Dead Island

by **shiki-jitsu** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 3:55 am

by **Neon Maniac** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 4:18 am

That trailer made me cry. We all need to get this and play together and maybe with Joe and save that little girl.

by **Neon Maniac** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 4:20 am

IGN has it backward/forwards here:

http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/02/16/de ... nt-trailer

Also, if you have the video going so you can here the music, and watch this:

:spider:

It's also fairly effective.

by **shiki-jitsu** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 3:16 pm

This trailer is just as good backwards (forwards). Hopefully the graphics will look atleast half this good in gameplay.

by **TGM** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 6:33 pm

the "father" rendering is fucking incredible IMO... the little girl looks a little off to me tho

by **TGM** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 6:36 pm

via destructoid

Borderlands set on the Just Cause 2 island with the Left 4 Dead style of zombies, featuring a quest system similar to Fallout 3 and the weapons system of Dead Rising 2. Blend all of that together, and you get Dead Island; or, as Deep Silver likes to refer to it, a "first-person zombie slasher action RPG."

The first thing that needs to be stated about Dead Island is that it is just visually gorgeous. The Chrome Engine shows off the huge tropical island paradise called Banoi Island in such vivid detail, and every inch of the island -- from little villages to a large city -- can be explored. While the game isn't linear, there are some sections that need to be opened up within the main storyline in order to get to other parts of the island.

As for the story, you play as one of four playable characters who recently checked into the Royal Palms Resort hotel. While on this vacation, the player wakes up after a night of heavy partying to discover that some kind of zombie outbreak has been unleashed on the island. From here, I was shown the first mission, which serves as a sort of tutorial to the player.

Your character has found himself holed up in a beach hut surrounded by zombies with other survivors fearing for their lives. One of the survivors begs you to go assist a lone person fending off the horde outside. The player then picks up a pipe and goes out to bash in some heads.

Aside from the fact that the main four characters are immune to the zombie infection for some reason, they're all just normal people. So swinging the pipe will come off sloppy and wild at the start of the game. As you progress, though, your character will learn how to handle weapons better. Part of that comes from the skill tree system where you'll be able to learn new skills and upgrade abilities, such as learning the dash attack. The skill tree system wasn't shown off during this preview, but we'll have more info on how it works soon.

While there are guns, the main focus of Dead Island's combat mechanics are the melee weapons. You'll be getting your hands on pipes, machetes, shovels, bats -- even a freaking tree branch can be used as a weapon. The weapons do degrade over time and will eventually bust, so you'll have to find another weapon, or you can get it repaired at various locations on the island. Additionally, you can't simply go around swinging constantly at enemies. After a few swings, your character will be out of stamina and must catch their breath before attacking again.

Of all the features Deep Silver showed off, they seemed the most excited about how we'll be able to kill zombies. The main thing they want people to take away from Dead Island is all the gory ways you'll be able to kill the walking dead. You can chop a zombie's legs and arms off and just watch him as he flops around trying to gnaw at your ankles.

As for the zombies themselves, you'll have the standard slow zombies and the annoying running class. On top of that, there will be the special class zombies which will remind you a lot of the special infected from Left 4 Dead.

Similar to the zombies, the four playable characters each have a different play style, too. The cool thing with all of this is that friends will be easily able to jump in or out for four-player (online only) co-op fun times. Don't worry, you'll have the option of being whatever character you want so it's totally possible, for example, for four assassin characters to work together in co-op.

While there's still a lot of work going on with Dead Island, we can expect the experience to similar to Fallout thanks to all of the sidequests you can take on. Techland really wants players to get absorbed into the story and if the trailer is any indication, we're in for a treat.

What I got to see was a really early alpha build of Dead Island. While it was pretty and the way you can chop zombies up was cool, I still need to see a lot more. More importantly, I want to get real hands on with the game and see first-hand how satisfying it'll be slicing up zombies. The entire concept sounds great and it's really refreshing to see a different type of zombie game out there. I know many of you are sick of the zombie genre, but I think there's room for one more when it comes to Dead Island.

by **shiki-jitsu** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:14 pm

I will definitely be picking this up.

by K' » Fri Feb 18, 2011 5:21 am

Day-1 purchase. I was sure that this got cancelled, because there was some noise during the Game Convention '07 and then absolutely nothing. This new life signal in form of an artsy backwards/slowmo trailer was a pleasant surprise.

Old trailer from '07: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gc-20 ... land/23847
Old segment about the simulated skin, tissue and bone damage system: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/multi ... land/27906

by **Spez** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:08 pm

It's apparently already being optioned for a feature length film based on this alone.

by K' » Mon Feb 21, 2011 11:43 pm

http://kotaku.com/#!5766354/this-is-wha ... /gallery/1

by **Spez** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 2:12 pm

by **Alien Redrum** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 4:21 pm

by **DJBenz** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 11:58 am

TallGuyMe wrote:the "father" rendering is fucking incredible IMO... the little girl looks a little off to me tho

Agreed 100%. Although you can't get any idea of the game from a pre-rendered trailer, the description of the alpha sounds very cool. It'll be interesting to see if it can break away significantly from the Dead Rising gameplay/story arc.

As a semi-related aside, is anyone playing Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare? I got this at Christmas and really started to get into it before my 360 went RROD and died. I've replaced it now with a new-gen slim console, so need to get some spare time to pick up where I left off.