There are awesome ways to start your morning, but they probably aren't jampacked into just three minutes, like this Dead Island re-enactment from Chris Cropper's Going Nowhere Show.

It gets everything right about the zombie survival game, from the HUD to quest-giving to—wait, can you really blow up an exploding barrel with a plastic coat hanger?

Tipster Jeffrey G. gleaned this piece of wisdom from viewing it: "If you wanna survive any disaster, never choose/trust someone with the name 'Larry.'"

This is the part where I'd try to artfully describe how I meticulously took apart a zombie with an electrified fire axe on a pristine beach, sky-blue waters lapping at my knees.

I even took notes.

I'd probably explain that on my second play-through of Dead Island I switched from the Xbox 360 button-pushing attacks to the game's analog fighting. This more precise form of control requires you to plant your character with a trigger pull, set up a swing with the thumbstick and then follow through with smooth movements.

I'd explain how my first swing neatly cleaved off the zombie's right arm, but that it still sucker-punched me with the other fist. How I moved toward the zombie, blood now jetting from the stump a few inches under its right shoulder, and kicked it in the chest, knocking it slightly off balance. And then I swung again, cutting into its chest, exposing bone. A third swing took off the other arm. Kicks knocked it to the ground and a short hop-and-stomp crushed its head like an over-ripe melon.

That's how I was going to start my Dead Island review, but I realized it doesn't describe a unique moment in the game, it describes nearly every moment in the game. When you're not in one of the half-dozen or so safety zones on the island of Banoi, you're dismantling zombies, carefully, tactically, often awash in copious amounts of blood.

I didn't play Dead Island as much as I survived it. That's not a dig. I love this game. It's got its teeth sunk deep into me and won't let go. In fact, in the middle of preparing to write this review ( a process that involves wasting lots of time not writing a review) I decided I better go play some more just to make sure I hadn't missed anything.

Which is absurd.

Of course I missed things. Dead Island is an unbelievably large playground of hunting zombies, zombies hunting you, scavenging, making weapons, finding survivors, unraveling not just one plot but many stories and exploring a resort, a jungle, a sizable city and elsewhere.

I beat the game in about 17 hours. Then I went back and played another three hours. I've completed more than 60 quests. But I've still missed more than I've seen.

For instance, in the game you can find, upgrade and make your own weapons. I've made a few, but I have plans for dozens of weapons I've never made. And there are quests where you are awarded many more. One quest, for instance, gave me Gabriel's Hammer. Another time, while marauding through the zombies in a cemetery, I discovered a knife called Assassin's Greed. I suspect there are many more amazing weapons to find and make.

And then there are the characters. There are four characters you can play as in Dead Island, each have special skills. Sam is about the blunt weapons. Mei is an expert in sharps. Purna specializes in guns and Logan, who I played most, is a throwing expert. Each has a unique branch of the game's skill tree that allows them to unlock very specialized skills and bonuses.

Even if I had played all four characters, I only played with two so far, I wouldn't have seen everything. The skill tree is big enough to require at least two play-throughs, I suspect, to completely unlock. I haven't for instance, unlocked the ability to pick locks, which means there are a slew of containers I never opened.

And the stories. I figured out the main story because I played through the game. But I still don't know what happened to that commercial airliner. Or that diabetic brother. Or that trapped husband. I'm genuinely interested in finding the rest of the lost recordings made by the journalist.

So I keep playing. But still just alone. Dead Island has cooperative play. At anytime, just about, the game can sense that another online player is nearby and ask you if you want to join up. I rarely did this. Why? Because, in a complete change for me, I wanted to go this game alone.

Dead Island is a survivor's story and I wanted to feel like I survived the game without any help. Playing through the second time, I still feel that way. I still want to figure out all of those mysteries, help all of those people. Maybe on my third play-through I'll be more inviting.

This cooperative play does bring up one of the things that really bugs me about Dead Island. It is a narrative that stars a cast of four. But if you play the game alone, you never see those other three members. Not until you get to a cut-scene and suddenly they're talking like they've been there right by your side all along. It's a disconnect so severe that I began to hope that the game was going to deliver the game's lead up as a schizophrenic by the end. Alas it didn't.

