Dying Light is an open world survival horror game where zombies happen in a quarantined section of a relatively run down city called Harram and you’re sent there to retrieve an important ducument. DL incorporates a dynamic parkour system to a large degree, which you can often use to avoid slicing through hoards of walking meat(are humans Kosher, or are they Harram?).
Combat
Dying Light is almost a sequel to Dead Island, and by that I mean it pretty much is a sequel but it’s creators are not saying it is and it doesn’t appear to be set in the same universe, just one that’s very slightly different. They are both quite similar, but Dying Light is a major improvement over Dead Island.
Like Dead Island, combat is melee focused and finicky until you learn it’s intricacies, where it would definitely become rather rinse-and-repeat had Techland not include the progressive addition of enemies and abilities, which do well to keep it exciting. The abilities in Dying Light are mostly well designed and balanced — their use depends on your scenery and what you’re fighting, a trait which successfully avoids over-reliance on a single combat routine over and over. A small nitpick is that there are a few things which feel out of place in the usually realistic feeling Dying Light universe such as craftable remedies that are way too effective and some other slightly cartoonish effects(Electricity for example stays with an object for seconds while arcing across its surface)
All melee weapons have a finite durability, they can be repaired but only a few times. I think this is a rather cheap attempt to make weapon retrieval more rewarding and to get players using multiple weapons. It makes using good weapons feel bad, like I’m wasting it. Mediocre weapons are plentiful, but saying goodbye to my favourite, customised weapon when it breaks forever makes me feel sad :(.
I certainly understand why Techland made weapons have such a short lifespan, if a player found a good weapon that lasted forever, they would have no insentive to search for loot, collect money etc.
They already sort of fixed this by having zombies get stronger as the player levels up while also unlocking new weapons, which in effect slowly makes your weapons less effective against them so when you get a new one it feels very powerful against them, but actually isn’t(weapons do improve slightly faster than zombies). Though I’m not a fan of this method and its affect isn’t strong enough keep players interested in looting on its own.
Dying Light is certainly better with finite weapon repairs than without them, but its a flawed solution.
Story
I’ve only seen people complain about it, but DL’s story is pretty good. The plot provided a constant sense of urgency(Maybe too much urgency, I felt bad having a free-running race while my allies were slowly dying). Some moments were misses, DL has some issues showing emotions and I think maybe it needs to be told it’s okay to cry, though there were certainly some good emotional scenes.
The worldbuilding however is amazing, Techland did a good job constructing an immersive universe with depth that still fits well in game format.
Night time is terrifiying in a way that gets my adrenaline going, and it does it without jump scares or making the player powerless – A lot of horror games lock the player in a flight position which isn’t particularly difficult and ‘flight’ often doesn’t require very much attention. In DL, we have fight and/or flight. There were several instances of these physiological affects happening to me as I played the game.
Summary
The levels are massive, populated, diverse and the player and infected both interact with them nicely. The art and graphics are great(apart from the unwanted effects and Gameworks), combat is exiting, the campaign is good and the side quests are plentifuloverall, I’d give Dying Light 7.9/10
I’d recommend this game if you liked Dead Island or melee action games and you have a good PC(Gameworks doesn’t work so well with AMD because nvidia works better with profits than consumers). The horror is good, but not overwhelming and can be avoided by sleeping through the night.
Organised Nonsense 