14 DAY TRIAL // 
Riptide is a standalone expansion for Dead Island, the game that captured players’ imagination with its superb reveal trailer.
The actual released product delivered a highly divisive experience that was hampered by some post-launch problems and by some weird design decisions, and Riptide was supposed to fix the issues and realize the potential of the series.
The new title from developer Techland and publisher Deep Silver is a weird mix of new and old, a game that fails to innovate on the familiar formula in any significant way and that lacks the attention to detail that could have made it a hit.
As it stands, the game is a little more than Dead Island, with one added character and new areas to explore.
Story
Gamers can pick the four characters of the original game or choose a newly introduced one and then it’s just a matter of remembering how to run, hit, run, hit and change weapons until all the zombies are dead and players are able to progress.
Tropical islands tend to cluster together, and that means the player is now left to fend for himself on Panalai, a version of the first game’s Banoi that is much wetter and more dangerous.
The problem with Riptide is that it lacks any compelling way of keeping players interested in the narrative and that it never manages to create a clear connection between me and the character I am playing.
This game needed a top level writer to add emotion to the world, the mix of horror and melancholy that was evident in the much-discussed trailer that put Dead Island on the map.
As it stands, dialogue is forgettable, characters are mostly clichés, and there’s never a sense that the player’s actions are actually impacting anyone.
The Walking Dead raised the story bar for zombie titles and Techland have failed to adapt their own game to the expectations of the player base.
Gameplay
The core gameplay is not changed much, even though the new character John Morgan has a number of moves that make it easy for him to deal with concentrated zombie hordes and clear space to recuperate stamina.
Playing the older cast feels familiar and there’s no good reason to choose them over the newcomer, who at least offer the surprise of discovering his skill tree.
Unfortunately, he lacks any special attack to deal with the repetitive nature of Dead Island: Riptide, a game that needs to paradoxically throw fewer zombies at the player and give him more interesting occasions to interact with the world.
Another major problem with Riptide is the way quests are designed and the lack of interest that the team has for immersion and intelligent writing.
This could very well have been an MMO because almost every side mission can be categorized as a defense task, where barricades are required to keep enemy waves away, or a fetch quest, involving a rare item or a particular task.
The missions that progress the story are a little better, but the characters Riptide introduces are rarely interesting and they display all the genre’ stereotypes without any attempt at innovation.
Cars and boats are more important in Dead Island: Riptide because the development team really wants to show off the scale of the island and the beautiful game world they have created.
Hop into a vehicle when you can because it offers extra protection from the zombie hordes, but be careful to move along roads or water lanes and don’t try any complex maneuvers, which can get cars stuck in the scenery.
Fighting undead for 15 minutes is fun and interesting, especially given the way weapons are created by combining objects in some truly crazy ways, but after another quarter of an hour boredom sets in and Riptide fails to do anything to break up the monotony.
I wanted to see interesting modifiers to all the set pieces or more tactics from the zombie hordes, especially the special types.
I wanted Riptide to make it easier to select weapons and end the trend of making firearms less than desirable that’s been started in the original Dead Island.
I expected at least some clever twists on the standard formula; yet, the defense missions, while potentially fun, are really just a slightly more difficult take on the standard zombie bashing formula of the game.
Unfortunately, Techland seems to have been more interested in keeping the experience close to the original Dead Island, an approach that would have only made sense if the team had been trying to create a downloadable content package rather than a standalone expansion.
At least, the team has worked on the core of the game engine and has eliminated the bugs that frustrated many players when the first title was launched, although I still encountered two crashes and the constant re-spawning of some items cannot be working as initially designed.
Graphics and audio
Dead Island: Riptide looks good, although there’s no clear leap in quality over the original release.
Weapons are well detailed, zombies shamble convincingly along before getting killed again and the scenery has moments when it looks downright beautiful and you cannot do anything else than stop and stare, despite the game that there are undead on your trail trying to eat your brains.
Animations are also solid, with nice moments when body parts detach from enemies, but there’s no real reason to love the graphics when the game fails to make gameplay interesting.
The sound design is not impressive in any way, even though I appreciate the effort that has gone into adding sounds for the various hand-to-hand weapons.
Multiplayer
It’s perfectly possible to get through Dead Island: Riptide without inviting any other player to help and at times the game becomes hard enough to make the experience enjoyable despite the repetitive nature of its core mechanics.
Humans are once more thrown into the mix of the game for more fun, with less emphasis on tactics and careful use of weapons and more on simple zombie bashing, each player showing off his best skills and his most outlandish tools.
Riptide also supports drop in and out and makes the entire multiplayer experience easy to set up and launch.
The only problem is that gamers need to make sure that they have actual friends involved because otherwise there’s quite a bit of potential for grieving.
I wonder whether Techland and Deep Silver have any plans to push the Dead Islands concept towards the MMO space, where it might capture a wider audience as long as it upgraded its mechanics and found a new narrative structure.
As a standalone expansion, that package is clearly aimed at those who liked the original Dead Island, but even they might struggle to like the new experience. I do believe that the core ideas of the game are sound and hope that Techland gets to make Dead Island 2 and show players how their zombie bashing experience can evolve to the next level. Until then, gamers who are interested in the gameplay should pick up the initial game, see if they really like it and only then buy Riptide.
The Good
The Bad
Conclusion
