Game: Dead Island: Ryder White (DLC)
Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Deep Silver
Developer: Techland
ESRB: M
Genre: Zombie Killing DLC
Players: 1
What's Hot: Tells the story from a different angle
What's Not: Where’s the game I love?
Review by: Jason McMaster
It’s been a while since I last played Dead Island, Deep Silver’s tropical zombie paradise simulator. I still remember it fondly, though. The problem is Ryder White, the new DLC, isn’t that game. In fact it takes what I loved about Dead Island and strips it away. There’s no leveling, no skill point allotments. Nothing. Just a bad ass Ryder White killing zombies and frankly— that’s simply not enough.
The Ryder White DLC plays from the viewpoint of a rather famous NPC from the original storyline, showing a different side of the story and highlighting parts of the outbreak. This has the rather interesting, if not enjoyable, side effect of having you play a soldier that doesn’t need skill advancement. Or at least that’s the explanation of why advancement is missing. While I like the idea of going in a different direction, there are limitations in doing that. For instance, if your game isn’t well suited for gun play then making a DLC pack exclusively about said gun play isn’t the best option.
They went in that direction.
You don’t have to use guns, in theory, but there are quite a few guns made available. They’re everywhere. This is weird to anyone who remembers playing through the standard game. The most you’d ever see of a gun before midway through the game was Purna’s special power. I always assumed that was a design choice, and a wise one at that, since the game is heavily melee based.
Another notable design choice in the DLC is that the new campaign is single player only. That brings us to another part of the game that made it stand out: the co-op. Without the co-op, leveling and other RPG elements, Dead Island simply isn’t very good. In fact, it’s incredibly frustrating.
In the original campaign, a handful of zombies are enough to kill you. In the DLC, since you have guns I assume, Techland hurls 10 or 15 zombies at you at once. The aiming is awful, relying on a screen-devouring iron sight, and I never seem to have enough bullets. I usually kill the first wave to be taken down by a couple of stragglers while I run around trying to reload. If you’re curious how long it takes for me to throw a controller, it’s roughly about 10 Dead Island game reloads.
However, Mr. White’s wild ride isn’t the only thing included in this package – there are also a few new schematics for making new weapons. These can be accessed in the regular game as well as the DLC. This is a cool feature if you’re new to Dead Island or are on a new playthrough, but there’s not really enough there to warrant paying for the DLC. Dead Island is still a game that deserves to be played if you missed it last year – but Ryder White can be safely skipped.
Jason McMaster is a regular contributor to GameShark and also writes for Quarter to Three.com.
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