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All gamers are carnivores and savages. Oh sure, some of us rarely eat meat in real life, but when we’re in a game, the thing we most want to see is our enemies turned into meat, the more rare and bloody the better. There’s something almost primal about seeing your foe turned inside out – you didn’t just win. You ripped them asunder. And there is satisfaction there. So which game this year looks best poised to satisfy our not-at-all-unhealthy bloodlust?
The Nominees
Rage
Capable of delivering some of the most eye-wateringly detailed graphics on the planet, Rage nonetheless keeps the gore quotient realistic and grounded. However, this creates one of those “less is more” situations – when you see the spray after unloading a shotgun shell into a mutant’s stomach, or watch as an expertly-thrown wingblade cleanly pops an enemy’s head off his body, you feel like a true master assassin. Preview
Dead Island
Zombies come apart more easily than not-yet-undead beings, and nowhere is that more evident than in this open world splatterfest. But the appeal here isn’t just that you can chop your foes into giblets. It’s the creative ways in which you can do it. Taking a cue from the Dead Rising series, Dead Island enables you to combine things like a hatchet and dynamite, which results in the ultimate sticky grenade when thrown.Preview
Prototype 2
Another open world game, but in this one you are a living bioweapon capable of incredible acts of destruction. Your body is capable of sprouting massive tendrils of living flesh, your arms can turn into blades six feet long, and nearly everything you see, be it monster, machine, human or some combination of the three, needs to be hacked into pieces. And if that wasn’t enough, you can consume people – literally – to take on their appearance.Preview
Rise of Nightmares
There’s no sense beating around the bush: Rise of Nightmares is not the prettiest game on this list. But it makes up for its lack of graphical detail by using Kinect to forge the most tangible connection between the player’s motions and what’s happening onscreen. It doesn’t quite come through in video, but here’s the point: It’s one thing to twiddle a controller stick to hack at a zombified face with an axe. But when you’re making the actual motion to press a chainsaw into a brain-eating ghoul and watching it rip through their rotting torso, it feels just a little bit more empowering. Preview
BloodRayne Betrayal
It may be the sole 2D representative on this list, but that doesn’t mean BloodRayne Betrayal is even remotely shy about letting massive gouts of crimson burst from every freshly-skewered enemy. The physiology of it all is questionable – we’re literally not sure how a creature of that size could contain that much blood. But it sure looks and feels good.Preview
Gears of War 3
A late entry, Gears of War 3 almost missed this list – as much as we love chainsawing friends, we’ve been doing that for years. But then we saw the E3 demo, in which a giant sea creature was attacking our heroes. Their solution? Blast it in the face until an eye bursts open, leaving the remnants dangling from its socket until the other one got blown out as well. This bodes well to us.Preview
And the winner is%26hellip;
Prototype 2
Truthfully, this one wasn’t even close. Prototype 2 delivers theblood and guts in more different ways than you could imagine. It’s not just that your arms become blades. It’s not just that you’re practically made of gore, sprouting giant meat tentacles all the time. It’s not just that you can stabbing some poor bastard in the neck with your arm-dagger, which will make 40-foot tendrils shoot out of his body, grab everything withing range, then retract and explode. It’s all that and more. You can see this particular hell at around the 1:06 mark in the video below, but you should really just watch the whole thing. We have a winner.Preview
The Nominees
Rage
Capable of delivering some of the most eye-wateringly detailed graphics on the planet, Rage nonetheless keeps the gore quotient realistic and grounded. However, this creates one of those “less is more” situations – when you see the spray after unloading a shotgun shell into a mutant’s stomach, or watch as an expertly-thrown wingblade cleanly pops an enemy’s head off his body, you feel like a true master assassin. Preview
Dead Island
Zombies come apart more easily than not-yet-undead beings, and nowhere is that more evident than in this open world splatterfest. But the appeal here isn’t just that you can chop your foes into giblets. It’s the creative ways in which you can do it. Taking a cue from the Dead Rising series, Dead Island enables you to combine things like a hatchet and dynamite, which results in the ultimate sticky grenade when thrown.Preview
Prototype 2
Another open world game, but in this one you are a living bioweapon capable of incredible acts of destruction. Your body is capable of sprouting massive tendrils of living flesh, your arms can turn into blades six feet long, and nearly everything you see, be it monster, machine, human or some combination of the three, needs to be hacked into pieces. And if that wasn’t enough, you can consume people – literally – to take on their appearance.Preview
Rise of Nightmares
There’s no sense beating around the bush: Rise of Nightmares is not the prettiest game on this list. But it makes up for its lack of graphical detail by using Kinect to forge the most tangible connection between the player’s motions and what’s happening onscreen. It doesn’t quite come through in video, but here’s the point: It’s one thing to twiddle a controller stick to hack at a zombified face with an axe. But when you’re making the actual motion to press a chainsaw into a brain-eating ghoul and watching it rip through their rotting torso, it feels just a little bit more empowering. Preview
BloodRayne Betrayal
It may be the sole 2D representative on this list, but that doesn’t mean BloodRayne Betrayal is even remotely shy about letting massive gouts of crimson burst from every freshly-skewered enemy. The physiology of it all is questionable – we’re literally not sure how a creature of that size could contain that much blood. But it sure looks and feels good.Preview
Gears of War 3
A late entry, Gears of War 3 almost missed this list – as much as we love chainsawing friends, we’ve been doing that for years. But then we saw the E3 demo, in which a giant sea creature was attacking our heroes. Their solution? Blast it in the face until an eye bursts open, leaving the remnants dangling from its socket until the other one got blown out as well. This bodes well to us.Preview
And the winner is%26hellip;
Prototype 2
Truthfully, this one wasn’t even close. Prototype 2 delivers theblood and guts in more different ways than you could imagine. It’s not just that your arms become blades. It’s not just that you’re practically made of gore, sprouting giant meat tentacles all the time. It’s not just that you can stabbing some poor bastard in the neck with your arm-dagger, which will make 40-foot tendrils shoot out of his body, grab everything withing range, then retract and explode. It’s all that and more. You can see this particular hell at around the 1:06 mark in the video below, but you should really just watch the whole thing. We have a winner.Preview
