Dying Light and the current state of the zombie apocalypse trend... part 2 + review
"Oh man, it's so much better. There's so much stuff you can do!"
"Trust me, dude. I put in about 30 hours, and I'm still having a blast with it!"
"Dead Island never should have happened. THIS is the definitive open-world zombie game!"
These are just examples of the positive word-of-mouth I received when inquiring about Dying Light. Not trying to say "OH, THEY'RE DEAD-WRONG!" since that's their opinion, but when you look at the average player/reader score on multiple sites, there's plenty of evidence that shows it has a high number of fans.
So because of this, my expectations were a bit raised. Probably higher than they should have been, being that I have such a vehement hatred for how deep into the concrete the zombie survival trend has been driven. I wasn't expecting "game of the year" material. I just wanted it to be fun, action-packed, and at least full of something that would set it apart from the other "been there, done that" experience.
What can I say? All it did was make me hate it even more.
Pros: Exquisitely detailed and gorgeous visuals, with terrific lighting effects; Easy controls with a great free-running/parkour system; Skill progression is rewarding and offers some cool abilities; Day/night cycle is well-implemented, and offers some intense moments when out in the streets; Interactive environments help keep massacring zombies from feeling dull
Cons: Story is devoid of any suspense or originality, with forgettable characters and a terrible main antagonist; Side quests are mostly useless filler, with some of the dumbest AI you can imagine; No fast-travel system; Difficulty sways from too easy to aggravatingly cheap on numerous occasions; Enemy variety is incredibly tired and overs nothing new to the genre; Vendor trade posts are pointless, making money relatively worthless; Shaky hit-detection; Stealth is poorly implemented; Ending offers zero satisfaction
Visual & Presentation: 8
Oh wow, what a fantastic looking world we're dropped in. I'm not gonna lie, Dying Light has some jaw-dropping production values. I spent a lot of the first couple hours just staring at my surroundings, as well as the magnificent view from dizzying heights. Indoor environments are cluttered with great details, even though you'll notice a lot of repetitive decor very quickly. It's still forgivable, given how sharp and pristine everything looks.
No, seriously, this is a great looking game! At least from the world's standpoint. Lighting effects are amazing, and I love how the air was filled with debris particles, it gave the city of Harran a very dirty, bleak, grungy appearance. It felt like I was exploring a dead city. Broken down vehicles clog the streets, electricity is dodgy at best, and you'll come across numerous barricaded safe houses. This is a well-designed playground, and I will definitely give Techland kudos for doing an amazing job with it. Framerate remains solid almost all the way through, and not once did I ever experience any sort of freezing or crash.
Too bad I can't say the same for the character models.
The zombies look fine. The variation is there, and I have no qualms with seeing some models get reused. I mean, I have to be fair. The streets are packed with wandering undead, to expect a thousand different looking zombies is asking for way too much.
But for the living? Talk about lifeless. Yeah, I know. I used to praise this level of detail a few years ago, but come on. Lip syncing is probably the only thing that doesn't feel dated. I can't accept any sort of excuse for this, given that games like L.A. Noire were able to accomplish more convincing facial animations FOUR YEARS AGO. But Dying Light isn't alone. I thought Killzone: Shadow Fall's character models were just as bad. This is a new generation of graphical capabilities, after playing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Assassin's Creed Unity, I expected this to be the standard in motion-capture.
It isn't god-awful, but it's definitely on that "barely passable" level, given how much love and dedication was put into the game's world. Their movement is also stiff and jerky, especially with random NPCs that you rescue or fight with. However, I shouldn't really complain much. It's not like more realistic effects would have helped the story much.
Story: 2
How many times are we going to recycle the whole 'we have a cure, but we also must fight against a corrupted government and vicious rebels" story? I am so fucking sick of this contrived and over-used concept, Zombies Ate My Neighbors had more creativity. How am I supposed to be emotionally drawn to characters when every single one of them is a cookie-cutter copy of other multiple attempts? While I've seen other stories use the same backdrop that worked, that was because they had wonderful writing and great characters. Here? Nope.
You play as Kyle Crane, a Global Relief Effort (GRE) operative air-dropped into the quarantined city of Harran in order to acquire files and intel from Kadir "Rais" Suleiman linked to potentially halting the zombie outbreak. Of course, he's ambushed early on by Rais' thugs, and gets bitten by a zombie in the process. He gets saved by a bunch of "Runners", and is taken to their safe headquarters, known as The Tower. There, with his consciousness slowly drifting, he is given Antizin which temporarily relieves him of symptoms. He makes friends with the rebels there, and works with them to help them to not only complete research for the cure, but to eventually get them all out of there alive.
Rais, who is essentially another run-of-the-mill psychotic thug lord, wants to keep the files and intel for himself in order to keep the infection spreading, and "keeping chaos in its natural state". Oh for fuck's sake, can we stop writing bad guys like this in stories? Why is it that we have to go up against villains who have no real emotional connection or understanding with the world? Why must they be all "RAWR! I WANT TO KILL EVERYTHING! FEAR ME!" with no real reason other than to be evil and mean? Cartoon character villains have more substance than you!
