Dying Light is an open world adventure horror game, developed by Techland and published by Warner Brothers, released in January 2015 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. This game sort of came out of nowhere, it didn’t have very much hype behind it prior to release and it came as a welcome surprise to a usually quite month of the year for big game releases.
The game play in Dying Light reminded me so closely of Dead Island. You play in first person view as you explore the world. Of course, the world has been overrun by zombies. One of the changes to the “Dead Island” gameplay style is the parkour system.
We have seen parkour systems used in games such as Assassins Creed and Shadow of Mordor, but Dying Light’s version knocks them all out of the park. A third of the gameplay is based around the running and jumping across the landscape – you are able to hide from the zombies when you are jumping rooftop-to-rooftop so it is really in your interest to get to grasps with it as soon as possible.
There’s something serene about Dying Light. Maybe it’s cuz everyone’s dead. Hmm..
There are times when you will be thrown into the combat situations; this is where the Dead Island mechanics come in – melee weapons are going to be your primary source of damage and they work exactly the same as DI. Your weapons take durability damage each time you hit, but you can repair them on the fly with the required parts. Once you get your hands on a gun, the odds swing dramatically in your favour, but you do get the downside of the noise it creates, and it possibly attracting even more zombies to your location.
One of my favourite mechanics Dying Light introduced though would be the dynamic day and night cycle. During the day time, zombies will act in their usual manner, whilst they are still a danger, they can definitely be managed fairly easily. Once it is night time though; boy oh boy, you better have your running shoes on! The zombies transform into a much more dangerous form, they can sprint, and see a lot further away, as well as their heightened sense of hearing – meaning you will find it very hard to by-pass them. The day night cycle lasts for about 70 minutes in total, about one hour in daylight, and 10 minutes at night.
GET OFF my farmland, you undead f**ks!
Graphically, the game is one of the better looking games on the PS4, and easily puts many of the AAA games out there to shame. The lighting effects, explosions, and scenery all look absolutely stunning, and all the more so in the enhanced edition. Texture pop-in is minimal, and the animations of everything look amazing. Whilst there is a lot of animations that can be annoying after the first few times, such as when you open a chest, you have to wait 2-3 seconds whilst the animation plays out of you opening it; personally I would have liked this to be skippable but it is a really minor issue.
Dying Light starts out in a very easy fashion, allowing you to get to grips with the game mechanics, and the tutorial at the start of the game introduces you to the game very well too. The parkour mechanic can take a little while to get used to as sometimes you will probably fall whilst climbing buildings because you aren’t used to the way it works and feels, but it just takes practice. The only time I had real issues with the combat difficulty would be the later stages in the game, when you are just getting hammered by hordes of zombies over and over again. Little tip; conserve your ammo!
Some folks have trust issues.. Eh, it’s better than my character’s daddy issues..
The vast open world you are playing in very rarely leaves you with nothing to do; there are tons of side missions, collectibles and loot to find. There are over 100 different melee weapons, and they can be modified in different combinations (over 1000 of them!). The side missions do seem a little but samey after a while. I completed about 13 or so out of the 44 before I finished the main story and this was because they are very repetitive. A few other optional objectives consist of finding relief packages which is where you race the opposite faction to get a supply drop, saving survivors from the opposite faction’s men attacking them, and the same for zombies. You can also go out of your way to find collectible items such as trophy’s and notes around the world.
Completing the main story and about a ¼ of the side missions has taken me just over ten hours. Then come the expansion content, The Following, and this has been hands down one of the most content rich expansion packs in a long time. The Following quickly introduces you to your new best friend/car/weapon shortly after Kyle Crane, the hero of Harran, arrives in the expansive new area known as The Farmland. This scenic location boasts a greater surface area than Harran – as you’d expect for map that accommodates a much higher-speed mode of transportation – and has swapped out the densely populated slums and buildings for open fields, gorgeous coastal cliffs, and stretches of back roads. It’s just begging for you to burn some rubber. The inclusion of vehicular zombie-slaughter with a modifiable car manages to fit nicely alongside a ton of missions and an excellent mysterious story that comes together to form a well-oiled machine.
I played the game with keyboard and mouse, and should be strongly recommended you do not attempt to play with a controller. And that possibly is my major gripe with the game. I enjoy sitting back and enjoying single player experiences with a controller, but couldn’t for this game. The game simply doesn’t handle so well with a controller.
Verdict: To sum up, Dying Light is a really nicely done zombie adventure game. Personally I feel it is a much more rounded off game compared to the Dead Island series, and adds plenty of depth to the genre rather than re-hashing content that’s already been done before. The main story and core gameplay mechanics make’s Dying Light one of the standout games to be released in 2015 and the enhanced edition makes it well worth going back to the game.
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