14 DAY TRIAL // 
Dying Light is finally out. It’s been a long wait, and the game is really late to the zombie party, but it was worth it.
In a nutshell, the game is an expanded and more polished version of Dead Island, which was to be expected, with solid gameplay and a pretty big open-world city to faff about in for countless hours.
It looks good and plays good, but unfortunately, it’s marred by some technical issues, from slight glitches in zombie behavior and clipping to full halts while you get your face chewed off by a crowd of zombies, or during cutscenes.
However, during my time with the game, I had a really good time. Sure, it’s annoying when your weapons break in five hits or when you jump instead of dodging an incoming attack due to frame rate issues, but overall, the moment-to-moment gameplay will pull you into Dying Light’s world and leave you extremely satisfied.
Story
The action takes place in the fictional Middle-Eastern city of Harran, more specifically in the slums, which have been cordoned off from the rest of the world due to a viral outbreak that turns people into zombies.
You play the role of a covert operative sent into the hot zone to identify the source of an information leak and prevent it from propagating, or “retrieve” it, the way it used to be before computers were a thing.
The protagonist is as bland an army dude as you can get, doing annoying things for annoying reasons and being conflicted about doing his job in the manner one would imagine he usually does, not being a newcomer to the military and all.
The main motivation for him questioning his orders is the fact that there are innocent people in the city, a fact to which he must have been oblivious during all the other missions he had accomplished prior to that, where he blindly followed orders for the profit of his employer.
Oh, and the whole world is at stake, which makes worrying about the fate of a handful of people even harder to stomach. Was he even briefed for the mission? Couldn’t they have just sent someone who is less compassionate?
Oh well, as you might have guessed, the story is pretty video game-y. It’s not terrible and does have its moments, but it’s not impressive either. It just feels like some mandatory emotional connection and drama had to be shoved down your throat in order to make the game more “real,” which instead makes it feel a bit contrived.
Sure, having someone you love die is pretty bad. But when you’re a seasoned vet and people you don’t know die for reasons like bad planning, it just feels a little schizophrenic to get worked up about it, especially when you have the blood of tens or hundreds of other people on your hands.
That being said, there are a few nice bits to the story, like the way people actually hit and smash stuff when they get mad, or the rich lore that you can discover by talking to the inhabitants of Harran.
Your mission leads you into a confrontation with Harran’s psychopathic post-apocalyptic warlord Rais, a man who, in the words of Batman’s butler, just wants to see the world burn and casually shoots his own men for all sorts of mundane reasons.
You become a paragon of virtue and start fighting for the little guys in the Tower, who are a sort of hippie parkour practitioners outfit, and who don’t have a clear plan of how not to get killed by the aforementioned lunatic warlord.
Overall, I liked the universe the game takes place in better than the main story, because the city is pretty well thought out and it has plenty of little nuggets to enjoy as you explore it.
Gameplay
This is where Dying Light truly shines. It feels like a mashup of various AAA games that came before it, and it works pretty well for the most part. It has a little bit of Assassin’s Creed, some of Mirror’s Edge and some of Far Cry’s elements, which, alongside Techland’s own spin, make for a compelling experience.
The parkour system, while not as advanced as the one in Mirror’s Edge, is surprisingly smooth, offering a freedom of movement and fluidity of navigation that feel absolutely liberating.
Together with the fact that, although there is a rigid, linear story to follow, there are also a ton of side quests and the freedom to pursue them at your leisure, it makes for a very pleasant and experience.
Of course, like any game that has a similar structure, some moments might also turn out to be immersion-breaking, like a message on the radio stating an emergency that you already know you can safely postpone for later on without any negative consequences.
You can choose your own path through the city, whether it’s jumping from rooftop to rooftop or treading through the streets, shoving zombies to the side or showing them who’s boss and going head to head with them.
Also surprising is the number of ledges you can grab on to. There aren’t any kind of highlights on the surfaces you can interact with, the rule of thumb being that, if you should be able to grab something or climb to somewhere, you most likely will.
Previous runners have set up all kinds of ramps and signs through the city, highlighting freerunning paths that you can take, and there are trash mounds that can break your fall set up in various key locations where they would come in handy while being chased by the nastier undead.