But I still liked the story, I especially liked its unique take on how the zombie infestation began and spread. The ending, the very ending, was a bit much, but not so off-putting to nudge me into dissatisfaction.

There are other problems, problems developer Techland is working to fix, we're told. The game sometimes can't keep up with everything going on in a moment and suddenly zombies will look like they've been sanded down into smooth, moving sculptures.

I ran into one bug near the tail end of the game that permanently stripped me off all of the weapons I had collected, modded and upgraded and dropped me in a mess of high-level zombies with a person to protect.

Fortunately, that's also when I discovered another bug that allowed me to quickly dupe items. I used it on the single low-level item I found in the area: A machete. After perhaps a hundred deaths, I managed to squeak through the level. It was infuriating, but not enough to make me stop playing, or loving the game.

Played with simple button mashing or the more precise analog controls, fighting in Dead Island is the game's biggest strength.

What really sells the combat is that you can target specific parts of a zombie and the game knows how to deal with that. If you take a zombie's leg or legs off, it will fall down, but then crawl after you. If you cut off both of its arms, it will run into you. If you light it on fire, it will engulf you. Break an arm, and it will still disjointedly swing at you.

This makes for some amazing combat, as does the fact that sharp weapons can be thrown into zombies. I've faced off against zombies porcupined with the blades I've thrown into them. And when they finally shambled up to me, I've pulled those blades free and killed the zombie with them.

Initially it's almost funny. But that wears off over time and then it becomes tactical. I paused only briefly when a lucky toss firmly planted a fireaxe into the crotch of a zombie. Then I set about taking the thing down.

While I haven't managed to dig as deep as I'd like in the game, I have been able to get a shallow taste of the entire experience. According to the game, I've seen about 90 percent of the places Dead Island has to offer. That's impressive, especially considering just how massive this game is.

It's so big that even the fast travel offered in the game doesn't shave much time off your experience. The eclectic mix of settings amplify the experience, making sure you don't get worn out fighting zombies on the white sands of a beach, or in the run-down remains of a depressed city, or in the jungles or in a fortified prison.

Each setting is huge and most bring with them new forms of zombie infections. I was surprised how far into Dead Island I had to play to experience everything new in the game. Not just new settings, new zombies, new characters, but new ways of playing.

It wasn't until the very end, when I was confronted with killing other people, not zombies, but innocent people, that I felt I had touched on everything Dead Island has to offer.

Dead Island may not be everyone's favorite, but its deft combination of role-playing, action, horror, gunplay, driving and exploration makes it the sort of game that everyone should at least sample.

I've got to go now, I only paused the game and I really do go want to level up my fury skill.

Dead Island's expansion packs, both announced and not, may be hitting later than planned as developers refocus their energy on fixing the game, Deep Silver tells Kotaku.

"Right now the Dead Island development team's priority is working on fixes and updates across all platforms so that we can take care of all of the fans who have been so supportive of our game," a spokesperson said "There is some awesome DLC content planned for Dead Island, but first we have to put all our focus on the base game experience."

Techland released a new version of the computer game and a patch last week to deal with some pretty serious issues. Earlier this week the developer released a patch for the Xbox 360 version of the game. The team is currently working on a PS3 patch. All three patches are meant to fix multiplayer connectivity issues, autosave issues, and a bunch of other minor problems.

The team doesn't have a firm release date for the PS3 patch, but are working to get it done as soon as possible, we were told.

While Dead Island has some major, teeth-gnashing bugs, some of the oddities people run into seem to be more along the lines of the craziness occasionally spotted in Kotaku fave Red Dead Redemption. Personally, I love the game. I'll be writing up my review this week.

In the meantime, do you have any favorite bugs? We'd love to see them in comments.

This is sort of known, but I thought still worth talking among you fellow (few?) Dead Island fans.

In this screenshot of the game's menu we see three bits of unlockable content. The Ripper Mod is the weapon blueprint you get with a pre-order of the game. The Bloodbath Arena is a $10 downloadable pack already announced by Techland. So what is Ryder White's Campaign? It sounds like, knowing the story, it could be a vastly different way to play through the entire game, or at least a complete Act of the game.

