Dying Light (2015)

Playtime: 76,5 hours (both campaigns completed + most main game side-missions)

Intro

Dying Light is a looter shooter with parkour elements. You explore three different maps, killing zombies, collecting loot and jumping/grappling across the terrain.

The Good

• The core gameplay is really fun.
• You brutally murder slightly dirty humans zombies.
• Obliterating heads by stomping them and shoving zombies into traps is really fun.
• Grappling hook! Yay! Every game should have one!
• Nice variety of weapons.
• The open terrain + buggy in the DLC campaign (The Following) is a nice change of pace.

The Bad

• Really bad crafting menu.
• Clunky travel between the two main campaign maps.
• Attacking nests is too annoying.
• Voice actor for main character is miscast.
• Story is pretty dumb.
• Some of the platforming is clunky or otherwise bad.
• Escort missions are relatively hard with poor rewards.

The Ugly

• Godawful scripted events that you're almost certainly going to fail at least once.
• Truly terrible boss battle with impossible QTE (WASD instead of arrows).
• Looting and crafting takes up way, way too much time.
• Everything respawns making every feel inconsequential.
• Daily quests and other MMO elements.
• Levelled weapons. Can that cancer die already please?

Conclusion

Dying Light takes the Dead Island formula and somehow turns it into an actually fun game. It would've been a lot better without the repetitive elements like respawning enemies and looting. Like, i enjoy butching people with some dirt on their face so why make me get X purple items so i can make Y weapon? It is still a really fun game, just really frustrating in parts and about 10 hours too long.

Pretty enjoyable traversal mechanics, and a good (mostly) melee FPS, with a serviceable but weak/uninspired plot.

Could have got another star if the story/characters were better - the protag is just a standard tough guy with no real personality, background, or motivations of his own. The plot is fairly boilerplate "evil corporation/government" stuff. The NPCs are the standard cast of background characters, mostly more annoying than they are interesting, with not enough heart to inspire much feelings about them. Side quests make for a decent excuse to run around and enjoy the game's mechanics, but with one exception aren't all that compelling story-wise.

I had fun, but finished the MSQ and don't feel compelled to do the uncompleted side content or DLC. If I didn't have other, newer games in my backlog I might spend some more time just enjoying the game for it's mechanics.

I can overlook the story for the mechanically interesting elements of the game.

Parkour in first person has some great moments let down by some peculiar frustrations. In particular, there is no mechanism to climb down or make a 180 turn when hanging from scaffolding.

I enjoyed the lack of fast travel. I always like having to plan routes across difficult terrain. It reminds me of what I loved about Far Cry 2. The interaction with the standard few enemy types helped elevate the challenge.

I enjoyed the time I spent with the game, and sought out the side quests, but was not interested in progressing the main story once it became more scripted

Dying Light is a successor of Dead Island series. I've finished both previous games and they were okay: not great games, but quite fun. This one is pretty similar to them, but instead of an island we have a city full of zombies. The main addition here is a parkour system, but the core mechanics of cutting enemies into pieces and looting everything still the same. I wish looting was better as it's not really rewarding, I mostly played with the same weapon that I found in the first hours of the game. Co-op mode is well implemented and I recommend to find a friend for beating DL, because everything in better in co-op, as you know. It is a good game, but there are a lot of things that could be better, so I hope devs will improve this formula in the sequel.

The Following DLC surprised me as it is a big addition to the game: there are new location, buggies that you can drive and a lot of new quests. 15 years ago it could be considered as a decent add-on!

I consider this one of the best zombie FPS games of all time (the other favourite is Left 4 Dead 2). This game has it's flaws, but overall a really great experience for me. I have yet to try it's DLCs, but it offers so much content, that't it stands strong even without them. I heard a lot of bad about the story from others, but I think it's fine, though it could have been longer with more personal attachments to feel the pain of each death. The parkour is a great addition to the traversal and make this Dead Island succesor unique and more complex gameplay wise.

The Good:

• Kyle Crane is a badass character, who makes his own mistakes, but grows in the process
• The parkour style movement makes longer travels more enjoyable. The game also offers challanges to improve your skills
• The crafting system is complex and provides you all the tools to create your perfect zombie killing weapon. Yes, they break in time, but for me it only adds to the realism factor and you can craft a different one, to try out more playstyles.
• A lengthier DLC that I have yet to try (so I will update this section after that :) )
• An enjoyable story with a not bad antigonist
• The grapling hook, which gives the game a spin and makes you more confident during those long nights
• Volatiles and a different experience during the night. It can be scary and a perfect adrenaline rush, but also satisfying surviving a night
• Various zombies
• Craftable gadgets and items, to help you during your adventure
• Some say the multiplayer mode is even better, but I have yet to try that aswell, alongside co-op (will update this section)
• The game still gets updates and community challanges to this day, the developers are active and try to listen to their fanbase to make the game even better
• You can find new weapon blueprint codes online, (though some older ones are deactivated now :/ )

The Bad:

• The story could have been lengthier with deeper feelings towards characters
• More types of firearms would be appreciated, since you have to use them a lot against Rais' thugs
• The sneaking part of the game could be improved, you only have a few tools to use, and noise means more virals :)

Playthroughs: 2x

Difficulty: Normal, but curious about that Nightmare mode :D