“Dead Island: Retro Revenge” is the latest game in the hugely successful “Dead Island” franchise. When the first “Dead Island” came out in 2011 it was (if you’ll pardon the pun) a game-changer for the survival horror genre. It added a certain very gritty, visceral element that had not previously been a notable feature of the genre, adding a huge emphasis to the “survival” aspect of survival horror. In the last five years, all that’s come out of the series have been a stand-alone expansion and two small spin-off games while “Dead Island 2” has been stuck in development hell. So how well does the newest title and second spin-off “Dead Island: Retro Revenge” fill in for the long-awaited sequel? Let’s take a look.

“Retro Revenge” has an incredibly simple plot. The player takes control of Max, an obviously Jack Black inspired slacker who is busy playing video games during the zombie apocalypse. However, while Max is distracted by his video game, somebody steals his cat. So Max sets out on a trip through zombie-infested California to try to reclaim his cat.

“Retro Revenge” looks great. Most of the game is done with 16-bit graphics. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, this means it looks like a mid-90s game on the Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis. This is a really interesting choice, in my opinion, because most games that go for a pixel-graphic look tend to emulate the earlier and simpler 8-bit graphical style. This choice definitely pays off, too. The different enemy designs are all incredibly distinct and easy to tell apart with just a glance (which is a blessing in a game as fast paced as this). The game also uses very bright colors, which is an odd choice for a zombie game, but really helps to sell the California setting. Unfortunately, the screen can get very busy and so sometimes it can be a little hard to tell what is actually going on given just how many things are on screen and how bright they all are. One other oddity about the visual design is that the cut scenes are in more of a hand-drawn, motion comic style that doesn’t really mesh with the art of the game itself.

There’s some really great sound design in “Retro Revenge.” The music has just the right sorts of sounds to actually sound like it could be a forgotten SNES game. However, the sound does get a bit repetitive. Since there’s not a ton of variation in frankly much of anything during the game, you will hear the same sounds again and again. Of course, this is actually very in keeping with the games whose style it emulates.

There’s really not a whole lot to the gameplay of “Retro Revenge.” However, the gameplay that is there is a little misleading. At first, and especially in the screenshots posted on Steam, the game seems like it is going to be an old school beat ’em up in the vein of “Double Dragon.” Instead, it’s more of a rhythm game like “Dance Dance Revolution.” The player character is constantly moving to the right, and enemies are constantly moving to the left. The whole play of the game really is figuring out when to move up or down, and which attack button each enemy is vulnerable to. After that, it’s just a matter of learning the rhythm of when to attack each enemy. It may take a while to really master the gameplay, but there’s really no substance to it. It’s all just rote memorization and a little bit of reflexes.

“Dead Island” was a great game. It’s a modern classic of the horror genre. However, “Retro Rampage” not only fails to live up to the standard that the first game set, but actually tarnishes the brand name. “Retro Revenge” has almost no content. What content there is happens to be woefully underdeveloped. Square-Enix and Deep Silver both should have known better than to put out a game which is this blatantly unfinished.