What do you think? Personally, I'd love to play through White's pre-game story. I'd REALLY love to play his campaign through till the end of the entire game. If you know what I mean. WINKIE!

Love it for its body parts, looting, insanity and amazing settings, hate it for its ludicrous bugs and iffy graphics, either way you owe it to yourself to at least check Dead Island out.

There's tons of things to do, there's also a lot of really neat subtle, sorta hidden things. Like how the game lets you change your fighting controls to "analog." I'll let Machinima.com explain in this video.

Dead Island has earned itself somewhat of a reputation for being buggy. Some glitches, though, go the extra mile—in this case quite literally.

The PC Version of Dead Island has had a pretty rough launch. First, the developers' code was accidentally released in place of the retail version on Steam. Even after that problem was remedied, the final code on PC was buggy and the multiplayer servers were problematic.

Fortunately, a group of modders have been hard at work, sharing all manner of fixes and tweaks. They've been catalogued here, and the index is being regularly updated.

I haven't used most of these mods, though "Fists of Fury" looks like good fun. When I booted up the game, I found that the screen-tearing that was going on was so ugly that it was significantly affecting my experience. Weirdly, the game has no option for vsync. So, I held off on playing until Techland issued a patch that would add a vsyncing option.

Fortunately, Steam user Kosire beat them to the punch and posted a really easy way to toggle vsyncing on. It totally worked and improved my experience hugely. Thanks, Kosire!

Calling all Modders; Let's Mod Dead Island [Steam Forums]

The reviews are in for Techland's open-world zombie role-playing game Dead Island. Reviewers are talking about immersion and HUDs, PC bugs and control issues, and whether it is possible to love a game for the cool moments it provides while accepting that it has significant flaws. But from review to review, there is one constant: that damned trailer.

Produced by Axis Animation and released back in February, the Lost-tinged trailer received rave reviews. G4 called it "The best trailer I have seen in my life. The best video game trailer. The best movie trailer. The best anything trailer." MSNBC ran a piece entitled "The Dead Island Trailer Will Make You Cry." The ad even won an award at Cannes—not that Cannes, but an advertising festival held in the same location. Our own Mike Fahey was a bit more measured, calling it "The Most Heartbreaking Zombie Video Game Trailer You'll Ever See."

The trailer immediately sparked some debate: It was hard not to be roped in by the soft piano music and the slick intercutting, the final shot of the father holding his hand out to his doomed daughter. But there was a whiff of B.S. to the whole thing—after all, this was an advertisement we were watching. As Wired's Jason Schreier put it in a February op-ed, "If Dead Island's experience and emotional impact are anything close to this trailer, it could be a great game. But perhaps we should wait until we actually see the game itself before we start drawing those links."

In March, Brian Crecente interviewed the brand manager for Techland, who confirmed, more or less, that the family wouldn't be in the game. And now that the game has been released, there is no longer any ambiguity: the game is nothing like the trailer.

Here's Gamespot:

It's played in a first-person perspective and has shooting, but it's not a first-person shooter. And whatever that slow-motion trailer would have you believe, it's not a stirring emotional experience.

Destructoid:

With its debut trailer, Techland set itself the impossible goal of living up to self-generated hype on a massive scale. The video, which showed a family beset by zombies while a hauntingly beautiful refrain played, led one to believe that Dead Island would be an emotional roller coaster that touched on the human side of undead apocalypse.

Eurogamer:

Remember the Dead Island teaser trailer? Of course you do. It "went viral" as marketing people with spreadsheets like to say. That means everybody saw it, posted it on Facebook, emailed it to their friends and said, "Hey, what's this Dead Island game all about?"

3DJuegos.com:

Tras concretamente tres años sin dar señales de vida, el juego volvió de entre los muertos con su memorable tráiler cinemático que logró con apenas tres minutos de formidable CGI dejar impactado a aficionados y no aficionados, y comenzar a crear todas las expectativas que hasta entonces no había conseguido erigir.

and Gamestar.de:

In einem nahen Zimmer finden wir ein totes Paar (das wir schon aus dem eindrucksvollen, rückwärts ablaufenden Trailer von Dead Island kennen). Die zwei können uns nichts mehr erzählen.

