Dying Light is an experience that was a long time coming, ultimately crafting itself to be one of the most anticipated games of 2015 and understandably so. The new zombie-survival-themed, open-world adventure from Techland, the same developer who brought us Dead Island, puts players in the shoes of Kyle Crane, an undercover operative sent from the Global Relief Effort (GRE) to infiltrate the quarantine zone of Harran, Turkey, which has become overrun with “the infected,” a term coined to avoid using the term ‘zombie,’ for reasons unbeknownst to me. It’s revealed early on that the infection is a form of rabies, but the cause of the outbreak and the identity of those responsible is left undetailed. While undercover, Crane witnesses how civilization in the quarantine zone has changed while two groups battle over survival and supplies continuously made via airdrop from his employer and is tasked with recovering stolen documents from a warlord within the quarantine zone.
At first thought, back when Dying Light was announced in 2012 and simultaneously rumored to be a sequel to Dead Island, I had an understandably skeptical thought: “Oh lovely, yet another zombie experience.” Not long after, Techland announced that it was to be an original concept, and a lot of people kept their eyes and ears open. It wasn’t an IP I quickly dismissed, however, despite my bias that the zombie theme is overused and well, mainstream, for lack of a better word. With Dead Island’s survival elements struggling to make itself noticed in an incredibly buggy and almost problematic experience, there was hope to be had as more information surfaced about Dying Light, that we might actually see at least a decent zombie survival experience, perhaps even something comparable to DayZ.
Dying Light is an unbelievably brilliant game on its own. As I do with most video games that I can’t seem to find the patience for, I found myself in the coming weeks before launch, scouring the Internet for new gameplay videos; from what I’d seen, I knew it was something I would enjoy. Once midnight hit, it was definitely a proud moment that the expectations I had based merely on watching another person play was ultimately surpassed. Due to an impending blizzard on the East Coast, I grew restless as I learned that not only was there a traveling ban in the state, but that nearly every store, GameStop included, would be closed on launch day. Fortunately, my boyfriend’s as big a gamer as I am and decided to preorder the ultimate edition digitally, which allowed me access right at midnight. Within the first half an hour, I was glued to the screen, the controller gripped tightly in my hands.
The game begins with our protagonist arriving into the quarantine zone and after a kerfuffle with the local mercenaries, we’re already face to face with the undead. A few moments later, we’re getting a feel for movement, an introduction to the parkour mechanics within the game and not long after, we’re cast into the open playground of Dying Light.
The parkour elements are what captured my attention the most during development and the final weeks before launch – I think it’s safe to say that a lot of people shared that sentiment. The parkour was implemented with the assistance and guidance of David Belle, the founding father of the art as well as one of the main protagonists, Leito, in District 13 and as Leno in its remake, Brick Mansions, alongside Paul Walker. With Belle’s motion capture, stunt coordination and counseling, Dying Light features fast, fluid and poetic movements honoring the art of free-running. I highly recommend that DICE and EA either take notes or bring Belle onto the development team for Mirror’s Edge 2 if he isn’t involved already. The elements are undeniably on point and accurate, giving players the sense of power, freedom and motion as one escapes the hordes of zombies. It starts off very basic but fluid and as one progresses, you’ll unlock agility points that allow you to add perks to improve your movement and abilities. The trick with the parkour, just like in real life and even within Mirror’s Edge, is timing. The proper timing is key to ensure you’re not tripping or scrambling, breaking the flow. Additionally, Crane will never jump and magnetize to ledges. The player must point the camera in the direction of the ledge – pole, wall, window, any climbable surface, really – in order for it to be properly grabbed. I like that sense of realism there.
