NGP Review: Dying Light
The cultural phenomenon know as the zombie apocalypse has hit its climax. It seems now that the genre had been wearing thin on a culture that is proliferated with every form of zombie. From TV shows like Walking Dead to comic books like Marvel Zombies all the way to video games too numerous to count. Dying Light doesn't necessarily re-invent the wheel when it comes to the end of the world and re-animated corpses but what it does bring to the table is entertaining and definitely worth your time if you are looking for your next zombie fix.
Graphics
This game is truly next gen. I played it on the Xbox One and it looks amazing. Performance and framerate issues that would plague a lesser game with this many zombies on-screen are non-existent. In the imagined city of Harran you will kill, loot, meet interesting characters, all in the hopes of surviving. While doing so you can almost feel the Chrome 6 engine, the creative platform Techland has created, fighting to push out every pixel. Dynamic is the key word here. There are active day and night cycles as well as randomized weather patterns and each change is important to how you play the game. Every inch of the map is meant to be explored and there are always pay offs for doing so in the form of a new side mission or a sweet piece of loot. The setting, although fictional, feels very similar to the favelas of Brazil. There are a lot of metal topped shanties to clamber over as well as city centers complete with abandoned skyscrapers to complete the contrast of squalor and elegance.
Story
The narrative is the only place where Dying Light falters. The main storyline leaves a lot to be desired. Cliched villains and cookie cutter protagonists run rampant. This by no means makes the game a pain to play I just feel like with a little more story development it could have been really good. There is however a plethora of side quests that are often more interesting than the main story. Luckily there is a lot of gameplay when it comes to side quests and they will eventually eclipse the main mission as you turn into a well known hero of the quarantine zone. Saving everyone you come across and running missions for random people in need. Total gameplay averages around 40 hours to get through the main quest and about another 15 hours to 100% the game.
Gameplay
While the story might falter the gameplay is what matters the most, given that this is a video game. Dying Light is really a spiritual successor to Techland's previous zombie romp Dead Island. This is, in a sense, that game but turned up to 11. Combat is fluid and violent as hell. You will very rarely stumble across an actual firearm so most of the game is spent bashing in zombie skulls with pipes, baseball bats, and machetes. The combat often goes into slow-mo to highlight just how amazingly you bludgeoned that last zombie. There is also a brutal x-ray slow-mo that shows you how you just turned that corpse's ribs into toothpicks with a sledgehammer. Not only is the combat great but the way you get around is amazing as well. Your character is a parkour master allowing everything in the environment to be climbed up, hurdled, or slid under. The game tracks your progress in both combat and agility and each time you kill a zombie or make a sick jump you get experience points RPG style. Ranking up allows you to spend points on those abilities to make you more proficient at running, jumping, and decapitating. Weapons and loot are also handled in a very RPGish way. All loot has a color assigned to it highlighting how rare and awesome each weapon is. Loot is plentiful as well making you want to upgrade your backpack to carry more as soon as possible. Each weapon is also upgradable. Do you want a firemans axe that electrocutes enemies doing shock damage? Do you really need a butchers knife that has a zippo lighter attached to it doing burning damage? Why not, this is the apocalypse get creative with your killing.
Innovation
I don't typically get into horror games, or movies for that matter, mainly because I don't think they are scary. Dying Light takes something as simple as the sun going down and turns it into the most intense gameplay I have ever experienced. During the day you are free to run around taking out zombies at will and as long as you don't get caught in a crowd you shouldn't have too many problems. However when night arrives the game turns that around and makes it all about stealth and survival. The zombies at night are stronger and more lethal and to add to that there is a class of zombie that only comes out once it is dark. This particular zombie has to be alerted to your presence and once it starts hunting you your best option is to just run like a madman to the closest safe house. It is fast and has the ability to traverse the landscape as well, if not better, than you can and once it catches you you are dead within a matter of seconds. The penalty for dying, and ultimately what makes the game so scary, is that you lose a large chunk of the experience you gained, setting you back a ways from your next level up. So why even go out at night? Just go to a safe house just as it turns dark and sleep through the night. That is often the tactic you will take but the carrot on a string is that experience gained during the night doubles and loot drops are often better. So it's a conundrum you will often come across. Do I just push through the night and gain a massive amount of experience and just deal with the huge difficulty spike or do I sleep through the night and save myself the stress?
Verdict
Dying Light is one of the best open-world zombie games in recent memory. Pulling off crazy parkour getaways and going toe to toe with hordes of zombies with just a shovel that does toxic damage is an amazing gaming experience. The dynamic day and night cycle ramps up the thrills and is an excellent risk/reward system that is challenging while still being fun. There isn't really a whole lot of things you've never seen before in other games and the main story suffers from some unoriginality. However there is so much content here and everything works so perfectly (this is not one of those broke-at-launch disasters) that all of that becomes a minor issue as you are just having way too much fun running up the zombie body count.
4.5 out of 5 Pieces of Toast
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If you want to check out our partners in crime Mom 'N Pop Co-Op this is the first game play video in their Dying Light series. Check it out!
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