How much you wanna bet that Rais is gonna catch on that you're spying on him, and try to kill you? How much do you want to be he's gonna try to kill you by having someone else do the job for him? You'll be armed and able to kill him halfway through the game, but you'll only cut his hand off and run away... even after killing other thugs of his SECONDS BEFORE. He kills his own men just to show you that he means business. He throws taunts at you, questioning how much of a man you are.
Rais, in a nutshell, sucks as a main villain. It gets worse when I'm suddenly forced to worry about other characters that are on my side, primarily Jade and her brother Rahim. Why worse? Because the story does nothing to draw any sort of real emotion. I feel no connection with them. In fact, other than Rahim teaching Crane parkour skills, and going all vigilante on a botched personal mission with explosives (which resulted in his predictable infection and death), I found him to be more of an annoyance than an ally.
Jade? She plays that whole "I don't know you, so I can't trust you" schtick in the beginning, but as soon as her brother dies, she disappears and gets captured by Rais. Oh boy... damsel in distress time! Only when you finally meet up with her, she shows off how much of a badass she is by kicking the shit out of a bunch of zombies and thugs. HUH?! If she was able to hold her own like that in tight quarters, how the hell did she get detained? Of course, it comes to the point where both you and her have one vial of Antizin, and a choice is made to sacrifice herself so you can complete your mission.
The result? A really slow, agonizing slog through some sort of hallucination where you hop from platform to platform in what looks like fragments of limbo from DmC. This really destroys the momentum of action, and offers no purpose other than to be a flashy showpiece. It gets even worse when your final encounter with Rais is literally a six-button QTE session.
Another nitpick I have is the need for Antizin. There's no real explanation on how each dosage works, or how long it lasts until it wears off. The story implies that Crane is suffering from the effects of the infection, but there's no sort of time limit. You could go on a grind spree, spanning several day/night cycles that could go for WEEKS and the game does nothing to imply that you're getting worse. Only when the story says it's wearing off, it'll start taking its toll. I think a sort of "you need a dose every 72 hours" or something would have been a good idea to imply that sense of urgency.
Gameplay: 5
Okay, there's no denying this. Parkour is definitely the front-running star of Dying Light. Not since Mirror's Edge have I seen first person parkour elements implemented so effectively. Well, there's not a lot of them, so I guess it's hard to drive a comparison. Still! While it was a bit off-putting to have the jump button mapped to R1, once you get the hang of things, it's all surprisingly responsive. Jumping from far distances and grabbing onto ledges is a rush, and really helps making your escape from trouble that less frustrating. The city is well-constructed enough to where you can traverse almost anywhere with ease.
Also, the game uses a rewarding skill-progression system that unlocks useful abilities that keep the action from getting stale. While some upgrades are completely useless (vendor bartering for example), others make combat more appealing, like the drop kick. Now the drop kick is hard to get used to at first, but sadly it becomes a really cheat exploit once you get good at it. Once I built up my strength and unlocked the skull-stomp ability, I was able to take on multiple zombies with just my feet. It's also hilarious to use it in general, as your flying kicks send zombies soaring into the air. It's even more fun to kick them off tall buildings.
But some enemies are inconsistent with this. Especially human enemies which are surprisingly impervious to your drop kicks. I'm sorry, but if a dude ran up to me and jump-kicked me in the face, I sure as hell wouldn't be able to hold my ground, no matter how much body armor I have on. That's at least 180 pounds of force. Some zombies are able to withstand this as well. Goons make sense, since they're practically giants, wielding huge sledgehammers that will hit you even if you're five feet away from the strike....
Hit detection is questionable, because there have been many times where I had my sights zoned on my target's head, only to either miss completely, or hurt their torso or arms instead. This is especially frustrating with bladed weapons, as I would try to slice into their left side, only to watch their right arm get severed. When I was in my early levels, basic melee weapons to the head were frustratingly weak. I counted 20 hits with a bedpost, which broke shortly after taking out a single zombie. You can kick them when they're down, but that also takes dozens of stomps to finally kill them. It's ridiculous! Zombies aren't armored beasts. They're fragile, fleshy, decomposing corpses!
Though I will say it's nice to have the surrounding environment come to your aid when battling mobs of undead. There are traps set up all over the place by other survivors, like walls of spikes, electric fences and even light traps that blind pursuing swarms. Believe me, kicking dumbass zombies into those spikes are oh-so-satisfying. It almost matches up to the puddles of oil that you can set on fire while you watch them stupidly walk through and ignite their friends.
Sadly, enemy variation is nothing to write home about. Every single zombie type you've seen in games over the past eight years are here with no real emphasis on trying to be anything close to unique. You have your regular walkers... You have your virals, which are zombies that charge after you, and are sensitive to sounds... You have volatiles, which primarily show up at night, and are extremely aggressive, while being able to rip you apart in seconds... You have toads, which are essentially spitters... You have bombers, which are those exploding zombies that affect a wide area... Then you have screamers, which are creepy child-like zombies that stun you in annoying fashion with their shrieks.
