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| Title Artwork |
Visuals
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| The flooded city of Henderson |
The visuals are one of the most conflicting part of this game. The visual look great. They let you see every hair and scar of the survivors and the guts of the "infect," The problem is, if you get a close look at the details, if up close, the visuals look like total crap (forgive my language). The real beauty of this game though is the environment. The textures of the areas surrounding you easily give a strong sense of immersion and are amazing. You easily get the feeling that people once roamed the beaches and cities where the undead now inhabit. The only problem was how the world loaded. Whenever you return from a loading screen, the world loads but it takes a few more seconds before any of the textures load. This, which is another big immersion problem, isn't even a new issue. The original had the exact same problem, but it seemed that the developers no intention on trying to fix this mainly due to it not being too game breaking. This disappointed me because it was very apparent. The game also implemented an amazing weather system. You can occasionally see the world darkened with clouds as rain pours down. The attention to detail is great because you actually see the movement of the large bodies of water when the rain hits it. The only problem is that, the programmers didn't put much attention into how to implement it. You will literally be walking on the beach when in 2 seconds the sky will become dark and begin pouring. This looked extremely unnatural and ruined the immersion. Worse is that the weather changes very often so you soon lose the feeling that you are actually in the game. And one final detail which bothered the hell out of me (kind of going on a rant here) was the water. Yes I understand that the island of Palanai was just hit by a monsoon, so I should expect water, but the water was so bothersome. For some reason the developers made it so that you can not swim, which honestly didn't bother me too much because it sets boundaries for the island, but the water made trying to swim a slow death. If you fell into the water, whether from a shore or a porch, your screen just blurs up so that you feel that you really are underwater. The problem was that the screen becomes too blurry, to the point that I became disoriented and couldn't find my way back to shore. So unlike other games where you just drown, here you are forced to watch your health meter deplete while you struggle to find the ground you were so close too. But the water issues didn't stop there, because it also applied to the waterfalls. In new game, to provide immersion, game developers make water fall on your screen when under running water such as a waterfall, but Riptide when too far. When you go under a waterfall here, your screen becomes almost completely opaque, meaning you cannot see a thing. This easily kills you if you are trying to run away from any nearby enemies (Alright the rant ends here).
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| Harlow, the survivor who tells the heroes what happened to Palanai |
Next are the characters. During cutscenes, the character models look fine for the most part, nothing really worth mentioning. But during the gameplay when you start talking to them, they look absolutely dreadful. The light on their bone structures make them look dead themselves. And, in my opinion, the worst part of the characters are their eyes. People usually look at you when you talk, so you would expect the characters in a game to do that too, right? Nope. The characters, I'm assuming to give you a sense that they are afraid, constantly move around and look like they are avoiding eye contact with you. And when they do look at you, it looks like their faces are turned toward you but their eyes are somewhere else. And almost every characters eyes tend to be off balanced. I understand that not everyone's eyes are perfectly straight, but every single person looked strange because of it.
Music
Well the music section is going to be pretty short. To sum it all up, there was almost no music at all. This game wanted to be taken very serious so no music during the actual gameplay. I tend to not even notice whether there was music during the cutscenes, mainly because I had already accustomed myself to ignore my ears. There were still impressive sounds though. As you walked by the beach, you would hear the sounds of the waves. As you walked through the jungle, you would even hear monkeys (although you never see any). And one of my favorite parts was a loud suspenseful roar by what sounds like a giant zombie for a majority of the game. Whenever I heard this, I always stopped and looked around to make sure I wasn't about to die. Overall, no music but great sound effects.
Gameplay
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| One of the heroes running out of stamina, while fighting a Walker |
This game, as mentioned previously, is set in a first-person point of view. This has its ups and downs. First is the combat. This is a definite up. This made you feel like you were actually fighting zombies. If I may, I would actually like to compare it to another big first person game, Skyrim. Unlike how Skyrim moves, in this game, you can feel a lot of resistance when walking or fighting. This is, what I assume, to make you feel like you are your character. Whenever you swing a weapon, your camera moves along with it so you can see that your character is really swinging with all their might. Although this helps with the immersion, it gets extremely annoying when fighting. You will have your enemy right in front of you, but after you swing, there is just a few seconds before you can see your opponent clearly. This easily makes you feel uneasy because you might feel like your are going to get hit in that brief moment. And when its a group of zombies, you will easily get disoriented because you will swing and just face another zombie, all the while being attacked. Overall, the camera helps feel like you are in the world of Dead Island but it really faces a lot of trouble when you try to do anything. This also brings me to the stamina bar. Stamina is used to perform almost all physical actions such as running, jumping, or swinging a weapon around, though it does regenerate it takes some time. This sometimes can be an ingenious design which makes you avoid wasting all your stamina and plan accordingly on how and when you will use it.
