Developer Techland had a lot of interesting projects in the pipeline, but most seemed to be put on hold, seemingly indefinitely after the Call of Juarez series began. Fortunately, one of those projects, Dead Island, is being brought back by independent publisher Deep Silver. IGN had a lengthy preview of the game, which will still be open-world, first-person, and having a heavy focus on melee combat. You play on a resort island, so there’s not really caches of military weapons lying around. You’ll have to rely on everything and anything you can get your hands on, which is certainly reminiscent of Dead Rising. However, Techland sets its game apart with a physics engine that makes every strike you land result in a very specific injury to the undead, taking off a certain piece of skin or breaking bones.
When I first heard of Dead Island, it was billed as a PC/360 title as Techland’s Chrome 4 engine apparently didn’t support PS3 back then. That seems to have been cleared up, as the game’s now on track for release on the three main high definition platforms and slated for a 2011 release. Hit the jump for the new teaser trailer.
