Dead Island is set in a resort on an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea and instead of finding massive amounts of guns and ammo, you have to ward zombies off with knives, machetes, or whatever you can find as guns and ammo are very scarce.
From IGN
Rather than run-and-gun their way through a meat maze, players will be forced to scavenge for objects and use them to beat their undead foes into submission. There are precious few firearms scattered around the island (and even less ammo), so the majority of the combat will be intimate. Knives, machetes, bats, broomsticks, pipes – these are your defenses against the horde of infected monsters. It's survival horror with a melee action twist, and it's disgusting.
Dead Island's developers call it a "first-person zombie-slasher/action-RPG." That's a mouthful, and it's still unclear what the balance will be among those descriptors. Players will be able to choose from a cast of pre-set characters, including a former rapper named Sam B (the only character revealed so far).