Clearly, the trailer made enough of an impression that everyone felt obliged to address it in their review, often at the very top. The question is: Why did this ad, in particular, resonate like it did?

Advertising is meant to inform, but also to persuade. All ads lie to us to some extent; they spruce up the reality of financing a car or buying toilet paper to make us feel excited about it, to capture the essence of the product and convince us to buy it. In theory, the Dead Island trailer was meant to stand apart from the game, to show us what happened on the day the zombies rose up. Even though the tone of the finished game would be totally different than the trailer, the two things provided different perspectives on a unified story.

I've knocked around for a few hours in Dead Island, and reconciling the trailer with the game is indeed a bit difficult. Despite the fact that you can find the corpses of the trailer's family in the opening hotel level, I'm finding that the game's not-insubstantial charms lie in progression and exploration, not in my engagement with the story or characters. Though it should be said that Dead Island is a serious game; far more so than Dead Rising or even Left 4 Dead. Many of the sidequests are personal and fraught with loss and drama—"Take my brother his insulin," "Find medicine for my dying wife," and while the execution is flat and the animations are stilted, the small stories are often quite powerful.

I don't generally care for CGI trailers; they are misleading at a fundamental level. The first half of the reveal trailer for Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a bunch of footage of renaissance-era scientists attaching wings to a man, who then flew into the sun like Icarus. Which stands as a perfectly fine metaphor for the finished game, but is a far cry from what the actual game entails. And while the closing moments with Adam Jensen do show a cinematic approximation of gameplay, they don't show the game itself in action.

Plenty of other game trailers bend the rules of reality a bit to show a stylized view of their product; the famous "Mad World" trailer for Gears of War has been copied and parodied countless times, and the "Believe" campaign for Halo 3 was goosebump-raising, but ultimately unrelated to the game itself.

But still, the Dead Island trailer stands apart. In part, it's because Dead Island was a mystery—everyone knew what Halo 3 was going to be all about, so their ad agency was able to take more liberties with the campaign. All we really knew about Dead Island was that back in 2007, the game had, in fact, been about a family struggling to survive on a zombie-infested island. It was much easier to believe that the trailer was something of an approximation of the final product.

When I first watched that trailer, my bullshit detector was going off like crazy, and as the months wore on, preview after preview of the game made it quite clear that the final experience would be significantly different from the trailer. And yet still we talked about it, in previews and then in reviews; and here I am now, talking about it still. So again I ask: why?

The trailer was well-made and engaging; it channeled a hugely popular TV series (Lost) and it showed a little girl getting brutally murdered as her mother looked on. But I think the real reason for the trailer's impact was that it promised us something that, as it turned out, we wanted very badly.

We may not have known it at the time, but I think we want a zombie game that is tragic and sad, action-packed and tense, full of loss and emotional catharsis. We want a game to make us tear up, to show us impossible loss, to make come to terms with the actual risks and small but human costs of a deadly viral outbreak. Brilliantly, manipulatively, the Dead Island trailer promised us that, and our desire to see our wish fulfilled outweighed our skepticism. It was fun to believe that maybe, just maybe, this game would be different from the others.

And of course, now that the final game is out, we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that as much as we might want the game promised by that trailer, we're not getting it. Yet, anyway. Upon rewatching the trailer, I was mostly unmoved… until that little postscript, home-camera footage of the happy family, a daughter running around on the beach, a father corralling his family for a posed photo. Dang. That is the sort of thing I very much want to see in a video game.

I'm reminded of the famous scene in the season one finale of Mad Men in which protagonist Don Draper is pitching an ad campaign for the new Kodak "Carousel" slide projector. "Technology is a glittering lure," Draper says. "But there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged beyond flash, when they have a sentimental bond with the product."

The jury's out on Dead Island the game (Crecente will have his full review up this week). But whether its trailer was a misleading misstep or a brilliant piece of persuasion, it did something very important: it opened our eyes to something that we very much desire. By the time the trailer was made, Dead Island itself was most likely too far into development to be significantly changed. But even after the game's launch, the trailer's impact remains, as does the latent desire it illuminated. While Techland may not have made the game that their ad promised, perhaps another developer will.