I technically finished the remastered version on Series X and not the original here (I don’t even own the original game), but I already wrote an entry for it a while back and I don’t really want to edit my thoughts concerning the rest of my experience on that as that review is fairly long already. Think of this as my extended full review on Dead Island Definitive Edition as I have just now sucked it up and beat the entire campaign. I said I would at some point, and I did.
I trudged on ahead to see what else this game had to offer beyond what I experienced on the main island, and quite baffling as the game went along, it got worse. Remember the interesting unique bright vacation setting that Dead Island showcased front and center? Yeah, we can just forget about that, because by the second act you’re now in this dilapidated dull brown filthy apocalyptic ruined city, a setting I’ve seen time and time again, and nothing interesting is done with it. Oh but that’s not all, as 50% of the city missions involve you navigating even more dull looking sewers, complete with narrow tunnel level design and endless back and forth nonsense! It doesn’t get better from there either, the 3rd act is primarily in an uninspired jungle complete with native tribe areas and ruins (maybe throw in a laboratory because why not) and the final act is this generic prison. The game basically blew its load so incredibly early in the first act that all it had left were tired generic locations we’ve seen zombie media use over and over again.
The one true positive I had of my original review is now stripped away and all that’s left to focus on is the truly abysmal combat system. The drunk flailing doesn’t really improve, the game litters your screen UI with eyesore Ubisoft map and item icons, the enemy variety gets improved…somewhat, but not by much. There are these exploder zombies that blow up when you get near them and a fat zombie that pukes poison but that’s about it, the main variety comes in the form of a couple of new bosses. There’s…what I can only describe as a filth covered representation of the michelin man wrapped in a straitjacket, and his main gimmick is that he charges at you, and if he so much as even grazes the air you exhale, you get knocked down. There’s also this butcher who just charges at you and swings at you a bunch, and you’re basically just supposed to tank the damage if you have nothing but melee weapons to fight him with (the final boss is basically just a suped up version of this and it doesn’t really feel like the controls were designed around this at all). Neither of these are fun; as a matter of fact, they’re kind of aggravating to go against and the game just LOVES spamming the heck out of them everywhere you go. The sidequest progression system isn’t improved either, and the game often favors vomiting up escort missions for you to sop up with a used napkin. You walk a couple of feet, the person you’re escorting stops to basically tell you “kill all the enemies to proceed”, you kill all of them, they start moving again, rinse and repeat like 3-4 times until the mission ends. It also doesn’t help that if they die, you have to restart a previous checkpoint save all over again, as opposed to when you die there’s no consequence whatsoever because, again, this is supposed to be a coop game, so you’re left in a “please revive me” state even if there’s no one to play with, you get some cash taken away, and you respawn, complete with any zombies you previously killed prior to dying in a particular section. In general I was basically just brute forcing my way towards the end of a section because I couldn’t take dealing with infected or playing this game for much longer. There is a focus on firearm combat towards the halfway point but it ironically mainly amounts to shooting at humans (not zombies) behind cover like the most unpolished FPS game out there. Many encounters towards the 3rd act are against human npcs who fire at you behind cover and you end up fighting them more than the infected.
But man, even after all I described this game just didn’t know when to END. It drags on and on seemingly forever, I was genuinely baffled when I discovered there were FOUR acts in this game, and I wasn’t even halfway through act 2. This game absolutely sucks the life out of you with its repetitive awful combat, dull environments, shallow sidequest story progression system, and again maybe this negativity could’ve been lessened if I actually played with other people but I sincerely doubt it.
To my surprise the story actually did involve the main characters, but it’s basically the Dead Space 3 treatment, where if you’re playing solo you don’t get any interactions with the other playable characters and only see them in cutscenes, but despite that the game pretends that these characters have been interacting a lot and like…I just don’t care about any of these characters. The dialogue is awful, the voice acting is passable at best, the characters are all as interesting as a paper plate with stale sausage rolls on it, but like there are “twists” in the story that I guess the game really wants you to care about but I just…don’t. I don’t like ANY of these people, why should I care at all?
The presentation of the remaster is conflicting. On the one hand, 60fps is locked and the environments can look pretty impressive at times, but the remnants of the old awkward Xbox 360 lighting and texture work/character models still seeps through despite the remastering efforts and I’m convinced enough to label it equal parts pretty and equal parts outdated.
