Dead Island, the once perpetually in search of a publisher zombies cum Sandals® title from Call of Juarez developer Techland, hasn’t ever pinged my survival horror radar – I mean, I have nothing but love for the walking dead, but the world needs another hack and slash zombie game like it needs a gaping, oozing hole in the head, in the shape of a human’s upper and lower bicuspids.
But that was before the release of this Memento-esque teaser trailer, which tells the moving story of a young family’s Publishing Clearing House dream vacation gone horribly wrong. Despite not showing a single second of gameplay, this CGI opus is one of the most viscerally disturbing, artistically stunning game trailers I’ve ever seen. It’s like a mini zombie movie in reverse! And based on reports by IGN, who Techland and publisher Deep Silver invited to view an early build of the game, it’s a pretty accurate depiction of Dead Island’s dramatic tone, which they assure us is nothing like “the campy world of Dead Rising.”
Though like Dead Rising you’ll be forced to scavenge for weapons from the surrounding environment, those weapons will be intimate items like knives, axes, pipes, machetes and broken chunks of broom sticks. Set as it is in a remote resort on a tropical island in Papua New Guinea, players are more likely to come across caches of margaritas than mounted machine guns, lending “a stark reality” to the melee-centric combat. Consider my radar pinged and my tear ducts primed!
Dead Island will be out later this year for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