There are the hazmat zombies that can explode and kill others around them if you hit their gas tanks, but you risk attracting viral zombies in the process, which can get pretty damn irritating when you're trying to clear an area. Then there are bolters, which I find to be the most pointless existence in the game. They're zombies that are infected with green fungus, and only show up at night. Why pointless? They run away from you, and are only worth killing for farming a special crafting resource in a story quest. They're often surrounded by volatiles, so the incentive to go after them after that mission is pretty fucking low.
Weapons break all the time, so don't get attached to your electric-charged pickaxe. While this can be annoying, the game does a good job at keeping melee weapons plentiful, as you find junk all over the place. Even basic crafting ingredients are generously scattered, so you can craft molotov cocktails, med kits, throwing stars, and firecrackers galore. So if your favorite weapon breaks, you have lots of junk in your backpack to upgrade another.
This all becomes trivial once you acquire firearms, and you start fighting human foes in the second half. Guns are extremely powerful, and make the most dangerous scenarios way easier than they should be. Now in my point of view, I was fine with this. With how frustrating melee combat can get, I was perfectly okay with having a shotgun to blow walking corpses to bits with. Especially since getting grabbed by a zombie never fails to piss me the fuck off every single time.
THIS is something video games need to fucking stop, right now. STOP telling me to have a goddamn seizure with my controller every time some zombie or monster grabs hold of me! I am so tired of that shit! Whether it be jiggling the analog stick or rapidly hammering a button in rapid succession, STOP THAT! Thankfully, later on, you can unlock a counter move which will allow you to break free with a single button press. That's how it should be! Make it so I can instantly counter them with an attack of my choice, and not have me frantically panic and mash buttons until thumb locks up. Other games have been guilty of this, but zombie games primarily whore the ever-living fuck out of it.
Not only that, can we also stop having hordes of mindless zombies occupy every square foot of a confined area, while giving me a target to reach on the other side of it, thus FORCING me to waste items and tear my weapons to shreds just so I can retrieve a camera in the trunk of a car? This isn't scary anymore!
While story missions are pretty run-of-the-mill, a lot of the side missions are generic filler, and offer very little meat to the world. Some of the main missions are artificially bloated as well, in order to cheaply lengthen the task. How about just giving me more missions instead?! Nope. Take for instance, an early mission where you have to activate these radio towers. Well, just ONE really until you spend time wiping out/avoiding zombies and climbing your first tower Far Cry style, and learn that it didn't work... and that you need to go to another location and do the same thing again.
Side missions are even worse, because a lot of them are arbitrary fetch quests with little to zero real reward other than some EXP and a few goofy scenes. Like there's this dude who had me go to a couple stores to fetch a movie and some chocolate candy so he and his mother could enjoy an evening with the TV. Upon completing the quest, you see him with sitting on a couch with a stuffed imitation of his mother beside him. Umm, yay? That was rewarding.
How about a mission where I'm asked to get alcohol for a guy who tells me his wife is having a baby. Not once... not twice... but THREE TRIPS are required, each fetching multiple bottles of alcohol. The reward? Oh, just a group of assholes getting drunk and playing cards. I found that simply grinding at night with the bonus EXP boosts to offer more rewards than this bullshit. How about random civilians that ask for help? While some are pretty okay, like killing off charging thugs, or zombies while the victim hides. You get rewarded off the bat. But then there are these escorts. Oh god, FUCK this shit.
Zombies appear and fight you in unpredictable swarms. Every single civilian that I've had to escort ended up charging head-on into mobs with his baseball bat or shovel. I spent more time trying to clear a path for him than actually getting anywhere. Every zombie I was able to successfully shake off, he was instantly being eaten by another. And multiple escorts? No. Fuck escort missions in zombie games PERIOD. The NPCs never stay out of your way. They never find cover while you clear a safe path. They ALWAYS charge ahead of you, throwing themselves in danger and thus getting killed every time in the process. After three attempts, I ignored every civilian's cry for help.
While weapon/item crafting serves plenty of use, ingredients are so overly-plentiful, I found myself wondering why vendors even existed. There's no redeeming value to their items, the only time I visited them was to sell off junk like coffee and cigarettes (which zombies LOVE to pack around), and even then I watched as my cash climbed higher and higher with nothing of real value to blow it on. Yeah, they sell their share of purple and orange level weapons, but I found those everywhere just by simply raiding apartments and convenience stores.
When night falls, while zombies remain the same level of aggression, volatiles are what generate the real threat, making the darkness that much more dangerous. The game tells you that you can avoid them by simply being stealthy and staying out of their sight (which is featured on your mini-map with little MGS-style vision cones), but they still manage find you, no matter how quiet you are. Stealth in general is very weak, it's much easier to just high-tail it from one point to the next. But since volatiles are noisy, guess what else they attract... VIRALS!
