Dying Light Reviews
What a good game. It's really good. It's just so easy to pick up and get lost in for a few hours at a time. You can credit Techland for that success because it picked a few ideas and really got them right. The zombie-infested world is pretty and dangerous, and your character is fun to control. On top of that, the mechanics and the systems keep the core from getting boring.
Parkour. Open world. Zombies. Online co-op. Crafting. Radio towers. Zombies. Collect-a-thons. Zombies. Zombies. Dying Light desperately tries to be all of the videogames in a bid to impress everybody. If only it had tried as hard to be its own thing, we'd have had an amazing horror game on our hands. Instead, we just have another indistinct jack-of-all-trades to throw on top of the ever growing pile.
Like the best open world games, it's a factory for anecdotes and you'll create plenty of gems in its company. That's worth celebrating, no matter how derivative the various machines in that factory might be.
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' 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.
Techland's open-world horror can be scrappy in places, but its parkour-inspired zombie hunting is tense, moreish and engaging.
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 presents fun mechanics and a gorgeous world, but that comes with often boring quests and combat.
Techland has shown us that they've learned from their past experience with the Dead Island series and given us the first stand out title of 2015.
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.
Dying Light isn't a bad game, it's just one that feels like it goes on a bit too long, and was too invested in the trappings of an "open world" to make itself really stand out.
I could go on further about all the reasons why I love Dying Light, but I'll leave you on this note. I can say, without a doubt in my mind, Dying Light is one of the best zombie games ever made.
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.
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 is a thrill to play for any zombie enthusiast or someone who simply loves Shaun of The Dead without the comedy. It is a title which will leave you wanting more for good reason, and even though it falls short in aspects, it is a fun and solid zombie apocalyptic game.
With Dying Light, Techland has most certainly improved on Dead Island's melee-focused, open-world formula, but it still hasn't perfected it. Improved enemies and better navigation mean that while the journey from A to B and back again is more exciting this time around, it's a trip you'll be making far too frequently.
Dying Light is Techland's best and most ambitious title to date.
What's here works well enough, but it lacks soul, and if there's any motivation to continue it's only that you want to see it through - a damning indictment for any game.