Hot off the heels of both Dead Island games, Techland delivers Dying Light. frankly not much has changed since then, the environments are more brown and yellow and decayed and there is an elaborate parkour movement system but other than that fundamentally it is the same experience.
- The core of the gameplay loop is getting a main story mission, running free roam through the map to reach the objective, talking to a person or flipping a switch, then running all the way back across the map to talk to another person. To say the game is uneventful is putting it light.
For the first 4 hours it is hard for me to recall ANYTHING interesting that happens. Its an utter snoozefest. You do the same thing over and over. Talk to some generic forgettable story character, get an objective marker, parkour through the map to the objective marker, and usually all you do is just talk to another person. There's tons of zombies everywhere but you don't have much incentive to kill them as your weapons at this point suck bad, such as simple iron pipes or wooden boards. 10 hits to kill a single zombie.
I played in co op and for the first 4 hours all we can say is how bored we are and how nothing is actually happening. Luckily if one player reaches the next objective there is a fast travel mechanic where the other player can hold B to instantly travel there.
After the first couple hours around the halfway mark, JUST LIKE both Dead Island games, Dying Light introduces firearm combat. And it totally changes the experience and almost trivializes melee weapons. You'll be fighting in generic Call of Duty style close quarters battles obtaining pistols, assault rifles, with tons of ammo. Its a stark contrast to the previous hours where you could barely kill anything with crappy pipes and wooden boards, now you can easily 1 shot every enemy without any stress. Awkward.
- Because of this difficulty is all over the place. The first half is annoying and hard, you can't kill anything, and its not worth it to even engage. Then suddenly you turn into a killing machine out of nowhere that can just breeze past every enemy. The pacing is a mess. It just feels so odd to suddenly go from using awful melee weapons to instantly having 200+ assault rifle bullets that are pinpoint accurate that can one hit any enemy with a headshot. Why even use melee weapons after that point? I kept buying them at the Shop but they felt utterly worthless, even with upgrades.
- There are a ton of side quests and crafting and upgrades to be done, but it's like why even bother? I don't find the combat particularly entertaining or engaging and since its not even required the easier path is to run past everything utilizing the incredibly fluid and easy parkour system. You can climb anything and jump on anything. All you have to do is traverse the map spamming 'spacebar' and your guy will evade any encounter with ease.
If I did spend the first few hours mindlessly doing generic side quest after generic side quest, only to suddenly become a murderous superhero armed to the teeth with assault rifles after 1 story mission I would of felt like an idiot that wasted my time.
- The story, dialogue, and voice acting are extremely cookie cutter. It's another totally generic "get the zombie virus cure with a forced in 'romance' story and an ambiguously bad evil corporation as well as the obvious Bad Guy antagonist" its just cliche. We stopped giving a shit and just started listening to music towards the end of the game because it was so meh. There are a few interesting points but they're far and few between.
+ The best thing about Dying Light is the fluid movement system. It is genuinely fun at times to traverse the environment climbing rooftops and walking across wires, hopping around, looking down at your feet feeling like Spiderman or something. Unfortunately it feels like a case of filler. I would of almost preferred an instant fast travel to the next objective instead of having to run all around a boring open world just to get there. It gets tedious fast, but the movement never feels bad. If other games had this movement system I would not complain.
+ The graphics are pretty decent with some nice lighting effects and shaders, however it suffers from a really bland color palette where everything is kind of piss filtered and drab. There are a lot of sewer sections and swimming sections which are pretty atmospheric but in the long run will be utterly forgettable. Some environments are interesting like having to climb across industrial construction zones while avoiding zombies and looking out onto the wide view distance.
+ The gunfights with humans are pretty fun but they are the minority of events.
+ There is a kind of enjoyable co-op feature where you can compete against each other in certain points like racing to the objective and getting more kills and stuff. Completely optional but fun at times.
The game wraps up at about 11 hours of gameplay with a weak quicktime event ending. There is nothing compelling me to come back and free roam and do side missions. I don't understand the appeal that people have for this game really. It's like an illusion of emergent gameplay when in reality you don't actually have to fight 90% of encounters and there is not much reason to.
Unfortunately the game has a lot of stuff going for it, the movement is fun, graphics are nice, some of the combat is pretty decent, but the MAJOR flaw is that the mission design is absolutely awful. The large chunk of missions are completely UNEVENTFUL and nothing happens. You will go hours at a time without even being able to recall one interesting event that happened. Nothing but fetch quests and generic encounters. This alone makes the game feel like a chore to play at points. A pity because I was hoping it would be better than Dead Island but it only just matches it. It's hard to say if its better, because I feel like Dead Island has a more appealing location and environment. Score would be lower if played solo, like Dead Island. Disappointing.
5/10
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