Like the original Dead Island, the sequel, Dead Island: Riptide won't have a German release, because that country is really weird about depictions of killing video game zombies, who technically are not even human and literally are not real. The game's creative director was asked if he thinks Germans are still getting their hands on the game.

"I hope so," Sebastien Reichert told PCGamesN.

Reichert barely contains his scorn for German law, which forbids violence against humanlike characters. He points out that Gears of War 3 had no problem getting past German prudes, even though it contains graphically violent finishing moves against humanlike enemies.

"It feels fucking awkward to have one of the most successful games in years and nobody in your country knows it," said Reichert. Techland is based in Poland but Dead Island was partially developed in Germany.

Apparently the ability to mutilate corpses is what pushes censors' buttons, but Reichert points out the game actually punishes you by breaking or degrading weapons used to do that. Doesn't matter, the fact the means are there is enough to get the thumb from Germany.

Dead Island: Riptide dev: "You can buy Gears of War in Germany, but not Dead Island. What's the difference?" [PCGamesN]

Sleeping Dogs for $30! Dead Island for $10! Kingdom Hearts 3D for $20!

Like everyone else in the world, Square Enix is holding a Black Friday sale this weekend. From tomorrow through Monday, you'll be able to buy a bunch of their games online at some decent discounts. Here's the promo image (looking super pixelated because for some reason Square sent it to us really small):

Really, no one else in the gaming biz writes press releases like this. Here's today's, a rare two-in-one:

Subject: Emergency 2013 - a rescue strategy game
From: Aubrey Norris
BCC: Me

Yep, that is totally a genre. As a PC strategy nerd, I am totally OK with this.

So like, if you were ever wondering what you should do/what would happen if a volcano just straight up erupted out of nowhere in Switzerland or something, yeah man this is totally your game! That's what you get for being all neutral and shit, Switzerland! :D LOL jk Switzerland we cool, we cool.

I, for one, will be playing this game to see if there is a SWAT team anywhere in it. I've had an obsession with SWAT teams since I was in college (I don't know why?) and they are pretty much the hottest thing ever. I mean, look at this:

.

How is that not dead sexy? And the shield! Holy shit! :O

Well, it is. >=( DONT JUDGE ME

Press Release attached, Screenshot link below!

[LINK REDACTED]

OH AND BTW YOU GUYS:

We're looking to mebbe do a Collector's Edition for Dead Island Riptide.

But we want the community to decide what goes in it! Not just like some "LOL HERE'S SOME SHIT THAT WAS LYING AROUND IN OUR ORIFICE" thing, you know?

So please, encourage your friends/relatives/communities/Spice Girls Addiction support groups to vote in our poll and let us know what we should put in it!

http://kwiksurveys.com/app/rendersurvey.asp?sid=ku8d1catb1qyka531578

<3 THX YALL AH DO LUV UR FAEC
Aubrey Norris
Manager of Marketing & PR
Deep Silver

Bravo, Aubrey. As always.

The CGI trailer for Dead Island: Riptide does seem kind of similar to that emotionally riveting one for the first Dead Island game.

Slow, soft (though not as good) music. A focus on loving characters in a bad spot. Pretty, warm colors. A sad ending. It just doesn't go in reverse. And it certainly didn't capture me quite like the first game's trailer, which you can reminisce about below:

So what do you guys think? Does it live up to the hype-filled trailer of last year?

Dead Island Riptide CGI-Trailer [North America] [YouTube via The Verge]

Dead Island was a great game. It had its problems, sure, but there was something particularly wonderful about Techland's open-world, survival horror, melee-focused game.

It might've been how particularly brutal the zombies grew to be. The Butcher is maybe one of the most terrifying enemies I've come across in a video game. He's gross-looking, super built, and has razor-sharp stubs of bone for forearms. Both he and the other slew of large and small, fast and slow zombies made surviving the deceptively-gorgeous island quite the task. Dead Island's intrigue might also have been due to the many variety of weapons you could both find and create, taping electrical wires to machetes and nailing spikes onto baseball bats. It was a solid cooperative experience, too, letting you seamlessly jump in on missions with players who were nearby.

All those reasons made Dead Island an enjoyable experience, even if it didn't live up to the emotionally-charged hype that one awesome cinematic trailer built up. So it's with excitement that I received news of the next installment of the franchise.

I took a first real look at Dead Island: Riptide at this year's PAX Prime. It was a hands-off demo, behind closed doors. Here's a rundown of my thought process:

1. Oh, hey! It's Dead Island.

The characters are familiar, the zombies are familiar, the weapons are familiar, and the islandy feel is familiar. Though the four characters from the original title are making a return, there's a new character making an appearance that we haven't met yet. Logan and Purna led the demo at level 25s, and I instantly made note of the message on the screen that denoted a nearby player we could jump to to play with.

2. This is a very wet Dead Island.

It's the same resort a different island than we saw the same four characters trek through in the first title. but it's been transformed Players will now navigate a similar-looking island, ravaged by a monsoon. There's water everywhere. So much so that the group has to man a boat just to get through the island. Zombies will get in the way, sometimes even pulling you off the boat. At this point I'm wondering what fish-like zombie will have mutated to survive the new, wet environment. Zombies seem to evolve fast, so I have to imagine it's likely.

