Dying Light Reviews
I would have simply been content with Techland releasing another Dead Island game, as long as it came with some needed polish to help it realise its potential. Instead, we got Dying Light, a surprising mix of old and new, which has managed to once again rekindle my excitement for both the genre and the developer. It may stumble every so often, but Dying Light is still the most fun I've had in a while.
Dying Light too often loses track of what it's best at
Whether it's free running run one side of a map to the other, traversing great heights or simply making a zombies head explode with a baseball bat, Light offers you plenty of diversity to keep the game interesting.
Tense and full of adrenaline-fueled moments, Dying Light is a blast
Dying Light is a cavalcade of zombie ultra-violence that's hard to put down. The parkour can be a little sketchy at times, and it's not without its flaws, but whether you're playing alone or with a squad of Kyle Crane clones, you simply can't fail to have fun amid Harran City's zombie apocalypse. If this is how the world ends, count me in.
Dying Light is a really enjoyable game. The atmosphere is absolutely spot on and the game world is a joy to traverse with your parkour skills. It has issues with its mission structure and confusion in the direction of its protagonist, but you'll likely be having too much fun to care.
Dying Light has its moments. It has a great concept and that concept is executed relatively well, with a few minor drawbacks. I still say the villain seems awfully familiar and the story is just way too predictable, and some of the main missions feature design choices that are definite head-scratchers.
Some will love it, others will hate it, but Dying Light is an interesting experiment at least.
The parkour and risk/reward of the day/night cycle are nice features, but they aren't enough to overcome the abysmal writing or the boring, repetitive fetch quests that unnecessarily bloat this game.
What you do get, though, is a zombie scenario which is entirely plausible and believable and that, in itself, takes Dying Light to a higher plane, reaching toward the role-playing depth of State of Decay and the sheer nastiness of DayZ. Factor in the giant sandbox of a huge city, and the end result is a scarily immersive experience.
'Dying Light' hides all of its best gameplay behind a frustratingly steep learning curve and boring fetch quests, but shows potential once players dig a little deeper.
Excitement was high for Techland's full Dead Island team to put a new game, and for good reason. They are clearly a group of very talented individuals that know how to create some enjoyable gameplay mechanics. In Dying Light's situation, their great mechanic, the free running movement, can be overshadowed at times by climbing frustrations. It feels as if they need to take the ideas from Dead Island and Dying Light and mesh them together into a wonderful product. Dying Light features some truly serene moments as you glide from building to building, but once that serenity halts, so does the player's enjoyment.
Dying Light is a game best experienced on your own terms and at your own pace. It eschews the excesses of its sibling franchise, Dead Island, but is no worse for it and if you can get past the clunky storytelling and the repetitive missions, you might a diamond in the rough that really empowers you to revel in the design aspects of its zombie-infested sandbox.
Dying Light's core gameplay is solid and offers a uniquely thrilling sort of fun, but for every moment you spend having a good time, you'll spend just as many frustrated by its shortcomings.
Unlike Techland's previous titles, Dying Light is an easier game to recommend. Fantastic movement mechanics complement the brutal combat beautifully, and the game on a mechanical level is incredibly engrossing and fun to play. Sadly, there's little else above that to sell. The story and all the characters involved do little to hold your attention, and the mission design does little to surprise.
Dying Light is the impressive realization of an idea that with Dead Island had remained barely under the radar.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Dying Light stands out from the other zombie survival games with the unique course element and if you play it together with others is certainly one of the better zombie survival games on that huge mountain. Maybe future DLC will prevent the game from being at the bottom of everyone's pile in a few months.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
Although we have smashed sluggish zombies hundreds of times, this convention still has its loyal fans. Thanks to Techland's Dying Light, the list of titles with which they will spend at least a few dozen successful hours has just expanded by another position.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Dying Light is a fun, long-lasting zombie-parkour experience in the vein of Far Cry, Skyrim, and Mirror's Edge.
A very buggy attempt at recreating Dead Island with a very overwrought approach in distancing itself from the obvious inspiration. Without a massive patch, Dying Light can't really explain why it should stand out from the crowd.