All of these, together with the safe places and settlements scattered about, make for a pretty vivid and well-connected world that truly feels like a place where harrowed refugees are doing their best to survive, and a splendid setting for your adventures.
The combat system does have its issues from time to time, but for the most part, it feels spot on. Whether it’s swinging blades, pummeling zombies with pipes and hammers, or trying to slice people in half with a two-handed sword, everything has the right amount of kick.
Zombies are hard to kill and proper fighting takes a bit of patience and timing. Human enemies can parry your blows and dodge your attacks. The good thing is that you can also deploy staggering kicks and are able to evade incoming attacks, and even grapple with the assailants and topple them.
Of course, being an elite member of a military outfit, you’re pretty near invincible in one-on-one confrontations, but thankfully, if you’re not on your toes, multiple opponents can easily take you down, even lowly shamblers.
The level-up system also works great, following the Elder Scrolls school of thought where, if you jump around, you get agility points, and if you hit people in the head, you get better at that.
There are three trees to evolve, one related to running and climbing faster, as well as other movement-related abilities such as jump kicks and sliding while running, another one that offers you various special abilities during combat, and a survivalist tree that handles crafting, trading and other skills that might come in handy in the long run.
You start off pretty powerless, but as you grind your way to fame and scavenge for better and better gear, you’ll find yourself able to take on bigger and badder enemies, from hordes of shamblers to viral zombies that have been recently turned and still maintain their agility, being able to not only chase you but also climb after you when you’re trying to seek refuge above the ground.
The various moves you learn make the tedium of grinding countless packs of zombies feel like less of a chore, and that I think is what makes an open-world game shine. You get some mechanics and you get a world, and then go around it doing your own thing and having fun.
From setting up electricity traps and luring zombies into them using firecrackers and kicking dozens of them into spikes and instantly impaling them, to using them as a trampoline to vault across crowds, there is always some fun to be had while navigating Harran.
You can even star in a movie shot by a director that wants to save big on the special effects budget of his next movie, having you gun down hordes of zombies, taking advantage of the abundance of walkers in the city instead of hiring a makeup crew and extras.
Survival
There’s no horror survival game if you don’t have looting, crafting and running away from stuff, and Dying Light has plenty of everything.
The crafting system enables you to make your own unique weapons with added elemental properties, allowing you to take out enemies in style. There’s even the possibility of dousing enemies in conductive fluid to boost the damage of your electricity-based attacks, for those inclined to take things one step further than slashing and pummeling.
You can also upgrade your weapons using special kits, increasing their damage, handling or durability. You’ll also find out that bone is pretty good at breaking metal bars, but thankfully, there is a vast supply of weapons and you won’t have to duke it out bare-knuckled, Western movie saloon style.
Scavenging is also a pretty important part of the game, and you’ll want to dedicate some time to picking up supplies, lest you find yourself without the necessary tools to repair your weapon when it breaks, or even worse, without medikits.
From time to time, you’ll be able to see a plane fly overhead, parachuting a crate of supplies, and you’ll have to make a run for it in order to grab the goodies before Rais’ goons get to it, unless, of course, your plan was getting into a scuffle all along.
The drops contain supplies that you can trade in at any quartermaster for points, and also UV flares, which are really, really handy during the night.
“The game’s biggest challenges and best gameplay moments come at night. When darkness falls, the nastiest zombies come out to play and the world suddenly changes.”
How much random combat you’re able to do depends directly on how many medikits you currently have, as enemies tend to hit you a lot, and even taking some glancing blows while dodging can quickly add up when faced with hordes of zombies.
This becomes even more noticeable when you first encounter virals, the ones that can bring the battle to you and who relentlessly chase you (for a short while) around the city. However, as you level up and get better weapons, you’ll be able to take on bigger and bigger groups, making for a very satisfying feeling of progression.
The game’s biggest challenges and best gameplay moments come at night. When darkness falls, the nastiest zombies come out to play and the world suddenly changes.
If a zombie apocalypse usually makes you think about boredom and painstakingly grinding down a sea of mindless creatures, then Dying Light’s night gameplay will make you think about hiding in a wardrobe and praying to get to Narnia.
