At least its not the swamps of Louisiana.

Dead Island is one of those “love it or hate it” kind of games. While I personally was enthralled by the presentation, warts and all, I know many who derided the experience as being both broken and pointless, especially in the now bloated zombie sub-genre that has populated the game space. But that is not stopping Deep Silver from releasing its first spinoff to Dead Island, titled Riptide, in 2013.

Note I said spinoff, and not a sequel. Deep Silver is rather keen on stressing that point, noting that Riptide takes place on a separate island off the coast of Banoi, the setting for the first game. Other than some freshly minted screenshots, Deep Silver did reveal some information regarding the changes to the title. Notably comes a new weather system, which adds flooding into the game, forcing players to use boats to travel down river at times with zombies littering the pathway like piranhas. There is also a fortification and barricade aspect as well, where players need to reinforce barricades to keep the infected at bay from constant attacks. Deep Silver is also promising upgrades to the game engine, hopefully making it more stable than the bug-ridden release of Dead Island a year ago.

Thankfully, the good news is that you can import your characters from Dead Island into Riptide, meaning you won’t lose any of your character builds or progress once Riptide is released. Overall, it seems like Riptide is looking to add more zombie-killing goodness to the Dead Island world, and throw in some new modes to keep it fresh enough for a proper sequel down the line. We shall see if it sticks, or is dead on arrival come 2013.

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Source: Joystiq

Robert G.

All around gamer, teacher, historian and writer, making his home at Blistered Thumbs.

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