3. Is that... is that a sword with electricity strapped on? Oh, my favorite!

It's fairly similar, and even more deadly with as much water as is around your enemies, electrocuting them in their own puddle of death. The neat addition is that it seems to be a double-blade sword. How deadly.

4. Ha, they still walk funny when they carry stuff.

The two characters—Logan and Purna—being led throughout the "Breaching the Tunnels" level of Chapter 6 had to carry water pumps with them on their way to a church. They carried the metal pieces through fallen trees and into a cave before arriving there.

5. Mines? Now we're talking.

Fortifying defense hubs are a new kind of mission in Dead Island: Riptide. You'll build fences with the barricade system to cover the gaps in the dilapidated church, and plant mines around the perimeter to keep the incoming horde of zombies at bay. The water pump you're using to help you escape makes a lot of noise. And every faithful zombie lore reader knows that noise equals lots and lots of zombies, so planting mines around your fortified church is a welcomed addition. It's not just explosive mines, either. There seems to be a healthy variety of mines, like poison mines and sonic mines.

6. Oh man, I think my head is spinning.

There's lots of running back and forth involved in these defense missions. Especially when you have a movable, mounted machine gun at your disposal, and can set it in the front or back of the church to rid the swampy perimeter of those fodder enemies.

7. Did that zombie just throw something at me?! What the HELL, zombie. I'm going to stab you in and around the face for that.

The Grenadier zombie can throw grenades at you. These are some sophisticated jerks! Even with the machine gun, you'll probably still want to run up to zombies to thin out the crowd before it becomes too massive to handle. So lots of close-ranged combat is still an emphasis.

8. It's cool, grenade-throwing zombie. I've got lots of grenades of my own.

Techland wants to conserve that desperate survival feeling of the first game, but let you have fun with tossing around grenades, too. So when the danger is amped up—like during defense missions when you have to deal with a huge horde of zombies—you'll get more grenades to play around with. But at other points you'll still have to worry about resource management.

The defense aspect seemed neat. It's a collaborative effort, and lets you get wild with ammunition for a short amount of time before stepping back into the difficulties of harsh and unlikely survival. I'm excited for a new arsenal, too, but this demo didn't give me too extensive of a look to tell you how that's going. One last feature that I'm excited about, though, is that you can move your character over from Dead Island. Which we all know will make for even more brutal enemies, but there's something great about starting off strong and being asked to defeat even stronger enemies.

After name-dropping the Dead Island sequel at E3 in June, Deep Silver drops the first visuals and details on Dead Island: Riptide, which challenges the original four survivors to live up to the label once again.

They thought they were safe, but this is a zombie game — no one is ever truly safe. A powerful monsoon strikes just as the four heroes of Dead Island think their safe, destroying their rescue vessel and stranding them on the island resort once again.

Don't expect the same lush locales, however — the island has been transformed by the monsoon. Large areas have been destroyed, streets are flooded — in one of the new screens they find themselves on a boat, surrounded by water bound undead.

Nowhere is safe. For the fab four, which makes it fortunate that a new character with a mysterious new skill set is joining the crew. That's sure to help out during the game's new hub defense missions, which tasks players to set up defenses in advance of the oncoming hordes.

Otherwise it sounds like a lot of the same thing, only different, and that's what a sequel is supposed to be.

Dead Island: Riptide is slated for release in 2013 for the PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360.

It all started with a weapon mod. Techland programmer Marcin Zygadlo created a Dead Island mod that started turning heads in the studio. "It was a proof that chopping monsters frozen by magic spells using two-handed swords is brutally fun and addictive," Techland dev Marcin Kruczkiewicz blogs. The mod made such an impression that Techland assembled a small team to work on a prototype.

The result is the currently codenamed "Project Hell". It's a first-person hack-and-slash game (for, I'm assuming, PC). It's set in a dark fantasy world. Here are some work-in-progress images of the game.

"Our main goal is to make a game we can all enjoy playing so don't expect unicorns and fairies—we prefer breaking through hordes of undead minions only to slaughter their devilish and loathsome masters in a bloody boss-fight," added Kruczkiewicz. "To achieve that we'll use our experience already gained in game development and enhanced technology from Dead Island."

Early comparisons are to Dark Souls, but that's the default comparison these days for dark fantasy. Have a look and judge for yourself.

Sharpen Your Axes [Official Site]

A trademark filing for something called Dead Stop specifically mentions mobile phones. Techland, publisher of 2011's Dead Island, just applied for the mark. [Siliconera]

Dead Island, the zombie survival action game from 2011 that some hated and some couldn't get enough of, returns with a sequel, Dead Island Riptide.

Techland's game will be for "consoles" and PC, and will be...well, that's all we've got.

The Dead Island Game of the Year Edition, due out June 26 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, combines the game, both bouts of downloadable content, and the blueprint for the Ripper weapon mod in one $29.99 package.