The zombie bashing melee fest that is Dead Island: Riptide is set to arrive this week, but according to early reviews, the game may already be dead in the water. Evidently bashing in the brains of the the hungry horde in a tropical paradise is fun the first time around, but not so much the second.
As it's technically not a sequel, I suppose we couldn't expect too many improvements, but I never suspected that a game centered around braining ice cold corpses would get such a lukewarm reception.
Game Informer gives the game its best review at 8 out of 10: "Riptide's flaws are many, but they couldn't hold me back from having a blast. Few games nail the visceral feel of melee combat and co-op fun like Dead Island. At its worst, an annoying hiccup breaks the immersion of the grizzly trek through a zombie-infested paradise. At its best, Riptide hits the same high notes as the original."
But not everyone was as pleased with Riptide as GI. Case in point, it scored the lowest with Kotaku, who didn't even give the game a score, saying, "There are so many things so wrong with Dead Island: Riptide that I'm not even sure where to begin."
The remaining reviews have the game pegged as mediocre at best; a 5.5 from Polygon, 5 from Destructoid, and so on. You can check out the summation below, but the consensus seems to be that despite a new character and a setting, ultimately, Riptide is more of the same that the original offered. So if the first game was your bag, give it a go, but if not, at least wait for a price drop.
7.5, PSU - "If you enjoy tense survival horror games and like tinkering with extensive weapons using an imaginative crafting system, you will enjoy playing Dead Island: Riptide. It's just a pity that the lack of imagination with boss battles and some bugs can detract from your immersion in the world."
7.2, IGN - "The action is here in spades, but Riptide doesn't lift a finger to address the original Dead Island's failures."
7.0, GamingBolt - "Dead Island: Riptide overall is a good game that has a unique experience to offer as opposed to other first-person shooters. However, the technical bugs, choppy frame-rate and sound clipping issues can hurt the experience, and that makes the game, not as enjoyable as it should be."
5.9, CVG - "Despite having all the basic ingredients they need to become a productive member of society, zombies can never quite hold it together and end up a slavering, flaky, inconsistent mess. So (drumroll) a little bit like Dead Island: Riptide, then."
5.5, Inside Gaming Daily - "Whether or not you'll enjoy that adventure depends on your love for the first game, and the friends you bring along for the slaughter. Dead Island: Riptide doesn't fix what's broken with the first game, which is odd given the amount of details that desperately need to be repaired. The concept of an open world zombie survival game is still good on paper, but somehow Techland has failed for a second time to make sure it works in execution."
4.0, Game Spot - "Dead Island: Riptide might look like an idyllic zombie-fest, but it's little more than a frustrating mess of half-baked ideas and repetitive combat."