All in all though this was genuinely one of the most miserable games I ever had to slog through, and yeah sure whatever I did this to myself just to say I did it, but I am telling you now, stay FAR away from this. It’s not even worth renting.
And no I’m not finishing Riptide. Not for a long long while at least.
I trudged on ahead to see what else this game had to offer beyond what I experienced on the main island, and quite baffling as the game went along, it got worse. Remember the interesting unique bright vacation setting that Dead Island showcased front and center? Yeah, we can just forget about that, because by the second act you’re now in this dilapidated dull brown filthy apocalyptic ruined city, a setting I’ve seen time and time again, and nothing interesting is done with it. Oh but that’s not all, as 50% of the city missions involve you navigating even more dull looking sewers, complete with narrow tunnel level design and endless back and forth nonsense! It doesn’t get better from there either, the 3rd act is primarily in an uninspired jungle complete with native tribe areas and ruins (maybe throw in a laboratory because why not) and the final act is this generic prison. The game basically blew its load so incredibly early in the first act that all it had left were tired generic locations we’ve seen zombie media use over and over again.
The one true positive I had of my original review is now stripped away and all that’s left to focus on is the truly abysmal combat system. The drunk flailing doesn’t really improve, the game litters your screen UI with eyesore Ubisoft map and item icons, the enemy variety gets improved…somewhat, but not by much. There are these exploder zombies that blow up when you get near them and a fat zombie that pukes poison but that’s about it, the main variety comes in the form of a couple of new bosses. There’s…what I can only describe as a filth covered representation of the michelin man wrapped in a straitjacket, and his main gimmick is that he charges at you, and if he so much as even grazes the air you exhale, you get knocked down. There’s also this butcher who just charges at you and swings at you a bunch, and you’re basically just supposed to tank the damage if you have nothing but melee weapons to fight him with (the final boss is basically just a suped up version of this and it doesn’t really feel like the controls were designed around this at all). Neither of these are fun; as a matter of fact, they’re kind of aggravating to go against and the game just LOVES spamming the heck out of them everywhere you go. The sidequest progression system isn’t improved either, and the game often favors vomiting up escort missions for you to sop up with a used napkin. You walk a couple of feet, the person you’re escorting stops to basically tell you “kill all the enemies to proceed”, you kill all of them, they start moving again, rinse and repeat like 3-4 times until the mission ends. It also doesn’t help that if they die, you have to restart a previous checkpoint save all over again, as opposed to when you die there’s no consequence whatsoever because, again, this is supposed to be a coop game, so you’re left in a “please revive me” state even if there’s no one to play with, you get some cash taken away, and you respawn, complete with any zombies you previously killed prior to dying in a particular section. In general I was basically just brute forcing my way towards the end of a section because I couldn’t take dealing with infected or playing this game for much longer. There is a focus on firearm combat towards the halfway point but it ironically mainly amounts to shooting at humans (not zombies) behind cover like the most unpolished FPS game out there. Many encounters towards the 3rd act are against human npcs who fire at you behind cover and you end up fighting them more than the infected.
But man, even after all I described this game just didn’t know when to END. It drags on and on seemingly forever, I was genuinely baffled when I discovered there were FOUR acts in this game, and I wasn’t even halfway through act 2. This game absolutely sucks the life out of you with its repetitive awful combat, dull environments, shallow sidequest story progression system, and again maybe this negativity could’ve been lessened if I actually played with other people but I sincerely doubt it.
To my surprise the story actually did involve the main characters, but it’s basically the Dead Space 3 treatment, where if you’re playing solo you don’t get any interactions with the other playable characters and only see them in cutscenes, but despite that the game pretends that these characters have been interacting a lot and like…I just don’t care about any of these characters. The dialogue is awful, the voice acting is passable at best, the characters are all as interesting as a paper plate with stale sausage rolls on it, but like there are “twists” in the story that I guess the game really wants you to care about but I just…don’t. I don’t like ANY of these people, why should I care at all?
The presentation of the remaster is conflicting. On the one hand, 60fps is locked and the environments can look pretty impressive at times, but the remnants of the old awkward Xbox 360 lighting and texture work/character models still seeps through despite the remastering efforts and I’m convinced enough to label it equal parts pretty and equal parts outdated.
All in all though this was genuinely one of the most miserable games I ever had to slog through, and yeah sure whatever I did this to myself just to say I did it, but I am telling you now, stay FAR away from this. It’s not even worth renting.
And no I’m not finishing Riptide. Not for a long long while at least.