With marketing calendars so stuffed as to leave nary a day bereft of some huge news, these days when a game falls off the radar for any length of time you get to expecting the only news of it you'll here going forward will be of its untimely demise - a la the latest tragedy to befall Mirror's Edge 2, just a few days ago.
Not so with Dead Island, seemingly. In fact by all appearances, Polish developers Techland have been pretty goshdarned busy since announcing Dead Island in 2007. They've found themselves a fairly reputable publisher in Deep Silver. They've got enough code together to have demoed a sliver of gameplay to certain elements of the press. And they've put together a trailer.
If you haven't already, for shame! You really must watch it:
Released yesterday to some pretty ecstatic raves, the three minute piece Techland put together to officially out their melee-focused zombie survival horror (come RPG I dare say) certainly looks the part. Moreover it feels it, too. But I'd like to think we're all adults here. We must know by now how incredibly deceptive trailers often are, and much as I might hope Dead Island is gaming's answer to The Reapers Are The Angels - rather than the Autumn of Dead Rising 2 - I sincerely doubt it will be.
I first saw the beautifully staged action embedded above over at Dark Horizons, where Garth Franklin writes that "The setting, piano score and emotional character focus of the trailer remind me of Lost [and] the structure is akin to Memento."
High praise - and perhaps there's a case for it. Dead Island can certainly lay claim to having a seriously sweet trailer, but it's much too early to tell much of anything about the game itself. Let's not set ourselves up for a fall. Bear in mind all we've seen of Dead Island so far is CG: no gameplay. And this is a game, not a CG movie.
...also it's coming from the studio which gave us Pet Racer and its world-renowned sequel Pet Soccer.
But I shouldn't be such an dick: Techland also gave the world Call of Juarez, and its sequel Bound in Blood - easily the best in class in western-themed video games before Red Dead Redemption came along and knocked all our socks off in 2010.
So they're capable developers when they sets their minds to it. There is hope!
For the very moment, however, let's not stoke the fires of our hearts with thoughts of a zombie video game with the sort of auteurish aspirations Garth has alludes to... not till we know a great deal more about Dead Island.
(Which I don't believe for a second will meet its projected 2011 street date, incidentally. More likely you'll see it - at the earliest - in the Spring of next year, on Xbox 360 and PS3.)
I first saw the beautifully staged action embedded above over at Dark Horizons, where Garth Franklin writes that "The setting, piano score and emotional character focus of the trailer remind me of Lost [and] the structure is akin to Memento."
High praise - and perhaps there's a case for it. Dead Island can certainly lay claim to having a seriously sweet trailer, but it's much too early to tell much of anything about the game itself. Let's not set ourselves up for a fall. Bear in mind all we've seen of Dead Island so far is CG: no gameplay. And this is a game, not a CG movie.
...also it's coming from the studio which gave us Pet Racer and its world-renowned sequel Pet Soccer.
But I shouldn't be such an dick: Techland also gave the world Call of Juarez, and its sequel Bound in Blood - easily the best in class in western-themed video games before Red Dead Redemption came along and knocked all our socks off in 2010.
So they're capable developers when they sets their minds to it. There is hope!
For the very moment, however, let's not stoke the fires of our hearts with thoughts of a zombie video game with the sort of auteurish aspirations Garth has alludes to... not till we know a great deal more about Dead Island.
(Which I don't believe for a second will meet its projected 2011 street date, incidentally. More likely you'll see it - at the earliest - in the Spring of next year, on Xbox 360 and PS3.)
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