Remember when zombies were cool? I'm not talking early-to-mid 2000 cool, like when The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z were fun little literary distractions. Nor when games like Dead Rising and movies like the Dawn of the Dead remake were breathing life back into the soon to be over-exploited genre. I talking Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead on VHS, and (at the time) hard to find copies of The Evil Dead 1 and 2, plus horrible foreign films with the word "Zombie" misspelled. Remember when zombies were cool, because no one else thought they were? No? Me neither.
Remember when zombies were completely overdone and everyone was sick of them? Sure you do. That was right around the time Left 4 Dead 2 came out. Think back to that time, back to late 2009... the economy was still taking a crap on everybody, and the prospect of Armageddon seemed all to real. (Okay, not really.) The zombie genre was so done. But hey, what else are you going to shoot? Nazi Taliban Aliens? They'll do in a pinch, but they just don't have the squishy squishiness of the undead.
Then remember when zombies became cool again? The greatest game trailer of all time simply showed a zombie attack with some sequences in reversed order along with music seemingly lifted straight from the last episode of Lost. Oh yeah, and there may have been some good ol' kiddie violence thrown in to tug at your heartstrings. Well it worked. Are you as pumped for Dead Island as I am? You damn well better be. All I know is that if I can't fling zombie kids out of hotel windows, I'm going to be sorely disappointed. Check out this trailer.
Dead Island is scheduled for an late summer release. It features 4 player online co-op, and will be available on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.