It gets messier on indoor environments, as viral zombies will suddenly burst out of doors and charge at you for simply stepping on a broken bottle. Hell, there have been rooms I had completely cleared suddenly have virals appear out of nowhere, and that always got infuriating. Even moreso when you have an area devoid of zombies and you start to pick a chest's lock only to get assaulted from behind from a viral without any sort of warning. The aggravation climbs when bombers pop up in the room and kill you instantly without even knowing what hit you.
Here's a good question. Why is it that I can shut some doors but not others? I can understand being unable to OPEN some of them, but when I'm on the run or trying to cover my tracks, why do ordinary, undamaged doors render themselves useless?
As the main story begins wrapping up, the game takes for an awkward shift. For one thing, the map is divided into two areas: The Slums, and Sector Zero. Zero is essentially the cityscape area, and you reach it halfway in the story by traveling through Harran's sewers. It's a pretty lengthy trek. However, even after unlocking and securing all safe zones, they failed to implement any sort of fast travel, making backtracking segments extremely tedious.
Well, towards the game's end, you have to trek back to The Slums, and since there's no fast travel of any sort, you have to run through the sewers... again. But this time with more parkour-jumping and platforming across ledges, pipes and catwalks. While this is fine and dandy in itself, the game doesn't push any of your applied sprinting/parkour skills to the test until you're pretty much almost at the end, and at that point it just gets annoying.
There's a spot where you have to run this sort of gauntlet through the underground sewers while avoiding volatiles, regular walkers, and trying not to lose your balance from sprinting across narrow pipes and planks. You don't have time to stop and fight, for you'll get overwhelmed within seconds. It just pulls this Halo 3-style "GO GO GO NOW!!!!" finale before finally having to climb your last tower and take on Rais in pathetic QTE fashion. Fighting his buddy Tahir earlier was far more rewarding, since that was an actual FIGHT to the death with just a machete.
This is all haphazardly slapped together in sync with one of the dumbest cop-out endings I've experienced in awhile. Not once was I full of tension as the story tied itself together. Not once was I emotionally charged with revenge on Rais for killing my comrades. The more I played, the more I wanted this to hurry up and finish. I eyeballed the story percentage in the pause menu frequently, anxiously waiting for it to streak past 90% in the last couple hours.
I only got more irritated once I learned that people were saying that "it gets better later" or "multiplayer is what makes it fun!" Never, EVER try to convince me that a game is good only because of its multiplayer, and you definitely don't want to try and convince me that I should forgive a game's shortcomings because it becomes great after the first half.
I didn't try multiplayer at all, for the interest just wasn't there. So I can't rightfully say anything positive or negative about it. But saying that "it makes it better" is the same bullshit excuse I was fed over Resident Evil 5 six years ago. Do not pull that shit with me. Dying Light was built as a single-player experience from the ground up, and it shows from the narrative alone. If you can't make your core element deliver, you have a problem with your execution.
The emphasis is on survival and grinding, so trying to tell me that "it gets better" is sort of a "well DUH!" given. You're gonna be stronger and have more abilities by then, so of course it'll be better! But the journey there? The actual work put in? The sense of adventure is completely absent, as all Dying Light is is a derivative attempt at giving us more of the same exact thing but with a different coat of paint.
Overall Verdict: 4/10
I could have been crueler with this rating, but I'd be an idiot to ignore Dying Light's valiant efforts. They're there, and if you're a huge zombie fan, this game is definitely up your alley. Me? Did this change my view on zombie games? Did I just walk in with a negative attitude already set?
You can assume I have an ego over this all you want, but Dying Light is not this "awesome game" you fans made it out to be. In fact, I now have serious trust issues with folks' tastes since so many would not stop telling me "YOU NEED TO GET THIS!!"
Dying Light is an exercise in tedium. It's valid proof that even some of the biggest companies can't come up with anything resembling originality when it comes to zombies. It's the same fucking thing we've been poked with for the past seven years, and I don't want to hear people telling me "OH! YOU NEED TO TRY STATE OF DECAY OR H1Z1 INSTEAD!" because I'm not falling for that shit again. I am fucking done with this zombie survival bullshit, and I have had it with the disgustingly rampant fanbase that refuses to admit that they've been circling the same garbage for years.
Until someone tries to really push the envelope with originality in this genre, I'd be happy if I never see another zombie survival game for another half decade. This is the exact reason why I haven't been able to gain motivation to watch the last three seasons of The Walking Dead, and that's a show with good writing. This is the reason why I won't touch the Resident Evil: Revelations games.
There was once a time when I had fun killing zombies, but because of this ass-raping over-saturation of the theme, that time is long gone, and I don't know if I'll ever get it back. Like the military shooter fans, your dollar has told studios that you're okay with this. You're okay with more of the same, and less innovation. Thanks for giving this game the mass attention it does not deserve. Go pre-order your copy of Dead Island 2 and choke on it. I'm fucking done.