Dying Light features a significant and well-crafted roleplaying element, similar to Tomb Raider and Far Cry in the sense of gaining experience (XP) for your actions in the game. There’s the ability to add skills and those skill trees are divided into three categories: Survivor, Power and Agility. The Survivor skill tree is an essentially passive one, which through progress, allows you to purchase skills that gives you more backpack room to store weapons, crafting abilities and the likes. The Power skill tree consists of mainly offensive abilities - charging up attacks, dealing deadlier blows, etc. – and has some ‘special’ skills like the ‘Windmill’ which allows you to spin in a 360 degree motion, clearing out the undead surrounding you in a swift, devastating motion. Lastly, the Agility skill tree allows you to unlock abilities to further your parkour prowess; you’ll have abilities such as drop-kicking, sliding, a safe rolling land after jumping, etc. The roleplaying elements here allow you to progress at a steady rate and unlock abilities to strengthen Crane and craft him into a true force to be reckoned with.
Combat in the game is easily comparable to Dead Island and that’s either a win or a loss depending on how you felt about the game. In its defense, combat feels a lot better than Dead Island in some aspects and you certainly feel less than defenseless from the go, more powerful as you progress, but you never truly feel over powerful, which is certainly a good thing, because one doesn’t truly wish to diminish the difficulty, does one? Mikel Reparaz over at IGN has criticized Dying Light during their ‘review-in-progress’ by stating, “Fighting, meanwhile, is an awkward mess – but I get the sense that it’s supposed to be at this point. I flail awkwardly, even blindly, at zombies, hoping to connect with their heads or other vital spots.” While I can almost – keyword, almost – understand the frustration, one has to remember that you can’t expect to wield some kind of supreme power as soon as you take control of the character. Like Mirror’s Edge, the game (in the beginning, anyway) is more about evasion and accomplishing your mission of securing supplies, not playing baseball with a lead pipe and a zombie’s head as the ball. There’s an initial sense of defenselessness as you start to fight the infected for the first time, but as one progresses, it becomes less of “beat the zombie until you’re winded and it’s dead” and more of executing sharp, clever tactics with better weapons to take them out in one fell swoop. The only downside is that, like in Dead Island, weapons will deteriorate and “break” over [occasionally a short period of] time and must be repaired or replaced, as they prove ineffective. The frustrating aspect is that the game will tell you your weapon is “broken,” even when in-game, it looks perfectly fine. Furthermore, for the sake of realism, it doesn’t matter if the gas pipe you’re using for a weapon is “broken,” as it’s still blunt and heavy enough to bash a zombie’s head in. It’s one of the main gripes I have with Techland and their consistency in implementing an unpolished feature, really. I mean, it implements a sense of helplessness if your reliable baseball bat – made out of aluminum – is now “broken,” and you must repair it or use an alternative, but some weapons just shouldn’t “break” as easily, or at all for that matter.
The infected in Dying Light are more tolerable than in any other zombie game I’ve played, especially that of Dead Rising. With the latter, the one thing that drove me insane is that you couldn’t push and plow through the infected on foot without one of them grabbing you every three to six feet. With Dying Light, however, you’re able to maneuver past or around them with little complication, but the more there are, the harder it gets. With the utilization of the skill trees, though, maneuvering through hordes of the undead becomes easier and actually a hell of a lot more fun, with counter-attacks in the event one tries to grab you. There are different types of zombies within the game; there’s your average, run of the mill walkers who kind of stand and skulk around, posing a minimal threat unless in groups. As you progress, the undead vary and become deadlier. There’s gargantuan zombies carrying around rebar poles (a la Nightkin in Fallout), “virals,” which are recently-turned infected that can run and even climb like the player, evolved infected that spit poisonous…vomit and even naked, sprinting creatures whose mouths open triangularly as they bellow and attack. It’s creepy. Just…it’s just plain creepy.
Like the disgusting and horrifying creatures lurking about the city of Harran, the atmosphere and setting itself mirrors the sense of death, decay and dilapidation. The city is essentially a wasteland that was once a series of slums that was almost already a wasteland. It has a disturbing atmosphere to it, completely fitting for the theme, and it certainly feels dynamic. The particles of dust and filth in the air, the grime of the contaminated bodies of water, the palm trees and foliage dancing in the wind. The latter is almost therapeutic and if one were to glance for too long, one may just forget that there’s basically an apocalypse going on around them.
