Something I would have liked to have seen in Riptide was a better balance of drama and comedy.
DEAD ISLAND 2 CHARACTERS SERIES
The first game limited a character’s thoughts and feelings to a series of fish eyed people (a facial animation issue where characters eyes are not straight) having an exchange within a cutscene. Within Riptide, I appreciated hearing more from my character and my co-op partner’s character when they made comments about story developments and the environment. Riptide‘s characters are still pretty two dimensional, but on palatable level. A lot of dialogue is given by the chosen playable characters during gameplay and radio calls, which gives them some semblance of a personality outside of cutscenes. Thankfully, Riptide actually steps this up a notch-not by much, but to a point where I could actually care about what was happening. The storytelling was also too messy for my preference. Characters felt insignificant, two dimensional, and dispassionate. The first Dead Island had a pretty forgettable story, in both terms of what actually happened and the way the narrative was told.
It’s a mild distraction but the real pleasure comes from running zombies over. When attacked, a simple QTE occurs to knock them back. Boats are fun to drive but they’re easily accessible to zombie attacks. Cars can still be used to traverse the starting portion of the island, but I found the road to be a less than optimal path to use for travel-boats allowed me to get closer to my waypoint. The tropical storm that resulted in the heroes being sent back to the zombie infested islands has also caused massive flooding on land, setting up a slightly different experience for players that will introduce nautical travel between villages on the island. The game takes place on the neighboring island Palanai. The four survivors of the Banoi island outbreak had reached refuge and safety only to be cast back onto land because of a storm. Regardless of the game’s “not sequel” status, the story picks up right after the events of the first game. It may not be a groundbreaking follow up to a game that I found marred with problems–and potential– but it thankfully gets the job done. Riptide is, for the most part, more of what the first game was but with some much needed tweaks and adjustments.
Techland may be reserving true sequel status for a game that completely revamps the game’s engine and features. Dead Island Riptide is not a sequel by traditional means and publisher Deep Silver has made this fact abundantly clear. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about Techland’s second entry in their zombie island resort series Dead Island.
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