Dead Island (Video Game Preview)

Dead Island is a new horror/survival zombie game scheduled to be released August 1, 2011 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Dead Island is about a zombie breakout happening in the island resort named Royal Palms Resort and the four survivors who seem to be immune to the fast-spreading disease. Dead Island has been in development for a long time now and Techland recently released a teaser trailer for the game that you can see HERE. While this trailer looks really cool, I can't say that it made me any more excited for the game's release. It shows no actual gameplay from the game, so I think getting pumped up from the trailer would be a bit ridiculous. I mean for all we know players may not kill zombies by shooting them in the head or otherwise destroying a zombie's brain but maybe you kill them by feeding them cupcakes and giving them hugs. Although from what I've gathered from different articles, the game will focus primarily on using melee weapons that can be upgraded to kill zombies with few firearms spread throughout stages, similar to Dead Rising's core mechanics. Dead Island is also supposed to be a first person game that up to four people can play cooperatively trying to get to certain destinations while fighting through the hordes of zombies, similar to the Left 4 Dead series. There is supposed to also be RPG elements in Dead Island such as each character having predetermined classes that can unlock certain moves and skills, similar to what players experienced in Borderlands. Add all of that up, and you have a game that will make me wet myself if it is executed properly.

Dead Island lets players choose from four different characters to play as: Xian Mei (a former hotel employee), Logan (a surfer), Sam B (a former rapper) and another character named Purna (little is known about her but it is rumored she may be an island native). The four characters have been described by the game's publisher as a "leader," "tank," "jack-of-all-trades" and "assassin." Dead Island will feature a variety of zombies and boss zombies as well, including an exploding zombie that damages survivors within the blast radius. The boomer of Left 4 Dead was originally designed to explode like this in the developmental stage of the game and was later changed, so we'll see if Dead Island keeps this idea or trashes it as well. Dead Island will also contain non-playable characters that will help advance the story and help players through the game.

Dead Island experienced some controversy recently when the ESRB forced Techland to change the logo of the game featuring the hanging body. I wish someone would explain this one to me. Apparently it's ok to have a game where players brutally dismember reanimated corpses, and it's ok for the game to have a trailer with people getting eaten alive and showing a little girl falling to her death, but if there is an outline of a hanging body then that is going too far. I guess you could say that children under the age to play the game may see it when they shouldn't, but the ESRB doesn't enforce their own rules strictly enough to keep any underage person that wants to play the game from playing it anyhow. So basically what would've been a much better logo for the game gets turned into something E rated and not nearly as awesome. Fortunately, the logo will still be used inside the game.