Dead Island: Riptide received a mixed reception from critics, who cited that the game did not fix any of its predecessor's problems, nor add anything new to the gameplay.

The immune regain consciousness on the shore of the island of Palanai and are found by Harlow, a WHO researcher, who tells them the zombie infection has spread there as well.

Colonel Hardy tells the immune that Serpo's organization is interested in weaponizing the Kuru strain that caused the zombie outbreak.

The immune find the military base and contact Serpo; he tells them that Hardy is not to be trusted, and sends a helicopter to evacuate the survivors.

The pre and post-credits scenes reveal that the high majority of the people they have helped throughout the game had been killed by zombies as their respective holdouts were overrun by the infected.

[6] In January 2013, Deep Silver announced that Dead Island: Riptide would be available in a "Zombie Bait Edition", which would include a statuette of the bloodily dismembered torso of a bikini-clad woman.

Marketing materials described it as the game's "take on an iconic Roman marble torso sculpture" and "a striking conversation piece".

Journalists described the statuette as "gross", as something not even a sociopath would want,[9] or as a "text book example of the most extreme ends of misogynist fantasy, a woman reduced to nothing but her tits, her wounds hideously depicted in gore, jutting bones, and of course barely a mark covering her globular breasts".

[7] Within hours of the announcement, Deep Silver's UK branch issued a statement that they "apologize for any offense caused" and that they "sincerely regret this choice", reiterating "how deeply sorry we are, and that we are committed to making sure this will never happen again".

[11] In April 2013, video game media reported that the "Zombie Bait Edition" did not seem to have been withdrawn from sale, and that Deep Silver's parent company had made an "extremely limited quantity" of the mutilated torso statuettes available to retailers in Europe and Australia.

[23] GameSpot's Mark Walton heavily criticized the game, saying: "Dead Island: Riptide might look like an idyllic zombie-fest, but it's little more than a frustrating mess of half-baked ideas and repetitive combat.".