Dying Light - Review

Title:Dying Light

Platform(s): PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC

Release Date: January 27, 2015

ESRB: M

When Resident Evil, The Evil Within, Left 4 Dead, The Walking Dead, Dead Island, Dead Space, Dead Rising, H1Z1, State of Decay, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, and Call of Duty's zombies mode are eleven games based around a zombie apocalypse that I can type in under two minutes, it's easy to roll your eyes as Techland's new open-world zombie survival game, Dying Light, rolls onto shelves. But in a market already overrun by more zombies than we could ever care to count, Dying Light offers a breath of fresh air to an old genre. Dying Light is a visceral experience that takes chances with its unique mechanics and succeeds in their execution. Even with some hiccups along the way and though the story is largely forgettable, the world the game takes place in speaks for itself and is a beautiful playground that encourages and necessitates player creativity and progression.

Dying Light puts you into the ever-running shoes of Kyle Crane, an operative for the Global Response Effort. After a once-politician-now-tyrant, Kadir Sulaiman, steals files from the G.R.E. that may help lead to a cure for a recent zombie-virus within the districts of the city of Harran, Crane is sent within the walls of the quarantine zone to steal back the G.R.E.'s information. During Crane's journey he encounters many other survivors who he befriends and as he uncovers what is happening in Harran, the lines of who the enemy really is becomes more and more blurry.

While Dying Light's story isn't necessarily bad, I couldn't help but feel as though I had already been here and done this before. The game tells a story of a normal man thrust into a foreign land who must earn the trust of the indigenous peoples, all the while taking on a psychopathic leader who is more interested in bloodshed and fear tactics rather than actual leadership. It feels very similar to the story told in Far Cry 3. Characters, Crane especially, are largely lifeless and unrelatable. Though the game tries to express real emotional bonds between two people by saying things such as, “I know you guys were close,” or portraying tough decisions, outside of those individual cutscenes, NPCs do little other than give you objectives and Crane does little other than accept them.

Dying Light is arguably one of the best looking games of this generation so far. Harran is a huge map consisting of two separate areas that show both the slums and richer areas of the city. Not only does the world of Harran look believable and lived in, but it also looks abandoned. It's as though everything was left in the exact same place it has been since the outbreak of the virus. Countless cars litter the now ever-still freeway, homes are still fully furnished, with pictures decorating the walls and books still on their shelves, as well as numerous other small details that litter the world. There is an unnerving silence that befalls the city of Harran that creates an interesting juxtaposition between the amount of items that populate the world versus the lack of intelligent life. It is a silence that exists only until you run into the countless zombies that wander the streets of Harran. Zombie models are terrifying to look at and it is as though you can see their decomposition happening in front of your eyes.  Dying Light is a game that is trying to disgust you. Zombies explode into a vibrant mixture of viscera as you fight your way through them. Blood and bodies litter the streets in equal numbers and the vivid detail put into the cadavers is intricately vulgar.  Likewise, cutscenes and character models look great. Shown in first person, cutscenes that involve action or combat are jaw-dropping and really immerse you into the moment. 

Unfortunately, cutscenes that don't use pre-rendered visuals often have character models that look stoic, with only mouths and eyes that move as they pass on information to you. But, this is a small complaint when compared to how good the rest of the cutscenes look. I also noticed a few drops in the frame rate, but it was never bad enough that I would consider it a flaw in the game. What is less forgiving, though, is the game's immense texture pop-ins. More often than not, as you run through the world, trees, cars, etc. will pop in the closer you get. But also many building surfaces will look muddy for several seconds before the texture fully loads, even as you are right up next to them. Dying Light is a beautiful game and Harran is an impressive world to be in, but moments like this can pull the player out of the immersion and show cracks in the seams of the game.

There is no shortage of weapons in your arsenal to scatter bodies and each has its own advantages. Small knives or pipes allow for quick repeated hits, but bigger two handed weapons provide far stronger hits at the trade of speed. Similarly, you can use guns to take down several zombies quickly, but may attract other enemies with the loud sound of gunshots. As survivors adapt to their new life in Harran post-virus, they have weaponized the city, setting up traps to aid fighting back zombies. Elemental traps that conduct electricity or make use of fire are good when zombies are on your heels and you need something to quickly put some space between you and your pursuers. But, there are also traps that make use of things such as a car horn that can be strategically used to attract large groups of zombies to a sound out of the way of where you are trying to go. Experimenting with the weapons and traps provides for plenty of fun and trying out different strategies and learning how to properly use the city and arsenal to your advantage is a staple for staying alive during your time with Dying Light.

