So I figure it's fun to talk about games here, so I try to pick up a new game whenever I can. This time I played Dying Light. I feel like no one has ever heard of this game, I dunno, maybe that's just me. I mean with Batman, call of duty, Halo and soon Battlefront Starwars flying around I feel like this game is kinda lost in the mix, which is a shame because it's pretty good.
So basically, Dying Light is a zombie game. I know, "Another one?" But it has a nice twist to it. Imagine Mirror's Edge.. but in a zombie apocalypse. Yep, pretty epic right? It's like if Mirror's Edge and Left for Dead has a baby, it would be Dying Light. It has pretty decent characters and a well written story.. alright.. let's dive in.
Graphics:
The game looks amazing, everything about it looks real and believable and the zombies are gross and at times actually scary. The facial expressions and the movements in the game are done very well. It really does make you feel like you are the main character (Crane) from the sounds of your head movement to the body moving and your vision blurring when you get tired. It's like a VR game without the VR. Youtube videos do not do this game justice. I recommend that you actually try it out yourself.
Sound:
The music is okay, kinda generic but the sound effects and the voice of the people are pretty well done. The voice acting is pretty top notch and the sounds from the zombies are well done to. It really does sound like they are sick or messed up. The running zombies and the night hunters are really freaky.
Gameplay:
This game isn't like your typical zombie shooter. You're not some dude with a shit ton of guns and you're not some military unit in a mansion. You're just a dude that runs. That's it. The game starts off really intense and it's not forgiving you will die alot and you will run away alot from zombies. The gameplay is all about fight or flight and everytime I pick up the controller I certainly do get a rush, like shit should I run? Fuck can I kill this zombie? I mean yes you do get weapons but they all start off like shit and break easily. At first it could be very frustrating since you could only run for so long until you decide you gotta fight.
At first everything sucked, all the weapons sucked, your stamina and stats sucked.. but once you get the hang out of the crafting system you slowly find yourself getting better weapons and finding things with better durability. Soon enough you find yourself killing zombies with relative ease and I find it to be rewarding. I found it to be I worked hard to get that good weapon and kill zombies better now, like it doesn't feel cheap, it feels like I earned it.
However somethings about the gameplay get repetitive like the side quests...
Side Quests:
So this game works in a stat system where you gain experience by attacking or running or just not dying so it's broken up into 3 categories:
1. Agility: Running, climbing stuff, evading attacks, etc, gives you agility points that you can use to gain new moves like running across walls, stunning enemies, etc.
2. Power: Attacking shit and killing shit gives you points that you can use to gain more strength and better durability and stamina for your weapons and attacks. This one is pretty straight forward.
3. Survivor: This one is weird, you get points by not dying because if you die you actually lose points in this category. You also get points by helping people. The benefits of this category is more item slots, cheaper items, crafting better items, etc. It's a pretty important category.
Now Side Quests are supposed to help with the Survivor Rank I feel but they are all so boring.. I mean the story behind the side quests are really cool and some of them are funny. I feel like there was some real effort placed into them like the story quests but they are all fetch quests. Like every single side quest is "Get this for me." over and over, it's like I am role playing to be someones intern, I mean shit, there's even a side quest to get someone some coffee.
I mean... yeah you got some challenges and stuff that breaks it up.. but I got some annoyed by the fetch quests that it just put me off from doing side quests at all and made me stick to just the main story.
The Story:
So the story of this game.. is well.. I'm probably going to ruin this so if you don't wanna know then skip this section but I'll try not give out too many spoilers. So pretty much you're this dude that gets thrown into this city that is infected by a zombie virus and everything is fucked. You meet some survivors who are nice and you meet others who are total assholes. Since they are assholes they are the bad guys since they try to stop you from finding a cure and stuff because like, they think that if they can control the virus they can control the world or whatever. The bad guys would fit right into Resident Evil to be honest.
So that's basically it, it's kinda simple but the way it's told and the characters you meet and how they interact with you and how you interact with them are pretty well done. It feels very natural. Like you get the sense that alot of the survivors are confused with what to do, you get a sense you become unsure of what to do yourself with your own morals and values. And everything does, I just want to point out that the guy you play as is real nice, like super duper nice to everyone he meets. It's sorta really weird in some parts but yeah. You play as a swell guy in this game.. nothing wrong with that but I wouldn't mind if he acted shitty for certain times in the story.
There are also some parts in this game where you get seizures because you are infected by the virus yourself and I found all of those parts to be pretty trippy, especially when there are other enemies around you.. like it's pretty interesting in my opinion.
The story though is pretty well done though, I mean, even if you don't like zombie or horror games and can't stand playing through them I would still try to find a youtube video of someone doing a story speed run of a movie of all the major cut scenes to check out what this game is about. I think it's worth a watch.
Would you play this?:
If you like zombie games and you want to try something different then I would definitely pick this game up. If you want a good action game with a good story I would pick this game up. I know some people do not like horror games and that's fine because this whole game is in first person and it's pretty real so it will have some scary moments especially in the beginning when you are weak as shit. But even if you just want a challenge then get this game now that I think about it.
Overall:
If 1 was an anal bead in a dead zombie body and 5 was that sweet red cherry on top of that sundae you really like then I would give this game a real 4.
It's close, real close to that cherry but if it wasn't for a lot of the repetitiveness in the game I would rank it higher.
Edited by poofka, 03 November 2015 - 10:31 PM.
