I honestly didn’t know what to expect when jumping into Techland’s Dying Light. Each and every trailer looked totally beautiful, the gameplay and parkour system looked fluid and fun, but as I’ve expressed numerous times on Geekscape and the Geekscape Games podcast; open world games don’t really do it for me, the zombie genre is entirely overdone (aside from Telltale, GIVE ME MORE PLEASE), and while there were some great moments hidden within Dead Island, the overall buggy package wasn’t overly memorable, or even overly fun.
Techland’s Dead Island follow-up, Dying Light, feels like the package the developer wanted to deliver the first time around. It’s absolutely not perfect, and it doesn’t really add anything new to the zombie genre, but I’m having a really hard time putting it down, and if that isn’t the mark of a great experience, I don’t know what is.
In Dying Light, you’ll play as Kyle Crane (voiced by Roger Craig Smith, who we featured on the Geekscape podcast just a few weeks back), an undercover GRE (Global Relief Effort) agent who’s dropped into the quarantined, zombie-filled city of Harran to acquire a stolen document that could lead to the destruction of the agency (and a lot of lives). Things don’t go very well (at all) for Crane once he lands, and over the course of the game he’ll have to figure out whether it’s more important to complete the mission at hand, or help the other survivors (that totally saved his life). Now, it’s definitely no Bioshock Infinite or The Last of Us, but the plot here is coherent and well-paced enough to keep you intrigued, and it features characters that you’ll actually grow to care about, which is a huge step up from the drudging story of Dead Island. The game does a great job of setting itself up via a nice stylized opening cinematic which you can watch below:
If you’ve played Dead Island, a lot of Dying Light‘s gameplay elements will feel instantly familiar to you. Combat is largely melee based (as it should be, as everyone knows that loud noises will draw more undead), and works via a ‘Stamina’ meter that forces you to time and aim each swing as precisely as possible, as after a few attempts (especially at the beginning of the game), you’ll be forced to rest for a few seconds to regain your breath. The much-loved and much-appreciated kick button is still present, which will help keep the walkers at bay even while you regain your stamina, and you better not become too attached to a certain weapon, as Dying Light expands on Dead Island’s ‘oh crap your weapon is now broken you better go repair it’ mechanic by limiting the number of times that each weapon can be fixed. Yep. I’ve heard some mixed responses on this addition as it basically means that the better weapons and upgrades that players work diligently for are simply temporary bonuses, but I actually enjoyed the fact that the game forced me to play around with different weapons, and upgrades came around regularly enough that it wasn’t a problem. Lastly, Dying Light takes Dead Island‘s expansive and awesome skill system and adds a third tier: Agility. This movement based tree will earn you all types of parkour upgrades as you sprint, jump, and climb through the overrun city.
Speaking of parkour, Dying Light does bring a few huge additions to the Dead Island formula (aside from all of the polish, of course): parkour (mentioned above) and a neat day/night system that drastically changes the way you play the game. The parkour system is simple, and is probably the most fun I’ve had with the movement style since Mirror’s Edge. Rather than the ‘hold-a-button-and-slowly-climb-anything’ mechanic from the Assassin’s Creed series, Dying Light maps the game’s jump button to the R1 button on the PS4 controller (a departure from the usual X, and tough for some to get used to, but I rocked the ‘Bumper Jumper’ control style on Titalfall, so no issue here), and while you’re running around, you just look at what you want to jump on, press the button, and if able Kyle will hop and pull himself up to the level. The parkour system works very well most of the time, though due to the brown and grey earthen tones of Harran and its surroundings, it can sometimes be tough to figure out (especially mid chase) what the best route to take may be. There have also been a handful of times that jumps or grabs didn’t take (but in my opinion, should have), which led to my immediate death. Dying Light is also infinitely more polished than its spiritual predecessor, but because of the vast openness of the game and its movement system, climbing animations can sometimes look clunky and not completely line up.
Then there’s the day/night system, which I definitely have a love/hate relationship with. First of all, nighttime is about the only time that Dying Light feels really scary (and at times I mean really). It’s really hard to see (obviously), so you have to decide whether you want to stay in total darkness, seeing just a few feet in front of you, or you could turn your flashlight on, drawing the attention of both the regular walkers but also the super freaky mutant nighttime only murder zombies. These moments are truly freaky, and there were definitely times during the game’s night sections that stressed me out to the point of needing to take a break. True story. Nighttime is much harder, and you’re rewarded for choosing to play at night with lots of bonus experience.
The main downside to the night portions of the game are just how many mutants there are. They’re hard to outrun, and once you’re spotted, you (for the most part) lose any semblance of stealthiness as these things will scare the hell out of you and it’s really hard to escape from them. This means that you’ll attract more of them, and die. A lot. While exciting and adrenaline pumping, I found that during the night sections I would simply stare at my minimap almost exclusively (you’re able to see mutant’s cones of vision, MGS style) and just try to avoid their sight instead of looking at what was occurring onscreen. Again, these sections are very cool looking, but I didn’t have that much fun with them. Thankfully, once you hit a safehouse you can just go to bed, and the game will cycle forward to morning time.
Co-op is another section where Dying Light truly shines. Again, the game offers a similar to Dead Island drop-in, drop-out multiplayer mechanic, but this time around having additional players offers unique competitive challenges (who kills the most zombies, for example) that net the winner nice bonuses. This means that, while you’re totally on the same team as your friends, you’re also constantly trying to best them, taking bigger risks in order to win, and possibly screwing up everything. It’s really a blast. And that’s not to mention the awesome Be The Zombie mode, which puts one player, well, as a zombie with the objective of killing all of your friends.
One of the most alluring aspects of Dying Light has to be the sheer amount of things there are to do in the game. Sick of the main storyline? There are always collectibles to find, interesting-as-hell side missions to complete (I don’t know if I’ve ever enjoyed doing side missions as much as I do in Dying Light, they’re honestly almost better than the main campaign), safe houses to… make safe, air drops to claim, and that’s just scratching the surface.
Overall, Dying Light doesn’t do a lot that hasn’t been done before, but its precise mixture of sleek movement, involved parkour, zombie survival, and fantastic co-op is beyond welcome in a console generation full of remakes and rehashes. It may not be the most polished or beautiful game this generation (thought it is definitely very pretty), but it’s probably the most fun I’ve had with a AAA title on the PS4 or Xbox One. If you liked Dead Island, you’re likely to adore it, and even if you didn’t (like me), you’re bound to find plenty to love in this game.
tl;dr
+ It improves on almost everything that Dead Island had to offer.
+ Running around and doing parkour is an absolute blast, alone or with friends.
+ Tons of content and side missions to keep you coming back… seriously.
– Nighttime is scary, but has you staring at the minimap instead of the action.
– Plot, while fairly coherent, is just interesting enough to keep you going.
– Sometimes glitchy animations, both in its movement, and its characters.
Final Score: 4/5.