It's another fun zombie slaying game for the Dead Island series, but it is a copy and paste effort overall!
Playing with friends is also a blast in this game. With a full 4 player match, it is pure chaos at the finest. The multiplayer is identical to the first where you can drop in/out whenever and trade weapons with other players. It is similar to Borderlands as well.
Aside from the fun combat and strong mulitplayer, this game is just not very good. Like I mentioned earlier, the story is mediocre. To top that off, the graphics look decent, but very muddled and ugly. The character facial animations looks horrendous as well. And I can't help but feel as if this game just a complete COPY AND PASTE of the original Dead Island. The only thing different is that it is on a different island but that only makes it worse considering the amazing resort location is now gone. The menus are all the same, the graphics are practically identical (same Chrome 5 engine), the story is the same thing, and the weapons are all identical to the first besides a few new ones they tossed in real quick. The only features they added in was the new zombie type called the Screamer and you can also operate a boat now. The boat mechanics are god-awful and it is really hard to turn around in it. The car mechanics haven't changed either, and there is still no third-person option for the vehicles which is HIGHLY frustrating.
The final problem I had with this game was the absurd number of glitches and how the controls were. The glitches ranged from getting stuck in a wall to an achievement glitching out. On the "complete every quest" achievement, I got to 79/80, beat the game, and nothing popped up. This same achievement problem happened in the first Dead Island too. Not to mention the bogus controls. Your characters moves around like a slug, and when I push down on the dialog stick to run, the game doesn't recognize it sometimes. Very frustrating and shame on Techland for not fixing this.
Overall, Dead Island: Riptide is a complete copy of the first one. I loved the combat in this, especially with friends, but this game is just too similar to the original. Literally nothing has changed and that makes me angry that Deep Silver went for a full retail price instead of an expansion pack or XBLA release. Avoid this until cheaper price unless you are a big Dead Island fan.