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| Sam B getting ready to use a work bench |
Alright, next is the weapon system. This sort of goes well with character abilities, so I might as well just explain it now. There are four returning players, and one new one. Each has a specific weapon that they are stronger with than other players. These include Sam B who is good with blunt weapons, Logan who is good at throwing weapons, Purna who is good with firearms, Xian Mei who is good with sharp weapons, and the new player John Morgan who is the master of close ranged weapons like brass knuckles and claws. So for each character there are the five weapon types which any player can use but each are best with their own. Along with the weapons, each weapon can be modified with blueprints and ingredients at repair benched where weapons can be fixed that can be found throughout the island. This can include adding poison, electric damage, and fire damage. You can also make new weapons out of the ingredients such as deodorant bombs, Molotov cocktails or explosive mines. Each have a set amount of base damage but the overall damage they can cause will change depending on what level you are at.
This brings us to the RPG element. Just like any RPG, you must defeat enemy to gain EXP and after earning enough EXP, you level up. With each level you gain, you get one skill point to use on a certain skill. This can be used in one of three skill trees. The trees are based around combat, survival, and an ability called fury. These skills can vary from taking less damage, gaining more EXP, regenerating more health, or having a stronger fury attack. Before I forget to mention, the fury attack is a move that can be used after hurting enemies enough to gain "rage". While in this state, you can punch much faster without using any stamina, and taking less damage. To balance it out, the fury only lasts a few seconds so you have to be careful not to waste it.
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| Logan trying to get back onto the boat after being pulled down by a Drowner |
Next is the exploration of the world. The island of Palanai is a giant place where if you want, you can walk across the entire thing, but luckily the developers provided vehicles. These things are life savers because walking is very slow in this game. The vehicles range from cars to boats. The cars are extremely fun because it allows you to run over zombies and not need to worry about losing health. The next was new to incorporate the new gameplay. The boats were actually very fun to use because just like the cars, you could ram into zombies and escape without a problem. And a great addition was to allow certain zombies to reach out of the water and try to pull you off the boat. This keeps you aware and I am disappointed this was also incorporated into the cars.
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| Multiple players trying to take down a Grenadier |
Finally, its very necessary that I mention the multiplayer. This has to be one of the series' best attributes. The MP is done in a drop in/drop out style where you can either join others or have others join you. This allows you to play as either different characters or even as two of the same players. Don't thin this would make the game too easy because as soon as the number of players in a game rises, so does the number of spawning zombies and levels of those zombies. This has to be the best part mainly because not only do you work together to clear mission and earn EXP, but you can also trade items or even just explore this immense island together. The only problem I found with this though was how it started in the beginning of the game. The first Dead Island started you off with the MP set to LAN, or local area network, which only allowed you to play with others whose consoles were nearby. This actually made me forget that MP was even an option. So you could only enjoy it once you search through a few menus and set it for online. In Riptide, the MP setting was turned on but set to accept everyone. This got extremely annoying because when I wanted to do a simple task, new people would occasionally jump into my game and hold me back from doing something. The solution is to, once again, search through the menus for a way to turn it off. Nothing too bad, just nit-picky.
Story
Alright, all that's left is the story. Honestly the story is a little disappointing. It starts you off directly where the first game ended. You are flying away in a helicopter with all of the 4 original playable character, a native girl (whose blood contains the original source of the zombie outbreak, although she doesn't show symptoms of it) and a prisoner from a jail on the previous island who helped you escape. As soon as they are off, they notice that they are running out of gas, and encounter a nearby military aircraft carrier where they land. Once they all get off, they are cuffed and having the 4 original survivors sent to a containment room where they meet the new survivor who is also immune to the virus and they all get drugged and experimented on to find why they are immune to the zombie virus. This is where you first get control. While waking up from being unconscious, you find that the outbreak has reached the ship and the ship starts going down. You quickly team up with the soldiers that are still alive to kill the zombie captain and try to get control of the ship again. Unfortunately the ship crashes onto the new island of Palanai, which has also been infested by the zombie virus. Just like the first, you must continue to find a way off the island. Unlike the first though, this island has just experienced a serious monsoon which has destroyed most of the cities and flooded most of the jungles. Though the transition is nice, the use of the almost identical story of the original game made it seem like the developers didn't really try too hard on the story. I would tell more, but honestly I don't want to ruin it for many who would still like to play it after reading this review.
Overview
Dead Island Riptide is overall a very fun game to play with friends. Alone, it might get very boring very fast. Though the game included a few new mission type, such as a defend the castle type of gameplay, it really isn't anything new for players from the original. The game also has A LOT of problems, none too game breaking, but if you are really picky, like me, you will find them instantly (one thing I found was that the zombie spawn points were way too close, and they would spawn seconds after I killed their predecessors, this made it a pain to get across certain points that were spawn heavy). With an average combat system, mediocre visuals, and many missed opportunities for great music, Dead Island Riptide isn't much to miss. As a lover of the original, I was seriously disappointed at the lack of issues fixed in general, let alone the new problems. I don't recommend this game to any newcomers unless they REALLY like zombie games or if they loved the original.
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| The new hero, John Morgan |
I rate this game 6.5 zombies out of 10
Notes: Sorry if I took long, been doing my reviews in between study sessions for my upcoming finals. Due to technical problem, I lost my home page so I will be posting a new one soon. Remember, if you want me to review any particular game, just shoot me an email at gabezune.1@gmail.com, and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Otherwise, feel free to comment and share. See you next time.
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