Dead Island Riptide on Xbox 360 – The DVDfever Review

Standard Edition:

Steelbook Edition:

Zombie Bait Edition:

Dead Island Riptide is a game that feels as mindless as the zombies in the game.

Now, I never played the first game in this series, but I understand that your character managed to get to the safety of a military ship and that’s where you start off from in this sequel, as a storm breaks and the brown stuff hits the fan… or rather, the red stuff, since that’s what zombies spill an awful lot of.

I love a first-person-shooter as much as the next gamer, but to me, Dead Island Riptide is just “run forward a bit, hack-and-slash your way through a zombie or two, then go forward some more”. Yes, you can apparently kill the undead. But how do they then stay dead if they were actually, dead already? This game would not trouble the mind of Wittgenstein.

The first weapon you’ll pick up is a crowbar which is handy enough for a while, but before long I came across some shotgun ammo just lying about on the ship’s deck. Okay, that’s fair enough if it happened to fall out of a crate from somewhere, but everything has a price tag in this game and the ammo apparently costs $57. So it wouldn’t let me pick it up. Huh?

You can have a read of Dr Kessler’s Casebook which tells you about the zombies in the game, but it’s nothing in particular that you need to trouble yourself with and is there for completeness if you really care about that sort of thing.

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Dead Island Riptide clip 1 – Typical mindless violence (720p HD)

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Some random asides:

• After you meet up with some other humans on deck, there are also times when they’ll just end up standing there in the pouring rain, as if the program’s broken. I’ve made a video of this, on DVDfeverGames, so you can see what I mean.

• Even when there’s a metal girder between you and a zombie, you can still fling your crowbar in their direction to smack them in the face, as if there’s nothing there. Similarly, they can hit you, too! More bad programming!

• Also, you’re never in any confusion as to where to go next since the map in the bottom-right leaves you in no doubt, thus rather cancelling out the open-world feel this game is meant to generate.

The graphics in Dead Island Riptide are pretty enough, but the gameplay just has so little going for it. It’s also achingly repetetive and, I have to say, I played it for just two hours before pulling the plug. This is one of the worst games I’ve played since Daikatana.

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Dead Island Riptide clip 2 – More mindless violence plus bad programming (720p HD)

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Important info:

• Publisher: Deep Silver
• Standard Price: £30.99 (Xbox 360, PS3); £24.99 (PC)
• Players: 1, online multiplayer: 2-8
• HDTV options: 720p/1080i/1080p
• Features: voice, game content download, leaderboard
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: English

GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT	8 6 2 1
OVERALL	2

Director: Pawel Marchewka
Writers: Tomasz Duszynski, William Harms, Maciej Jurewicz, Haris Orkin and Magdalena Tomkowicz
Music: Pawel Blaszczak

Cast:
Xian Mei: Kim Mai Guest
Purna: Peta Johnson
Sam B: Phil LaMarr
Logan: David Kaye
John Morgan: Adam Croasdell
Colonel Hardy: Andy McPhee
Frank Serpo: Jon Curry
Dr. Jane/Various Characters: Jean Gilpin
Harlow: Jennifer Cruise
Jacqueline/Angel Guerra/Rose: Marcella Lentz-Pope
Trevor: Dave B Mitchell
Dr. Kessler/Various Characters: André Sogliuzzo
Dr. Cecil/Various Characters: Kevin Daniels
Wayne/Various Characters: Adam Gifford
Marvin/Various Characters: Keone Young
Chimamanda: Patricia Belcher (uncredited)
Zoey: Leila Birch (uncredited)
Miya: Carin Chea (uncredited)
Various Characters: Nicholas Guy Smith (uncredited)

Standard Edition:

Steelbook Edition:

Zombie Bait Edition: