techland posts

Call of Juarez has, as a series, stayed in the wild west. While The Cartel aims to move to a more modern setting, it's still a bit of a western. There's definitely a bit of thematic influence from the excellent No Country For Old Men, and the characters definitely remind us of the classic western archetypes. Besides that, this is entirely a stylistic trailer. Lots of cool cinematics and explosions, not much else.

Download the Call of Juarez: The Cartel 'Law and Disorder' Launch Trailer
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Developer Techland will have a very busy 2011. It has two games coming out that have both generated its share of mainstream media coverage. One is, of course, the upcoming zombie action game Dead Island. The other is the modern day Western shooter Call of Juarez: The Cartel.

In an interview on The Web Site Formerly Known As Scrawl, Techland's Blazej Krakowiak confirmed that Call of Juarez: The Cartel would be getting a playable demo, although it's not yet determined if it will be released before or after the full game is released by Ubisoft this summer. It will also support the full game's three player co-op mode.

[Via VG247.com]

Dead Island screenshots are almost as popular as that "Friday" song but 10 times better to listen to (hehe, we made a funny). Today we got three new screenshots from the upcoming Techland-developed zombie action game that includes the return of the massive straitjacket-wearing zombie character from the last batch.

The zombie now has a name, the Ram, which we are guessing is indicative of some kind of ability to charge and do some damage with his whole body. The shot also shows the game's Assassin character which we would speculate as being, well, a character who likes to assassinate things. Hopefully we will see the actual game in moving action in the coming months before its release this fall.

Take a good look at the logo above this post for Dead Island. The upcoming zombie action game from developer Techland and publisher Deep Silver uses a dead body hanging by a rope to the tropical tree to form the "I" in "Island." That image is apparently too graphic for the ESRB ratings system here in the US.

According to IGN, the logo for the US box cover for Dead Island will be changed so that the body is standing upright on the ground, without a rope connecting it to the tree, when the game is released. The original logo will stay in the game itself and will also remain unchanged for the European box cover. There's no word as to why the ESRB asked for the change.

Dead Island currently remains one of the most talked about upcoming games and this evening publisher Deep Silver sent over a trio of new screenshots from the upcoming "zombies at your tropical vacation spot" action game from developer Techland.

We have added those new screenshots to our gallery of visuals from the game. Two of them are just empty location pictures showing a beach and a pool side covered in blood. The other shows what looks like a huge zombie wearing (or should we say "encased in") a straitjacket and a breathing apparatus. Even if that thing is secured we would be pretty scared of it if it showed up on our doorstep.

This is the playable demo for nail'd, the pulse pounding off-road stunt racing game with an awesome soundtrack that includes bands such as Deftones, Fear Factory, Hatebreed or Static X. The demo includes two tracks from the full game. System requirements are shown after the jump.

Download nail'd demo (304 MB)
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Call of Juarez The Cartel was just announced a couple of weeks ago but the upcoming first person shooter from developer Techland is already generating controversy in the mainstream media. Reuters has posted a story that reports that some people who live on the US-Mexico border believe the game, described by publisher Ubisoft as depicting a "bloody road trip from Los Angeles to Juarez, Mexico"; will glorify the real drug murders and conflicts across the border.

Laurencio Barraza, a youth worker in the Ciudad Juarez town of Mexico, is quoted as saying he believes that the game "glorifies violence, as if victims were just another number or another bonus." An Ubisoft spokesperson defends the game, saying, "While Call of Juarez the Cartel touches on subjects relevant to current events in Juarez, it does so in a fictional manner that makes the gaming experience feel more like being immersed in an action-movie than in a real-life situation." The game itself is due out sometime this summer.

Update: According to the Associated Press, lawmakers in the Mexican state of Chihuahua (where Ciudad Juarez is located) have now voted to ask Mexico's Interior Department to ban Call of Juarez: The Cartel.

On Saturday we and other web sites reported that the movie rights to the long-in-development zombie action game Dead Island had already been bought by movie producer Sean Daniel and Union Entertainment back in 2009. The first reports came from movie industry web sites which usually are accurate.

Now our sister site Joystiq reports that according to a statement from Klemens Kundratitz, the CEO of Koch Media (the parent company of Dead Island publisher Deep Silver) those movie right haven't been bought at all. While it admits that it has received "a vast amount of inquiries" about securing those rights, Kundratitz states, "We want to do it the right way as film realizations of games (or vice versa) usually fail to deliver what the fans were looking for." That's certainly true. Our question: How did all these movie industry web sites miss the mark so badly on their original stories?

Dead Island made a big splash this week with its reintroduction, thanks in no small part to the release of the very cool, even moving, CGI cut scene that showed a family being attacked by zombies in reverse. Now comes word that the movie rights to Dead Island have already been secured.

The Wrap reports that movie producer Sean Daniel (a producer on the Mummy series of films, among others) and Union Entertainment actually bought the Dead Island movie rights from the game's developer Techland rights way back in 2009. (Dead Island was first announced in 2007). The story says that Daniel and Union are now moving quickly to get a script written for the adaptation. Union also has the movie rights to Techland's Call of Juarez shooter series.

Dead Island is a game from developer Techland that was first announced way back in 2007. Set on an island where the players have to fight off a ton of zombies, there's been little info on the game since the announcement. Now IGN has the first preview, new screenshots and a CGI trailer from the game.

The preview states that the game will be a first person title set on a swanky island resort that gets hit with a zombie apocalyse. The game is designed to have players use items that would naturally be on such an island to fight off the infected so don't expect massive machine guns or rocket launchers. Instead the game will concentrate mostly on melee combat against the zombies. Look for four player co-op support along with some RPG-lite elements for player character progression. Dead Island is currently set for release sometime in 2011 for the PC and other platforms via publisher Deep Silver.