Watch the action-packed official launch trailer for Brink to find out whose side you’re on.

Serious Sam 3: BFE is a first-person shooter that takes place during Earth’s final struggle against Mental’s invasion.

We crack a few (undead) skulls during our hands-on session with Dead Island.

Dead Island, the upcoming zombie-themed action game, is the latest example of how the zombie apocalypse is already upon us. Day by day, more books, movies, television shows, and video games are joining the ranks of the undead, and their numbers only continue to grow. But this new game from developer Techland (creator of Call of Juarez) will try to evoke some of the tragedy and emotion you might expect from a getaway-vacation-turned-zombie-nightmare. We recently got a brief, hands-on demonstration of the game to see how the zombie slaying stacks up.

Dead Island takes place on a tropical paradise that has turned into a living nightmare after the local populace starts chowing down on one another. We started a few hours into the game, standing outside of a lighthouse. Vincent Kummer, brand manager at publisher Deep Silver and our copilot throughout the demo, informed us that we were in control of Xian Mei, one of the resort’s (former) employees. Apparently, her job must have involved a lot of cutlery because Mei’s weapon of choice was anything with a blade. Described as an assassin type of character, our character was one of four playable characters in Dead Island, along with a tank, leader, and jack-of-all-trades.

The lighthouse itself served as a makeshift refuge from some of the island’s locals. It was a somber scene, and it set the tone for the rest of the demo. All around us, people could barely contain their desperation. Some lashed out with anger; others pleaded for help. One woman wept silently in a corner. When we talked to the leader of this group and were assigned to go retrieve some signal flares from the beach, we were relieved to get out of that den. The path leading away from the lighthouse was lined with bodies; some heavily burned, others torn to pieces. Under the circumstances, this wasn’t too surprising. Then one of them moved. The low, all-too-familiar moan that followed left no room for error; this was a zombie that had spotted its next meal.

At least, that’s what it thought right up until we used our machete to hack its head clean off its shoulders. Combat was all about maintaining our stamina. Attacking, running, jumping, and other such activities would all cut into our stamina bar, which would refill quickly provided we didn’t do much more than walk a few steps. Without stamina, we couldn’t defend ourselves. This made battles against large numbers of enemies especially challenging because our initial urge was to lash out wildly at everything in sight. As we became more accustomed to the fighting, we learned–in perhaps the same way a real survivor would in this scenario–to stop and think. Taking that extra moment to line up a killing blow to the head and not waste energy made all the difference in these encounters.

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Scribblenauts studio 5th Cell delays release of Xbox Live Arcade third-person shooter into next year following GDC reception.

5th Cell first announced its Xbox Live Arcade effort Hybrid in October, but it wasn’t until this year’s Game Developers Conference in March that the game got its first real exposure. From that debut, 5th Cell learned at least one thing: Hybrid isn’t going to be ready for its previously announced 2011 launch window.

Today, the studio said that it has bumped Hybrid into 2012. The game has thus far only been announced for Xbox Live, but studio head Jeremiah Slaczka indicated to GameSpot that it may also see release on additional platforms.

“Hybrid was very well received this past GDC; people really seemed to enjoy it,” Slaczka said of the delay. “But with an additional year, we can take what we’ve learned and really drill down on our ideas to hopefully transform this game into something great.”

A marked departure from 5th Cell’s previous work on franchises such as Scribblenauts and Drawn to Life, Hybrid is a third-person shooter in which two rival factions wage war in a postapocalyptic world. In addition to its single-player campaign, gamers will also be able to battle it out in persistent-world online modes.

Square Enix launches teaser trailer for next installment in stealth action series; Io Interactive developing.

Shortly after launching the trailer, developer Io Interactive and Square Enix Europe officially announced that Hitman Absolution is indeed in development for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. The announcement did not offer a release window for the title but did say it had been built from the ground up using Io’s proprietary Glacier 2 engine. The game will be shown off behind closed doors at next month’s Electronic Entertainment Expo.

The trailer, which also surfaced on the official Hitman.com website, shows series protagonist Agent 47 screwing a silencer onto the end of a pistol. The scene then fades into a shot of one of his trademark Silverballer .45 pistols with a rattlesnake curled around it. The shot then fades to a UPC barcode with the numbers “110706″ and “47″ highlighted in red.

Both the YouTube page and the official announcement offered a brief synopsis of Hitman Absolution’s plot: “Hitman Absolution follows Agent 47, a cold blooded assassin, who takes on his most dangerous contract to date. Betrayed by those he trusted and hunted by the police, he finds himself at the centre of a dark conspiracy and must embark on a personal journey through a corrupt and twisted world, in his search for the truth.”

Hitman Absolution will be the first entry in the series since 2006′s Hitman: Blood Money, which saw 47 bring silent death to locales ranging from mid-Mardi Gras New Orleans to the White House. The series follows the murderous exploits of Agent 47, a bald killer genetically engineered to be the perfect assassin. Hitman: Codename 47 (2000) told the tale of how the protagonist found work with the International Contract Agency (ICA) whacking high-profile criminals. In Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (2002), 47 is pulled out of retirement after his priest friend is kidnapped by the Sicilian Mafia. In Hitman: Contracts (2004), he revisits many missions from the original game, albeit in reverse.

Check out this brand-new action-packed trailer. Renegade Ops lets you unleash mayhem and destruction in a mobile commando unit.

Child of Eden is a visually stunning shooter using Microsoft’s Kinect as well as traditional controls. We go hands-on and give our full report.

2K Games today detailed its plans to spread Darkness throughout the world. The publisher confirmed that The Darkness II, the sequel to 2007′s well-reviewed supernatural first-person shooter, is set to arrive in North American stores October 4, with an international launch October 7.

Escalation is the second downloadable content pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Thor: The Video Game is a third person action adventure game based of the Marvel movie.