Dead Island

Released: September 2011
First person melee combat
Rated: Mature (lots and lots of gore and blood)

The breakdown: This is a fun game where you get to kill zombies up close and personal.

Ahh, the island of Banoi.  A beautiful tropical island in the South Pacific where you can lay out on the beach all day, explore, or get killed by a whole bunch of zombies.

So you wake up and discover your vacation is over.  People are all infected with a virus that turns them into zombies, but somehow you are immune.  For the most part, you run around the island tracking down objects, helping people, and of course, killing zombies. 
The weapon I felt best with was a home made combination of a electrocution element with something with a blade.  You had a lot of choices for weapons between knifes, guns, pipes, bats, shovels, sticks, and then you can modify them into maces, flaming weapons, and electrical zappers.  So I thought the most fun for the game was making a new weapon and trying it out.  My least favorite thing was getting lost on the island with no idea of where to find what I was looking for.  It's an open world so you can explore as much as you like and it certainly looked beautiful and peaceful when you weren't being chased by walking dead people.
You have your choice of being 4 different people.  I picked the British woman who used to be a police officer to be better with guns, but I discovered I liked knives better.
Overall, it was fun and very bloody.  Sometimes scary, and sometimes hysterical (especially when you get to run down zombies with a car).  The inner city was FILLED with tough zombies and human bad guys so that was my least favorite place to play because it was so damn hard to survive.
I think most people would be better off just renting it and playing it through once because I don't see much enjoyment in playing it repeatedly.

Here's a trailer for it:
http://youtu.be/YEzM2psna_o

I give it 3 out of 5 joysticks as it can be really fun sometimes, but also once through is good enough.