Seeing how little Dead Island has mechanically evolved in the 19 or so months since its last outing is the biggest disappointment of Riptide. I just wish components were a bit rarer or less varied, because as it stands, it always felt random whether or not I had the components for a given mod. I loved modding weapons with blueprints I found across the island the novelty of a flaming shovel or electrified sledgehammer never really wore off. I'm not sure at what point game designers decided a fun mechanic might be to manually loot the 30 pieces of trash scattered about a room in various suitcases and drawers in the hopes of finding a few scraps that make the player infinitesimally more dangerous. Equally meaningless is the loot you'll gather throughout the game. This system is valuable for gaming easy experience points, but is never necessary or even terribly helpful in most encounters (especially since death is so meaningless). Melee weapons are the best thing Riptide's combat has going for it.Ĭharacters (still) have a Fury mode in which the screen goes red, damage is increased and experience is rewarded for killing zombies. If you're thinking that shooting zombies would have provided the variety I so craved, I would point out that shooting zombies has been central to every video game released by every publisher on every platform in the last four years. Guns and ammo are sparse enough, and knives are effective enough that I only changed things up when I got bored. Yes, Dead Island Riptide has guns and bullets, but I played largely as Xian Mei, so I mostly focused on the cutting. Riptide features some interesting new zombie types - I never tired of watching the Grenadier rip off a chunk of its flesh and hurl it at me - but my strategy never wavered: Cut cut cut. It's all on a curve, so, in practice, the only thing that's changing is the numbers. Monsters level with you, as do the weapons. You get stronger with each level of progression, but as you rise, you lift everything in the flooded world of Riptide. As you develop weapons that let you paralyze zombies, even this much strategy isn't necessary. Got a stronger zombie? Run around it and keep hacking. Lopping off a head or the occasional arm? Great. Money is slightly less essential this time around as weapons in Riptide, blessedly, degrade more slowly. Death isn't even a big deal: Just dust yourself off, lose a percentage of your wealth and get back to the killing. The skills you acquire (most of which are directly lifted from Dead Island) are all about how effectively and violently you re-dead the hordes. The vast array of customizable weapons are all just different animations and speeds of zombie murder. Every facet of Dead Island Riptide is built around killing zombies.
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