Gruesome foes, interesting custom weaponry, and a new sub genre of survival horror made Dead Island an enjoyable experience, even if it didn't live up to the emotionally-charged hype that one awesome cinematic trailer built up. So it's with excitement that I bestow upon you news of the next installment of the franchise. Kotaku got a hands on demo of Riptide at PAX Prime.
It's the same resort we saw the same four characters trek through in the first title, but it's been transformed by a monsoon. There's water everywhere. So much so that the group has to man a boat just to get through the island. Zombies will get in the way, sometimes even pulling you off the boat. At this point I'm wondering what fish-like zombie will have mutated to survive the new, wet environment. Zombies seem to evolve fast, so I have to imagine it's likely.
Fortifying defense hubs are a new kind of mission in Dead Island: Riptide. You'll build fences with the barricade system to cover the gaps in the dilapidated church, and plant mines around the perimeter to keep the incoming horde of zombies at bay. The water pump you're using to help you escape makes a lot of noise. And every faithful zombie lore reader knows that noise equals lots and lots of zombies, so planting mines around your fortified church is a welcomed addition. It's not just explosive mines, either. There seems to be a healthy variety of mines, like poison mines and sonic mines.
There's lots of running back and forth involved in these defense missions. Especially when you have a movable, mounted machine gun at your disposal, and can set it in the front or back of the church to rid the swampy perimeter of those fodder enemies.
I've got lots of grenades of my own.Techland wants to conserve that desperate survival feeling of the first game, but let you have fun with tossing around grenades, too. So when the danger is amped up—like during defense missions when you have to deal with a huge horde of zombies—you'll get more grenades to play around with. But at other points you'll still have to worry about resource management.