A Look At: Dead Island: Riptide

Deep Silver's latest zombie slasher has arrived, yet some gamers my feel as if they are stranded when it comes to purchasing the game.

Firstly, the game isn't as bad as some critics reviewed it to be. Sure it doesn't have the movie quality of its previous trailers or the graphics of Crysis 3, but what it does have is charm.

Dead Island: Riptide takes place straight after the ending in Dead Island, and leaves our (5) survivors stranded on another beautiful island; Palanai. To make things simple I'll list the pros and cons.

Pros:

• Zombie killing satisfaction - Being able to chop off heads, arms, legs.. you get the picture.
• Great multiplayer co-op - I've been playing with a friend and this is the games biggest strength - zombie killing road trips!
• Zombie Apocalypse realism - (Apart from the weapons) You actually feel like a survivor stranded on a tropical paradise, and I'm pretty sure that is what they were aiming for.
• Awesome weapon customisation - Your barbed wire baseball bat feels like a unique slaying machine.
• Challenging and rewarding gameplay - Finally getting that unreliable pistol you've always wanted after laying waste to hordes and hordes of the un-dead. 
• David Kaye voicing the character Logan.

Co-op is the only way to play, it's fun!

Cons:

• Lack of character depth - The game would have only benefited if I knew more about the person I was playing as.
• Cheesy animations - Weird 3rd person running animations (Watch on YouTube, hilarious).
• Annoying fetch quests - If you don't have/want a buddy to play along prepare for monotony.
• Zombie bait edition - A bit pointless but I don't think Deep Silver deserved all the strong criticism they received for the failed marketing tool.
• The ending - So much more could have been done to make this so much better. The ending feels rushed, though this doesn't really take away from the overall story, it just needed more explaining and needed to be executed better. 

All in all Dead Island: Riptide is a good game, not an amazing action-packed movie extravaganza, but a good game. I would however recommend playing online with friends for the best experience.