"Trust me, dude. I put in about 30 hours, and I'm still having a blast with it!"
"Dead Island never should have happened. THIS is the definitive open-world zombie game!"
These are just examples of the positive word-of-mouth I received when inquiring about Dying Light. Not trying to say "OH, THEY'RE DEAD-WRONG!" since that's their opinion, but when you look at the average player/reader score on multiple sites, there's plenty of evidence that shows it has a high number of fans.
So because of this, my expectations were a bit raised. Probably higher than they should have been, being that I have such a vehement hatred for how deep into the concrete the zombie survival trend has been driven. I wasn't expecting "game of the year" material. I just wanted it to be fun, action-packed, and at least full of something that would set it apart from the other "been there, done that" experience.
What can I say? All it did was make me hate it even more.
Pros: Exquisitely detailed and gorgeous visuals, with terrific lighting effects; Easy controls with a great free-running/parkour system; Skill progression is rewarding and offers some cool abilities; Day/night cycle is well-implemented, and offers some intense moments when out in the streets; Interactive environments help keep massacring zombies from feeling dull
Cons: Story is devoid of any suspense or originality, with forgettable characters and a terrible main antagonist; Side quests are mostly useless filler, with some of the dumbest AI you can imagine; No fast-travel system; Difficulty sways from too easy to aggravatingly cheap on numerous occasions; Enemy variety is incredibly tired and overs nothing new to the genre; Vendor trade posts are pointless, making money relatively worthless; Shaky hit-detection; Stealth is poorly implemented; Ending offers zero satisfaction
Visual & Presentation: 8
Oh wow, what a fantastic looking world we're dropped in. I'm not gonna lie, Dying Light has some jaw-dropping production values. I spent a lot of the first couple hours just staring at my surroundings, as well as the magnificent view from dizzying heights. Indoor environments are cluttered with great details, even though you'll notice a lot of repetitive decor very quickly. It's still forgivable, given how sharp and pristine everything looks.
No, seriously, this is a great looking game! At least from the world's standpoint. Lighting effects are amazing, and I love how the air was filled with debris particles, it gave the city of Harran a very dirty, bleak, grungy appearance. It felt like I was exploring a dead city. Broken down vehicles clog the streets, electricity is dodgy at best, and you'll come across numerous barricaded safe houses. This is a well-designed playground, and I will definitely give Techland kudos for doing an amazing job with it. Framerate remains solid almost all the way through, and not once did I ever experience any sort of freezing or crash.
Too bad I can't say the same for the character models.
The zombies look fine. The variation is there, and I have no qualms with seeing some models get reused. I mean, I have to be fair. The streets are packed with wandering undead, to expect a thousand different looking zombies is asking for way too much.
But for the living? Talk about lifeless. Yeah, I know. I used to praise this level of detail a few years ago, but come on. Lip syncing is probably the only thing that doesn't feel dated. I can't accept any sort of excuse for this, given that games like L.A. Noire were able to accomplish more convincing facial animations FOUR YEARS AGO. But Dying Light isn't alone. I thought Killzone: Shadow Fall's character models were just as bad. This is a new generation of graphical capabilities, after playing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Assassin's Creed Unity, I expected this to be the standard in motion-capture.
It isn't god-awful, but it's definitely on that "barely passable" level, given how much love and dedication was put into the game's world. Their movement is also stiff and jerky, especially with random NPCs that you rescue or fight with. However, I shouldn't really complain much. It's not like more realistic effects would have helped the story much.
Story: 2
How many times are we going to recycle the whole 'we have a cure, but we also must fight against a corrupted government and vicious rebels" story? I am so fucking sick of this contrived and over-used concept, Zombies Ate My Neighbors had more creativity. How am I supposed to be emotionally drawn to characters when every single one of them is a cookie-cutter copy of other multiple attempts? While I've seen other stories use the same backdrop that worked, that was because they had wonderful writing and great characters. Here? Nope.
You play as Kyle Crane, a Global Relief Effort (GRE) operative air-dropped into the quarantined city of Harran in order to acquire files and intel from Kadir "Rais" Suleiman linked to potentially halting the zombie outbreak. Of course, he's ambushed early on by Rais' thugs, and gets bitten by a zombie in the process. He gets saved by a bunch of "Runners", and is taken to their safe headquarters, known as The Tower. There, with his consciousness slowly drifting, he is given Antizin which temporarily relieves him of symptoms. He makes friends with the rebels there, and works with them to help them to not only complete research for the cure, but to eventually get them all out of there alive.
Rais, who is essentially another run-of-the-mill psychotic thug lord, wants to keep the files and intel for himself in order to keep the infection spreading, and "keeping chaos in its natural state". Oh for fuck's sake, can we stop writing bad guys like this in stories? Why is it that we have to go up against villains who have no real emotional connection or understanding with the world? Why must they be all "RAWR! I WANT TO KILL EVERYTHING! FEAR ME!" with no real reason other than to be evil and mean? Cartoon character villains have more substance than you!