Your main mode of traversal in Dying Light is parkour. At first, it takes a while to get use to as it involves close accuracy to get to where you want to go. But once you get the hang of the parkour mechanic, it proves to be incredibly solid and it isn't long before you are running from ground to roof within a matter of seconds. I did find that on several occasions buttons wouldn't always respond on screen leaving me to press them repeatedly until something happened as well as a latency between the button-push and the action on screen. This wasn't a frequent enough occurrence in the game for me to write it off as a major, but when an unresponsive action led to death or slow down, it definitely did become frustrating having to start over.

As mentioned above, hundreds of zombies line the streets and parkour becomes necessary for survival. No matter how well equipped you may be, it doesn't take long to become swarmed by zombies and overrun, resulting in death. Dying Light has three extensive skill trees necessary for leveling up parkour, combat, and your survival skills. As the game progresses, it gradually increases in difficulty as well as the number of enemies you may have to take on at a given time and level ups feel as though they are really helping your progression through the game. Dying Light is a very difficult game, but if care is taken with leveling up and purchasing necessary upgrades for different play styles, the game becomes accessible for both fight and flight strategies, offering a dual dynamic to how objectives can be completed. I found myself often using combat at first to be the best strategy, as close quarters left me with little opportunity for evasion. After leveling up a few times, I was able to plow through several zombies to create a chance for escape, and then use my higher parkour skills to quickly get out of trouble.

The game often puts players into tense situations where it feels you are only escaping by the skin of your teeth and with your heart in your throat. The game has many levels that build suspense gradually before ultimately reaching a climax in the form of a set-piece that builds upon the suspense to turn it into actual fear. The mixture of the game's intensity as well your own sharpening of the skill trees given to you, create many memorable levels that make this game unique. It hardly gives you a chance to breathe yet never lets you feel disadvantaged with what you're given if you take the time to work for the upgrades. In Dying Light, if you die, chances are it is your fault and your strategy may need to be revisited.

With that said, the ending of the game seemed to throw that philosophy out of the window. I found it an immensely frustrating practice of trial and error, as the game threw an insane amount of zombies at me inside of claustrophobic corridors and expected me to be able to juggle battling them all at once while performing death-defying jumps. I understand that a game expects players to be able to perform all the mechanics given to them by its final moments, but as I died repeatedly I began to think it was not operator-error making the frustrations, but rather poor level design. The entire campaign of Dying Light is fair with its difficulty and I never found myself not within reach of an exit when things got tough, until this point. It's unfortunate that such a fun game left a sour taste in the mouth of a player in its final moments, ultimately making the last emotion felt on the game that of frustration.

Dying Light's much publicized day and night cycle is one of the staples of the game. Though the game is intense throughout many of the levels, once the sun goes down in Harran, the game completely changes. Though you are never fully in control, during the day the game gives you a enough of a heads up to try and manage tense situations. But at night you become helpless. Quicker zombies and the introduction of more powerful foes make night time sequences genuinely frightening. I found myself unable to stop running to try and engage in combat. I could hear what was behind me, but I dared not turn to see it. Where most games look as though they just used a darker filter to simulate nighttime, Dying Light turns pitch black and you have nothing but the beam from your small flashlight to illuminate what is ahead of you. Dying Light flips its own script and makes you feel like prey and unless you can move quick enough to reach a safe-zone, you don't have much of a chance of seeing the sun rise again.

Dying Light is commendable for being a new IP that is not afraid to take chances with new unique mechanics such as its day and night cycle. My time in Harran was a surprising delight and I cannot wait to go back. Most importantly, Dying Light is a solid game that feels good to play. The first person parkour is fluid and effective, once you master it, and combat is delightfully disgusting as you plow through zombies on your way. Despite a forgettable story and a big hiccup in the final moments, Dying Light has proved itself as an interesting IP and a great experience.

8 out of 10

Great. This is a game definitely worth your time. A game that is extremely fun and does a good job of being fresh and inventive. This game may have only a few issues that keep it from being something truly special.