has the F bomb in it. The other characters consists of an ex American football player called Logan Carter, a waitress called Xian Mei and an ex police officer called Purna which is quite a weird name. I don't believe that the game was trying to be funny, but in most parts it is.

The game play in the game consists of smashing zombies heads wide open with a crowbar, or if you are the rapper then you can literally punch the heads off their shoulders. In my opinion the game play is a bit like Saints Row 4, where you learn most of it just by playing it and having fun exploring the wonders of zombie brutality.

There are a couple of things I like about the game, one is the fact that you can upgrade weapons and customize them, you can turn a simple baseball bat into a nail bat of hell. The 2nd would be that you can just go to town on these zombies, the fact that you can roundhouse kick them every time they close to you is brilliant and kind of reminds of Left 4 Dead. The bad bits about the game is that the story isn't the best, so hopefully in future games they can improve on that. And finally it's the fact that these zombies compared to other games take ages to kill unless you have a really powerful weapon or if you're an expert at zombie dodging.

To conclude... This game is great and who doesn't like punching off zombie heads, but the only downfall will be the lack of story. But who cares when you've got thousands of zombies to destroy. Dead Island Riptide gets a 8/10 from me.