Dead Island Riptide: Special Edition - Xbox 360

Never played the first Dead Island but I've had this one on preorder since last year when the steelbook cases were in stores. Always been a fan of the zombie genre and I figured this was a great place to start with the games. Anyone picking up this game and not the first will feel a little lost at the beginning but the story is good enough to stick on its own and not leave you scratching your head. Some of the quests can be a little repetitive at times, but once you get to the point where you have guns; everything is right in the world. Nothing quite beats that feeling when you put a sniper into the face of a boss mob and blow it's head off in a single earth-shattering blast. It's even better when a single shot takes out a group of zombies. Grenades are great as long as you don't blow yourself up, too. Riptide looks amazing as well. I felt the graphics were on par with Halo 4 and other titles. Didn't mind standing on the top of a building or tree house and just looking at everything around. Slightly long loading times were a tad annoying. And my only complaint is the multiplayer system. Both players should have to confirm that they want to join together rather than one person just deciding to join someone at random. Would find myself in a party without even knowing it. Also, when someone joins a party, almost all of the zombies in the area respawn which can nearly get you nuked if they're right on top of you. I spent 42 hours on the first playthrough and only got 71% completion. Going to have to go back as the other characters and try for the rest. So many sidequests and stuff to do!

Dead Island Riptide is the sequel of Dead Island and it's good in that sense. It's not trying to invent anything new or do anything creative. It's just the Dead Island we all love about. The control and the gameplay are the same. They added a new character for people who got tired of the original cast from DI. The story is almost non-existent. It's the same old go there get that kill that and kill more. But we're not here for that. We play DI because we get to kill zombies. Dead Island Riptide is great at it. You still get that great feeling of accomplishment when you cleared out a section of zombies. Zombies still creep up behind you and scare the heck out of you. You still have to tread carefully so you won't get swarmed by packs of zombies. If you loved playing Dead Island and want more of it, you shouldn't miss this. If you loved Dead Island, but you want something different and improved, you really shouldn't get this.

If you liked the original Dead Island, you will like Riptide. Just like the original, it is not perfect. Even though it seems smoother than its predecessor, It suffers occasional lag and is not as refined graphically, or control wise as Borderlands, Bioshock, and other AAA releases. The missions can be a bit repetitive, and the side missions are mostly what the magazines refer to as "fetch quests." In spite of its obvious flaws though, Riptide is a B-Movie, zombie slaying blast. Creating weapons, upgrading them, leveling your character and choosing which skills to level up is incredibly addicting. The fact that its $10 less then a typical new release is just bonus. BB giving the $20 RZ certificate with preorder is an even bigger bonus! Fun game. If you liked the original, continue the fun with Riptide!

If you have played the original Dead Island, you will enjoy this game a lot. Very similar to the previous title, this game brings back the fun zombie destruction. Although titles like Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead have become more popular than this game, Dead Island still is a very fun game. Especially for the price, you will get hours and hours of gameplay. Multiplayer is really fun too. Having people with you as you roam around helping take out the undead makes the game much more interesting. The game however does not have incredibly great graphics, but it is expected when it is not backed by a really big gaming company. Sometimes the gameplay can get tacky and online is abundant with players to always join you when playing.

I loved Dead Island. I have played it 5 times front to back. The biggest disappointment of the game is they re-spawn the people you have killed before you can even leave the section you are trying to play. I per-ordered the game, and even with the special BBQ weapon, I have lost it with two different player just because I hit the wrong button and dropped it, and was unable to recover it. You do not have a choice at what level you want to play the game, so you better know what you are doing. The plus side of it you get to go up to level 70 where it was level 60 in Dead Island. You can also import your player from Dead Island and start out at level 60.

Overall Riptide is a good game and continues where the first one left off pretty much. It plays a lot like the first one as well. You get more weapon selection in this game, more mods for them, more collectible items, more useful repeatable quests for lots of cash and experience points to rapidly level up. The best part of this game to me is the co-op experience it offers. Oh and theres one more new playable character which I didnt play much of because you can import your characters from the first Dead Island game which I did and continue your levels.

Overall game is fun, worth the discounted rate I purchased game under. Quirks in Game: Lost volume on my TV when I was on the Navy Destroyer on two separate occasions, game froze a couple times, on a few separate challenges, the zombies would no proceed to the building the group of survivors were in so I could not proceed forward to complete mission (all entrances to the building had flames in them so I could not go out of the building either) and was forced to close out game and start mission over which I completed successfully the second time around.

Enjoyable zombie killing game that maybe surpassed by others such as resident evil, call of duty black ops, dead rising, left for dead among many others. The visual are fine enough and the action move pretty well for zombie killing spree. Unfortunately multiplayer is only with system link of Xbox live and can't do split screen where everyone can play in the same room. Even call of duty blacktops and left for dead allow two players to play on the same console. Not many people can have multiple xbox and tv for playing multi player at home.