Dying Light Reviews
Despite a clunky story and technical performance, there's a lot of fun to be found in dashing and dodging through a zombie-filled city.
High-speed parkour and gruesome zombie massacres make Dying Light a blast, even if the story's just okay.
As a follow up to Dead Island, Dying Light represents an improvement on the technical front, but has lost some of its knockabout charm in the process. It shares its predecessors pace and shape, as things start on a relative high as you explore into the game's systems, but then tail off the hours tick by. Dying Light mixes up Techland's own recipe to enjoyable effect, but can't fully disguise its regurgitated flavour.
A small improvement on Dead Island, but there's still barely anything that either works as well as advertised or is isn't just stolen wholesale from other, better, games.
Dying Light parades its lack of invention and frustrates with some unrewarding missions, but it barely matters: there's an immediate joy in exploring this compelling concrete playground of undead, explosions, and bins.
Tense and full of adrenaline-fueled moments, Dying Light is a blast
Dying Light has plenty of rewards to offer as long as you're willing to overlook its frustrations.
Dying Light too often loses track of what it's best at
A thrilling zombie adventure that makes me remember what I love about Dead Island and forget what I hated.
Dying Light is a sum of its inspirational parts. It brings together Techland's previous Dead Island with a bit of Mirror's Edge and Far Cry 3. At its best, leaping across the rooftops with zombies milling about below, it surpasses those titles. At worse, it has mechanics that needlessly pad out the game's running time.
Dying Light often boils down to "Zombies: The Videogame," but it's fun to flip around like a ninja and cause havoc while you shuffle from one mission to the next. For many of you out there, that's basically all you'll need.
Killing a bunch of zombies still has its charms in this day and age and I'll likely have nightmares about the dying light of Dying Light, but Techland's latest proves to be an uneven experience. Ultimately it's a game I appreciate for its ideas more so than its execution.
Dying Light may not be the most original or the best scripted game, but what it does, it does well. Zombies, parkour, co-op... one of those games that as you try it will catch you, and even more so if you play with friends.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Fans of zombie survival, open worlds, and first-person shooters will find things to enjoy in Dying Light, but it's a rough ride. The contextual movement and realistic time progression suggest that Techland wants to immerse you in Harran's apocalyptic plight, but the game's realism takes a hit at almost every turn whether it's the graphics, the enemy AI, or the mannequin-like demeanor of the souls you'll attempt to save. Jumping around and smacking zombies is fun, but we're hoping whatever comes next focuses more on realistic living people than realistic dead ones.
Although a sound game, Dying Light just falls short of greatness. Compared to its predecessors it looks stunning and has picked up a raft of new and interesting ideas. Several hours in, however, and a familiar sense of fatigue will inevitably set in. Unless roaming Harran with friends in tow, Dying Light isn't one of those games you can comfortably sit and play for hours on end. Zombie enthusiasts are still in for a treat though, as well as anyone looking for an unconventional first person action game.
Unfortunately, Techland is still unable to deliver a story worth telling. I didn't feel any emotional attachment to any of the characters, nor did I care if they ended up surviving or not. The addition of an overall weapon durability was also something I could have done without as I prefer to cut down my enemies without having to worry whether or not my weapons will disintegrate in my hands.
There is no shortage of flaws, but if you are looking for horror, exploration, crafting and subjective evolutions, here is the game for you.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Funny and gimmicky but hardly revolutionary. That would be the perfect definition of Dying Light, which seems to settle for only parkour to justify a twist on the zombie video game genre.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
A more polished and focused game than their previous effort in open world zombie games, Techland marries graceful parkour and chaotic combat in this sandbox scavenger's fever dream.
Dying Light keeps the best bits of Dead Island, forgets to get rid of the bad, but makes up for it with awesome parkour and a tense day/night dynamic.