How much you wanna bet that Rais is gonna catch on that you're spying on him, and try to kill you? How much do you want to be he's gonna try to kill you by having someone else do the job for him? You'll be armed and able to kill him halfway through the game, but you'll only cut his hand off and run away... even after killing other thugs of his SECONDS BEFORE. He kills his own men just to show you that he means business. He throws taunts at you, questioning how much of a man you are.
Rais, in a nutshell, sucks as a main villain. It gets worse when I'm suddenly forced to worry about other characters that are on my side, primarily Jade and her brother Rahim. Why worse? Because the story does nothing to draw any sort of real emotion. I feel no connection with them. In fact, other than Rahim teaching Crane parkour skills, and going all vigilante on a botched personal mission with explosives (which resulted in his predictable infection and death), I found him to be more of an annoyance than an ally.
Jade? She plays that whole "I don't know you, so I can't trust you" schtick in the beginning, but as soon as her brother dies, she disappears and gets captured by Rais. Oh boy... damsel in distress time! Only when you finally meet up with her, she shows off how much of a badass she is by kicking the shit out of a bunch of zombies and thugs. HUH?! If she was able to hold her own like that in tight quarters, how the hell did she get detained? Of course, it comes to the point where both you and her have one vial of Antizin, and a choice is made to sacrifice herself so you can complete your mission.
The result? A really slow, agonizing slog through some sort of hallucination where you hop from platform to platform in what looks like fragments of limbo from DmC. This really destroys the momentum of action, and offers no purpose other than to be a flashy showpiece. It gets even worse when your final encounter with Rais is literally a six-button QTE session.
Another nitpick I have is the need for Antizin. There's no real explanation on how each dosage works, or how long it lasts until it wears off. The story implies that Crane is suffering from the effects of the infection, but there's no sort of time limit. You could go on a grind spree, spanning several day/night cycles that could go for WEEKS and the game does nothing to imply that you're getting worse. Only when the story says it's wearing off, it'll start taking its toll. I think a sort of "you need a dose every 72 hours" or something would have been a good idea to imply that sense of urgency.
Gameplay: 5
Okay, there's no denying this. Parkour is definitely the front-running star of Dying Light. Not since Mirror's Edge have I seen first person parkour elements implemented so effectively. Well, there's not a lot of them, so I guess it's hard to drive a comparison. Still! While it was a bit off-putting to have the jump button mapped to R1, once you get the hang of things, it's all surprisingly responsive. Jumping from far distances and grabbing onto ledges is a rush, and really helps making your escape from trouble that less frustrating. The city is well-constructed enough to where you can traverse almost anywhere with ease.
Also, the game uses a rewarding skill-progression system that unlocks useful abilities that keep the action from getting stale. While some upgrades are completely useless (vendor bartering for example), others make combat more appealing, like the drop kick. Now the drop kick is hard to get used to at first, but sadly it becomes a really cheat exploit once you get good at it. Once I built up my strength and unlocked the skull-stomp ability, I was able to take on multiple zombies with just my feet. It's also hilarious to use it in general, as your flying kicks send zombies soaring into the air. It's even more fun to kick them off tall buildings.
But some enemies are inconsistent with this. Especially human enemies which are surprisingly impervious to your drop kicks. I'm sorry, but if a dude ran up to me and jump-kicked me in the face, I sure as hell wouldn't be able to hold my ground, no matter how much body armor I have on. That's at least 180 pounds of force. Some zombies are able to withstand this as well. Goons make sense, since they're practically giants, wielding huge sledgehammers that will hit you even if you're five feet away from the strike....
Hit detection is questionable, because there have been many times where I had my sights zoned on my target's head, only to either miss completely, or hurt their torso or arms instead. This is especially frustrating with bladed weapons, as I would try to slice into their left side, only to watch their right arm get severed. When I was in my early levels, basic melee weapons to the head were frustratingly weak. I counted 20 hits with a bedpost, which broke shortly after taking out a single zombie. You can kick them when they're down, but that also takes dozens of stomps to finally kill them. It's ridiculous! Zombies aren't armored beasts. They're fragile, fleshy, decomposing corpses!
Though I will say it's nice to have the surrounding environment come to your aid when battling mobs of undead. There are traps set up all over the place by other survivors, like walls of spikes, electric fences and even light traps that blind pursuing swarms. Believe me, kicking dumbass zombies into those spikes are oh-so-satisfying. It almost matches up to the puddles of oil that you can set on fire while you watch them stupidly walk through and ignite their friends.
Sadly, enemy variation is nothing to write home about. Every single zombie type you've seen in games over the past eight years are here with no real emphasis on trying to be anything close to unique. You have your regular walkers... You have your virals, which are zombies that charge after you, and are sensitive to sounds... You have volatiles, which primarily show up at night, and are extremely aggressive, while being able to rip you apart in seconds... You have toads, which are essentially spitters... You have bombers, which are those exploding zombies that affect a wide area... Then you have screamers, which are creepy child-like zombies that stun you in annoying fashion with their shrieks.
