Dead Island Retro Revenge was developed by Empty Clip Studios and released in 2016. It is a 16-bit side-scrolling, beat-em-up, arcade game. Originally it was developed as part of the Dead Island Definitive Collection, but it is worth getting as a standalone game?

Rating (out of 10):
- Graphics (inc. VFX): 7.5
- Music (inc SFX): 5
- Story: 5.5
- Content: 4
- Controls: 7.5
- Gameplay: 4

I liked the graphics and VFX in the game, and honestly, I'd say it's the best part of the game in my opinion.

The music suits the game well, but it's not a soundtrack that you could listen to outside of the game. It's simple arcade-themed music that does its job, nothing more, nothing less.

As this is an arcade-style game the story isn't the focus, and most of these types of games don't have one at all. That being said Retro Revenge does have a little backstory, which progressed as we pass the 3 main stages of the game. It's a funny little story about our main character trying to rescue his cat, and I want to note that the art in the cutscenes is cool.

The controls in the game are as simple as can be. Up and down movement, with four directions of attack and two abilities. Altogether you play the game using just eight keys on your keyboard.

I didn't enjoy the gameplay much. All we do is try to get to the end of the stage alive, using different combinations of attacks to defeat different types of foes running at us.

The game has three modes Story, Marathon and Survivor. The story mode takes me about 4 hours to finish, but it can be completed in half that time if you're good at these games (I'm not). Most of the content in the game is about perfecting the stages and earning the most amount of points possible to climb the leaderboard.

Finally, if you enjoy the idea of perfecting your runs and finding ways to maximise your number of points to climb the leaderboard and brag about being top whatever% at different levels of the game, this is a perfect game for you. However, if you don't care about any of that, this game has nothing to offer You.

I rate it 5.0/10.0