The volatiles are very, very fast and deadly, and the first time you encounter them is so scary that you won’t want to stay out during the night ever again. There’s even a button to look back over your shoulder while you’re being chased, because someone felt the need to make it even scarier than it already was.
Granted, they too have their weak spot, in the form of UV light, which you can use to deter them for a short duration and gain some ground while running for safety, and you can always try to take a swing at them, but it’s not advisable until you get to a higher level.
However, experimenting and learning how to play with them and around them, sneaking around undetected in the shadows, and then outrunning a ravenous pack of volatiles can be extremely exhilarating, and it also offers you a ton of points toward your survival tree.
Nighttime is every bit as intense as the developers touted it to be, and it really puts the in-game radio warnings into context. You have to distract enemies using noise and stay away from their vision cones, unless you want to stir up trouble.
Another useful tool in the survivalist’s arsenal is the ability to make your Spidey sense tingle, sending a sort of dolphin-vision sonar wave through the environment, locating various nearby pieces of loot, as well as revealing the location of nearby volatiles on the prowl.
Sound and visuals
The sound design is pretty good, you get tons of creepy moans to chill your spine while going about your business through Harran, and the music is very fitting too. There a lot of Arabic influences interspersed with some sci-fi horror chimes and guitars.
Unfortunately, for the most part, you won’t be able to hear it due to the tense nature of what you’re doing.
It will be drowned out by nearby moans and shouts, by the sound of virals scampering around the base of the building you just climbed on thinking you were safe, and by your own panting, after evading pursuit or while fighting several enemies a once.
The game has a lot of dialogue, all of it voice-acted, but sometimes the characters seem a bit bored or disconnected from what's going on. For the most part, it's at least decent, and the bits and pieces of dialogue you overhear, such as people telling jokes and discussing the current state of affairs, are a neat finishing touch to the game world.
The visuals are another strong point of Dying Light, with everything looking very good and having a lot of personality, from graffiti to stencils and other markings on walls to the vegetation and debris, showing a ton of work being put into making the world as genuine and plausible as possible.
The night and day cycle is very well implemented, and as dusk settles, your visibility starts going down as your heart rate is going up, while you’re running to the nearest safe house.
Mornings are foggy and sometimes it even rains, and it all looks great. From time to time, there will be a strong wind, and you’ll be able to hear it blow past you and see the trees move back and forth with it.
There are flocks of birds flying in the sky, flies around dead bodies, puddles and stains everywhere, and a ton of particle effects that just make the world pop. There are plenty of vantage points from where to gaze upon the city at various times of day and take in its beauty, from the numerous metal shacks in the slums and the massive highways to the high-rise blocks of flats and everything in between.
The Good
- Great open-world action
- Satisfying combat
- Fluid parkour mechanics
- Genuinely scary at night
- Good progression system
- Gorgeous visuals
The Bad
- Really bad technical issues
- Generic and contrived story
- Uninteresting voice acting at times
Conclusion
The parkour navigation system is very fluid and enjoyable in its own right, combat feels pretty meaty, there’s scavenging and crafting, opponents are challenging and keep you on your toes, the graphics are great, and the dynamic night and day cycle introduces a nice shift in gameplay.
The main story has plenty of holes and some questionable decisions from the protagonists, but it’s passable, and there are also a myriad of other things to do in Harran.
From simply jumping from rooftop to rooftop looking for zombies to test your new weapon on, picking locks, wandering through the city, tracking down cargo drops, liberating safe zones, rescuing other survivors, uncovering Easter eggs and various collectibles, to studying the effect of assault rifles on crowds, there’s never a dull moment in Dying Light.
It gets many things right, it’s focused and feels really worthwhile and fun. The skills you level up give you a sense of actual progression and offer you new ways to tackle the challenges ahead.
The world feels alive and everything serves a purpose, it all comes together in a cohesive experience, with a great presentation and a ton of attention to detail. It’s not going to blow anyone’s mind anytime soon, but it’s a solid first-person open-world survival game that feels both familiar and new.
Best of all, it managed to exceed my expectations. It looks gorgeous and feels polished. Unfortunately, it’s also technically inconsistent. I died many times due to performance issues at the most inopportune moment and the cutscenes were marred by lag and freezes. But there’s a great game underneath all the unoptimized fluff.