There are the hazmat zombies that can explode and kill others around them if you hit their gas tanks, but you risk attracting viral zombies in the process, which can get pretty damn irritating when you're trying to clear an area. Then there are bolters, which I find to be the most pointless existence in the game. They're zombies that are infected with green fungus, and only show up at night. Why pointless? They run away from you, and are only worth killing for farming a special crafting resource in a story quest. They're often surrounded by volatiles, so the incentive to go after them after that mission is pretty fucking low.
Weapons break all the time, so don't get attached to your electric-charged pickaxe. While this can be annoying, the game does a good job at keeping melee weapons plentiful, as you find junk all over the place. Even basic crafting ingredients are generously scattered, so you can craft molotov cocktails, med kits, throwing stars, and firecrackers galore. So if your favorite weapon breaks, you have lots of junk in your backpack to upgrade another.
This all becomes trivial once you acquire firearms, and you start fighting human foes in the second half. Guns are extremely powerful, and make the most dangerous scenarios way easier than they should be. Now in my point of view, I was fine with this. With how frustrating melee combat can get, I was perfectly okay with having a shotgun to blow walking corpses to bits with. Especially since getting grabbed by a zombie never fails to piss me the fuck off every single time.
THIS is something video games need to fucking stop, right now. STOP telling me to have a goddamn seizure with my controller every time some zombie or monster grabs hold of me! I am so tired of that shit! Whether it be jiggling the analog stick or rapidly hammering a button in rapid succession, STOP THAT! Thankfully, later on, you can unlock a counter move which will allow you to break free with a single button press. That's how it should be! Make it so I can instantly counter them with an attack of my choice, and not have me frantically panic and mash buttons until thumb locks up. Other games have been guilty of this, but zombie games primarily whore the ever-living fuck out of it.
Not only that, can we also stop having hordes of mindless zombies occupy every square foot of a confined area, while giving me a target to reach on the other side of it, thus FORCING me to waste items and tear my weapons to shreds just so I can retrieve a camera in the trunk of a car? This isn't scary anymore!
While story missions are pretty run-of-the-mill, a lot of the side missions are generic filler, and offer very little meat to the world. Some of the main missions are artificially bloated as well, in order to cheaply lengthen the task. How about just giving me more missions instead?! Nope. Take for instance, an early mission where you have to activate these radio towers. Well, just ONE really until you spend time wiping out/avoiding zombies and climbing your first tower Far Cry style, and learn that it didn't work... and that you need to go to another location and do the same thing again.
Side missions are even worse, because a lot of them are arbitrary fetch quests with little to zero real reward other than some EXP and a few goofy scenes. Like there's this dude who had me go to a couple stores to fetch a movie and some chocolate candy so he and his mother could enjoy an evening with the TV. Upon completing the quest, you see him with sitting on a couch with a stuffed imitation of his mother beside him. Umm, yay? That was rewarding.
How about a mission where I'm asked to get alcohol for a guy who tells me his wife is having a baby. Not once... not twice... but THREE TRIPS are required, each fetching multiple bottles of alcohol. The reward? Oh, just a group of assholes getting drunk and playing cards. I found that simply grinding at night with the bonus EXP boosts to offer more rewards than this bullshit. How about random civilians that ask for help? While some are pretty okay, like killing off charging thugs, or zombies while the victim hides. You get rewarded off the bat. But then there are these escorts. Oh god, FUCK this shit.
Zombies appear and fight you in unpredictable swarms. Every single civilian that I've had to escort ended up charging head-on into mobs with his baseball bat or shovel. I spent more time trying to clear a path for him than actually getting anywhere. Every zombie I was able to successfully shake off, he was instantly being eaten by another. And multiple escorts? No. Fuck escort missions in zombie games PERIOD. The NPCs never stay out of your way. They never find cover while you clear a safe path. They ALWAYS charge ahead of you, throwing themselves in danger and thus getting killed every time in the process. After three attempts, I ignored every civilian's cry for help.
While weapon/item crafting serves plenty of use, ingredients are so overly-plentiful, I found myself wondering why vendors even existed. There's no redeeming value to their items, the only time I visited them was to sell off junk like coffee and cigarettes (which zombies LOVE to pack around), and even then I watched as my cash climbed higher and higher with nothing of real value to blow it on. Yeah, they sell their share of purple and orange level weapons, but I found those everywhere just by simply raiding apartments and convenience stores.
When night falls, while zombies remain the same level of aggression, volatiles are what generate the real threat, making the darkness that much more dangerous. The game tells you that you can avoid them by simply being stealthy and staying out of their sight (which is featured on your mini-map with little MGS-style vision cones), but they still manage find you, no matter how quiet you are. Stealth in general is very weak, it's much easier to just high-tail it from one point to the next. But since volatiles are noisy, guess what else they attract... VIRALS!
