Dead Island: Riptide

In the original Dead Island the game's characters survive the terrors on the island of Banoi and successfully escape, boarding the Banoi archipelago. Dead Island: Riptide sees the zombie virus reappear as it infects the ship's crew; conveniently when a storm begins wreaking havoc. The horror continues when the survivors find themselves on another island, Palanai, with new zombies, weapons and characters.    

Players can pick up in Dead Island: Riptide where they left off in the original Dead Island. A feature of Dead Island: Riptide allows players to import their character from the original game along with their level and skills. This is a helpful, but an unnecessary feature as this is all that is imported. Unfortunately importing your character does not include the cash you previously earned or weapons that you tirelessly modded and came to love.

New weapons include an assortment of mines, a rocket launcher and a sniper rifle. The weapons are semi-par; briefly exciting simply for the experience. Modding weapons proves to be helpful with some valuable entertainment. Similar to the original game players can mod a weapon to electrocute a zombie or set them ablaze. Create a poisonous axe with the paralyzing strike mod and watch a zombie puke their guts out.

Using these weapons while fighting zombies can be fun, frightening and laughable all at the same time. The allure of the game is simply beating zombies to death in as many unique ways as one can imagine. However, during the blood bath and limb severing many things quickly become apparent.

At one point during the game's loading screen it says "Go for the classic: aim for the head." Being a zombie shooter this is logical, assuming all zombies are quickly killed when shot or bludgeoned in the head. Logical, yes. True, no. Using the sniper rifle or a melee weapon for an occasional critical hit is about the only time you'll see a zombie drop from a single blow. Most of your enemies require a handful of shots to the head and multiple stomps to the skull. In other words, aiming for the head is no better than button mashing while aiming anywhere on the zombie's body.

If players make it far enough into the game to begin modding weapons and scoping zombies then they've most certainly noticed the glitches. Only a few moments into the game and they appear. They continue to pop up throughout the entire game with zombies stuck in walls and doorways and disappearing weapons. Be wary; throw a weapon at a walker, hit it and you may or may not get it back. This is especially frustrating when you lose your favorite modded weapon.

Beyond the carnage, modding and glitching there is an actual story line. However, the storyline in Dead Island: Riptide is weak. The cut scenes are barely passable, with cheesy lines and a constant urge to skip through them. After skipping the majority of cut scenes players will be blissfully unaware of what is actually going on. Occasionally exciting words like "traitor!" and "cannibalism!" will be heard nearly reeling players back into the hope of a decent story line.

Finishing the main storyline is a comfortable challenge. If it becomes too difficult (which it should not) the option to play cooperatively is always there. Cooperative play is also a nice feature for working on achievements and challenges. Finish the game solo or with others; either way Dead Island: Riptide seems to abruptly end without the opportunity to challenge a vital enemy. Swiftly leave the island and complete the game or stay behind and complete side missions. Choose to leave and there is no turning back. You must restart the main campaign again to complete any further side missions. A pain for those gung ho achievement hunters.

Dead Island: Riptide is not a game to be taken too seriously. If you enjoyed Dead Island then you will certainly have fun playing Dead Island: Riptide. Take it as it is and you'll have some fun hacking zombies to pieces; pick it apart and you'll grimace through the entire game.

Megan Bethke, NoobFeed (@XboxBetty).