Dying Light features a dynamic day and night cycle that functions primarily around the narrative in the beginning. In addition, there’s also a weather system that I haven’t quite figured out yet. It’ll be sunny and bright for a little while and spontaneously rain every now and then and I haven’t been able to determine if it’s truly dynamic or randomized for effect. During the day, the zombies are populated primarily by the ‘walkers’ with some ‘virals’ peppered here and there. Traversal and navigation is considerably simple unless of course you run into the massive infected carrying large weapons or a horde of zombies around the corner. By night, however, the game is turned upside down as your only true options are to stay quiet and sneak about or run like the devil himself is chasing you. Fighting the undead at night is often a suicidal move until you’ve progressed a bit and unlocked better skills for yourself. The game is populated primarily by the volatile “biters,” which are the incredibly powerful, creepy-as-all-hell, triangular mouthed savages that can kill you with little effort. However, there is indeed a reward for venturing out at night and surviving, as XP is doubled if you spend a majority of the night outside of safe zones. Good luck.
The visuals for the game are astounding and it was the first thing I noticed the moment I started playing, as well as an aspect that I continually make note of. The draw distance is incredible and while you can’t exactly see everything miles away, the landscape and architecture are visible with no weakened textures to note. Clothing on characters and the infected have physics, allowing them to move with the wind or during movement, blood pools move and expand at realistic proportions as well as a handful of other noteworthy aspects. It’s an undeniably gorgeous game and while it does suffer occasionally with a slow loading texture or two, it’s hardly noticeable and doesn’t occur frequently enough to become a nuisance.
Dying Light features a fun and helpful co-op element that allows players to join their friends or fellow gamers and participate in the open-world experience together. Cooperative players might choose to progress through the story, explore and scavenge supplies, go on a zombie killing spree or any combination of the above. The cooperative element allows players to do everything available in a single-player mode, but with a friend or two. In addition, there’s a dangerous addition to both the single-player campaign and co-op feature; the Be the Zombie mode allows an additional player to invade the game as the Hunter, a deadly stalker that will arrive at night while the zombie horde is at its peak and track the human players. The humans must locate and destroy zombie nests to ultimately defeat the Hunter and are able to use their UV flashlight to temporarily weaken and ‘kill’ the Hunter. It allows players a brief window of breathing room before it respawns and attacks once more. The only downsides are that sometimes, the Hunter feels way too overpowered, more so than the ‘biters’ that are able to kill you with a single lunging attack. Additionally, even during daylight, if a player is invading your game as a Hunter, the game will automatically turn to night time to accommodate the scenario. Either way, the Be the Zombie component is fun and rather frightening. Additionally, a downside of participating in the co-op is that any story progression you make does not count toward your single player experience. So, you may finish three missions cooperatively, but your single player campaign is paused until you go back to it, and therefore, no progress is recorded. However, any weapons, items or upgrades (weapon or self) are kept when you return to your single player campaign, so that's a nice touch.
Dying Light is an unbelievably brilliant game that certainly lives up to the hype it generated. It’s a fresh and innovative take on a zombie survival experience and the parkour element is just the icing on an already delicious treat. It boasts a substantial campaign with a decent length and replay value that gives you your money’s worth and then some. Even with the lovely addition of New Game Plus, you'll really feel compelled to play through the campaign again and further your abilities. With vast locations to explore and continuous reasons to do so, a handful of side missions, an intriguing plot line, phenomenally fun gameplay and a solid, functional roleplaying element, it is certainly a must-have game of 2015.
Small video game maps that are packed with things to do are better than huge but empty maps. Here are five small but brilliant maps in games.
To download the additional content players should launch Dying Light and from the menu choose the option “DLC Packs” and download all their new content. If you have never played The Following before, now is the best time to try it for free!
Such a great game. The devs really should be proud and they are def serving the gaming community well.
Neil writes: "You'd have forgiven Techland for dropping the content additions for Dying Light, what with the sequel out and going great guns and the original having now been out in the public domain for seven years. But still that new content for the original - and one of the best zombie games ever - continues to arrive, with Dying Light players today finding access to the Dieselpunk Bundle."
The game is easily an 8/10. It could have used like you said a bit longer story but overall its a good game.