I picked up a couple of really good games during the latest Steam holiday sale. Warhammer Vermintide had been on my wishlist since pre-release. However, I noticed Dying Light for $20. I knew absolutely nothing about the game other then zombies were in it. Now I used to love me a good zombie stomp. Red Dead Redemption’s zombie DLC was fantastic, and I have fond memories of DayZ during it’s early days. Left 4 Dead 2 is also a great time.
These days though, the zombie games were just getting to be a bit much. I started to look past zombie games as I did WW2 shooters. There were just too many of them! This was an ignorant way to do things. I overlooked Dying Light.
It’s a parkouring zombie madhouse. You get to run around in a rather detailed world completing missions for random people, or you can follow the story line. I’ve been doing a bit of both, and I’ve been enjoying it.
So, ‘what’s the twist?’ I’m sure you’re asking. Well, things get interesting at night. The big baddies come out swinging for the fences, and the safest way to defeat them is to run like hell. Unless one wishes a rather graphic up close view a Reapers from Blade 2, you should run to a safe house scattered around the map.
You get a 1 hour warning. They will remind you on the radio continuously to get safe. You then start to hear screams in the distance, and your watch starts beeping. The screams get louder and much angrier. Ohh myy, is it pretty spooky to experience the first time.
I’ve not played Mirror’s Edge, but I sure do like how the parkour works in most of Dying Light. It’s pretty close to how it works in Assassins Creed, and it works well. However, I still have those accidents where I overestimate a jump and die though. Eh, playing in Co-Op helps with that.
A useful advantage of the parkour is that you rarely have to fight any zombies. A majority of the zombies are pretty docile in the early game. You can run right past most of them and scamper up a building with little worry. If you make too much of a racket though, the zombies become a bit more aggressive, and it attracts faster moving zombies. It’s a nice system that lets you plan out your fights. Just don’t get surrounded as the game mentions.
So, how is the smashing zombie part? It is a real treat. The damage model on the zombies is some of the best stuff I’ve seen. The damage is local to where your weapon impacts. So you can smash off parts of a zombies face, skull, or whatever really. If you like the Evil Dead series, this should be right up your alley in terms of the splatter factor. I should note that head damage of some kind seems to be the best way to put down zombies in Dying Light.
It does have weapon lifespan thing, and I hate that feature in games. However, the weapon repair isn’t that bad since you can run past most zombies as I stated earlier. You can also find an huge amount of weapons fairly easily. So when one weapon is ruined, you should have a good lineup to choose from. In addition you can mod them, and you can create some pretty cool stuff with the options given. Electrify your pipe wrench so it stuns people? Huzzah! Exploding Ninja Stars? Hell yeah! Most importantly, you can craft your own Molotov Cocktail. You are going to want to stock up on them.
The story and voice acting are alright. It’s not doing much for me, but it doesn’t hurt the game really. I’m still watching the cut scenes at least, and I was rewarded by viewing a rather annoying character die. So, that was a pretty cool part.
Co-Op play is yet another part the Devs nailed with this one. It works well. I can’t say it’s been flawless, but most issues are due to not being able to join a game during a cut scene. The majority of the Co-Op gameplay I’ve done has gone really well, and been a lot of fun. It really does help when you can warp all players to a mission critical spot when needed. It’s easy to wander off in Dying Light. A second helper is how Co-Op players ghost through each other so you can’t knock your friend off a building while performing parkour. I’m so glad they have that feature.
Problems in game have been few with me clocking up about 20hrs into it. There are a few odd character glitches, and I’ve had one co-op mission go REALLY wonky until it we had to restart it. Overall, bugs have been few and far between.
So I’d give this one thumbs up. I was lucky to grab it on sale for $20, and it’s a steal at that price. I believe it’s currently $60, and I would say it’s worth full price.
**I’m sure there are some typos up there. I’ll read it over later. Who knows, only bots read all this anyway. Haha!