Dying Light Reviews
Dying Light blazenly steals elements from other exponents in video games, but the way it implements each mechanic is impressive; the unfortunate thing is that, apparently, the studio lacks ambition to innovate.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
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.
Dying Light builds on the ground work of games like Dead Island and Mirror's Edge and excels in so many ways. The combat and crafting system is solid, and mixing in parkour as the main style of movement makes this game stand out against an onslaught of zombie-themed games. The atmosphere cultivated by the direness of the survivor's plight and the ever-looming threat of nightfall is wonderfully executed and a solid experience for players.
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.
Despite taking cues from other open world games, ones nobody could ever accuse of being fresh, Techland has molded these borrowed parts into something that is occasionally formidable. Dying Light never quite shakes off the spectre of these other games, but it doesn't play it as safe, presenting a world that is infinitely more deadly and fraught with tension. It is at its best, though, when the game doesn't get in the way of itself; when there are no calls on the radio or breaks in combat for a rest and a cup of tea.
It's Dead Island meets The Last of Us meets Far Cry 3 meets Assassin's Creed, but while Dying Light doesn't score highly for originality, it does for parkour thrills and zombie-slaying antics. The pace lags occasionally from time to time, but this is a slicker, most refined game than you might ever have expected from the brains behind Dead Island, and one that deserves to be a hit.
Dying Light is a good experiment that with greater attention to detail could have positioned itself as one of the best games of the year, but it remains only with the merits of offering excellent parkour, an exciting asymmetrical multiplayer mode and above all, a new way to experience horror at full speed.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Dying Light overall is a solid zombie action game that boasts one of the finest mixes of melee combat and parkour action in its genre. It's central weakness is that it purposely interferes with many elements that could have been truly phenomenal. It has a day and night time mechanic, but sabotages this somewhat by severely truncating the night time. It has a vibrant open world with plenty of places to explore, but holds your hand a little too much and gives you little reason to wander off on your own. Basically, Dying Light holds itself back too much. It has the capacity to be a title with a rare combination of triple A production and hardcore survival gameplay, but doesn't think that it's players deserve the latter. I hope that Techland wise up and update the game to at the very least lengthen the night, but even if they don't, Dying Light is still very much worth playing if you're comfortable with a more action oriented experience.
Dying Light starts out disappointing, but once you allow its brand of undead action to circulate your bloodstream, it can be difficult to put down. The storytelling is expectedly lacklustre, but with some 40 hours' worth of quests to complete, this is the type of title that's made for kicking back in co-op and culling corpses to your heart's content. The best thing about it, though, is that it gets better as the time flies by.
It's gory as all get out and pretty intense, but you'll probably forget all that round about the 50th time you plunge to your death from a bad jump
Dying Light is basically zombies on steroids. You're quicker, the zombies are quicker, and an action-packed, adrenaline-fueled rush. It's not without faults, but it's still a good time if you're into the whole zombie thing still.
Overall, my time with Dying Light has been incredibly exhilarating and entertaining. The ability to play with friends, but still improve my character without having to worry about losing out on any progress I have earned keeps me coming back for more and more. Tying this into a wonderfully designed climbing system, combat system and crafting system, Dying Light is easily going to be one of my favorite games of 2015.
Techland once again surprised the goal it needed to capture and snapped away the opportunity to make one of the most beautiful games in the world.
Review in Turkish | Read full review
Dying Light is a great mix of survival, RPG, exploration and horror. Compared to Dead Island it loses perhaps a bit in terms of novelty and setting, but it gains on other fronts thanks to the element of parkour and a more streamlined and instantaneous crafting system.
Review in Italian | Read full review
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.
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
The end result is something that feels like little more than the finished product of a well-oiled entertainment machine—a safe appeal to a mass audience. This is unfortunate since there is genuine joy to be had in simply navigating Techland's fictional city. If the same attention was paid to narrative development and visual design as has obviously gone into the player character's movement, Dying Light's world would be much more inviting.
If you're a Dead Island enthusiast, zombie addict, or free running connoisseur, Dying Light is the game for you. Its parkour is addicting and the way it eases your character into power is something other games can learn from. But if you're looking for a story that isn't frustrating, weapons that don't break after ten swings, and basically anything else that makes a game great, you're better off keeping your wallet in your pocket.
Overall Dying Light is a solid game. It's got some satisfying as hell combat and running around the city never gets old, but it's unfortunately saddled with a forgettable story and uninteresting side-quests.
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.