It gets messier on indoor environments, as viral zombies will suddenly burst out of doors and charge at you for simply stepping on a broken bottle. Hell, there have been rooms I had completely cleared suddenly have virals appear out of nowhere, and that always got infuriating. Even moreso when you have an area devoid of zombies and you start to pick a chest's lock only to get assaulted from behind from a viral without any sort of warning. The aggravation climbs when bombers pop up in the room and kill you instantly without even knowing what hit you.
Here's a good question. Why is it that I can shut some doors but not others? I can understand being unable to OPEN some of them, but when I'm on the run or trying to cover my tracks, why do ordinary, undamaged doors render themselves useless?
As the main story begins wrapping up, the game takes for an awkward shift. For one thing, the map is divided into two areas: The Slums, and Sector Zero. Zero is essentially the cityscape area, and you reach it halfway in the story by traveling through Harran's sewers. It's a pretty lengthy trek. However, even after unlocking and securing all safe zones, they failed to implement any sort of fast travel, making backtracking segments extremely tedious.
Well, towards the game's end, you have to trek back to The Slums, and since there's no fast travel of any sort, you have to run through the sewers... again. But this time with more parkour-jumping and platforming across ledges, pipes and catwalks. While this is fine and dandy in itself, the game doesn't push any of your applied sprinting/parkour skills to the test until you're pretty much almost at the end, and at that point it just gets annoying.
There's a spot where you have to run this sort of gauntlet through the underground sewers while avoiding volatiles, regular walkers, and trying not to lose your balance from sprinting across narrow pipes and planks. You don't have time to stop and fight, for you'll get overwhelmed within seconds. It just pulls this Halo 3-style "GO GO GO NOW!!!!" finale before finally having to climb your last tower and take on Rais in pathetic QTE fashion. Fighting his buddy Tahir earlier was far more rewarding, since that was an actual FIGHT to the death with just a machete.
This is all haphazardly slapped together in sync with one of the dumbest cop-out endings I've experienced in awhile. Not once was I full of tension as the story tied itself together. Not once was I emotionally charged with revenge on Rais for killing my comrades. The more I played, the more I wanted this to hurry up and finish. I eyeballed the story percentage in the pause menu frequently, anxiously waiting for it to streak past 90% in the last couple hours.
I only got more irritated once I learned that people were saying that "it gets better later" or "multiplayer is what makes it fun!" Never, EVER try to convince me that a game is good only because of its multiplayer, and you definitely don't want to try and convince me that I should forgive a game's shortcomings because it becomes great after the first half.
I didn't try multiplayer at all, for the interest just wasn't there. So I can't rightfully say anything positive or negative about it. But saying that "it makes it better" is the same bullshit excuse I was fed over Resident Evil 5 six years ago. Do not pull that shit with me. Dying Light was built as a single-player experience from the ground up, and it shows from the narrative alone. If you can't make your core element deliver, you have a problem with your execution.
The emphasis is on survival and grinding, so trying to tell me that "it gets better" is sort of a "well DUH!" given. You're gonna be stronger and have more abilities by then, so of course it'll be better! But the journey there? The actual work put in? The sense of adventure is completely absent, as all Dying Light is is a derivative attempt at giving us more of the same exact thing but with a different coat of paint.
Overall Verdict: 4/10
I could have been crueler with this rating, but I'd be an idiot to ignore Dying Light's valiant efforts. They're there, and if you're a huge zombie fan, this game is definitely up your alley. Me? Did this change my view on zombie games? Did I just walk in with a negative attitude already set?
You can assume I have an ego over this all you want, but Dying Light is not this "awesome game" you fans made it out to be. In fact, I now have serious trust issues with folks' tastes since so many would not stop telling me "YOU NEED TO GET THIS!!"
Dying Light is an exercise in tedium. It's valid proof that even some of the biggest companies can't come up with anything resembling originality when it comes to zombies. It's the same fucking thing we've been poked with for the past seven years, and I don't want to hear people telling me "OH! YOU NEED TO TRY STATE OF DECAY OR H1Z1 INSTEAD!" because I'm not falling for that shit again. I am fucking done with this zombie survival bullshit, and I have had it with the disgustingly rampant fanbase that refuses to admit that they've been circling the same garbage for years.
Until someone tries to really push the envelope with originality in this genre, I'd be happy if I never see another zombie survival game for another half decade. This is the exact reason why I haven't been able to gain motivation to watch the last three seasons of The Walking Dead, and that's a show with good writing. This is the reason why I won't touch the Resident Evil: Revelations games.
There was once a time when I had fun killing zombies, but because of this ass-raping over-saturation of the theme, that time is long gone, and I don't know if I'll ever get it back. Like the military shooter fans, your dollar has told studios that you're okay with this. You're okay with more of the same, and less innovation. Thanks for giving this game the mass attention it does not deserve. Go pre-order your copy of Dead Island 2 and choke on it. I'm fucking done.