I'd like to say there's been a reason why I haven't been posting for about two months but there really isn't. I've just been slacking off.
So Dying Light is a open-world first person action-adventure game from the Polish studio Techland. It's not really an RPG and not really a shooter, but I spent a damn long time considering putting those words in the heading because shooting zombies and exploring both feature, but aren't really integral to the experience. Although they sort of are.
Wait, what the fuck am I playing here?
There's parkour and a lot of free-roaming elements that'd be familiar in Mirror's Edge, a crafting system of Far Cry 3, an experience and level up system similar to your normal RPG, weapons combat that's reminiscent of Dead Island 2 and some sort of story as well but I'm damned if I know what it is.
You play as Kyle Crane, not to be confused with Nathan Drake.
Or the protagonist of Infamous or Gears of War or Spec Ops: The Line or Max Payne or Prototype or most games. Frankly he looks like a fusion of all male video game characters.
You're dropped into the infected city of Harran, a Turkish city filled with people who speak perfect English with barely a local inflection in their voices. You're there to stop a corrupt politician for reasons that aren't explained to you very clearly because I have absolutely no clue.
Also you start helping the locals, especially the sickish locals which kill people, lie to you and offer you things they can't provide. You do not get a choice in this, the titular hero of this sodding game just rolls his eyes and sighs emphatically as if to say "grr, you pesky people, oh alright fine."
Even after the third fucking betrayal mission. I am not even lying.
So a mysterious viral outbreak has contaminated the city and now everyone's a hyper-aggressive zombie and can we just stop? Right. okay. What?
Mysterious zombies in a mysterious city with the rest of the world mysteriously okay we're here doing something confusing to aid someone who isn't mentioned.
Fucking PACMAN HAD MORE EXPOSITION.
The game plays like a dream sometimes, with optimal fluidity between the parkour segments, combat segments, scavenging segments and crafting segments. However, only sometimes. The environmental design is mildly clunky and too often a jump kick to knock a zombie into a spiked fence will go through him or around him or the zombie will get stuck in the fence and rag doll around for five minutes. Often the combat becomes repetitive, even after weapons upgrading. In addition, the weapons themselves degrade very faster with no option for weapon permanence, leading you to lose your favourite electric shovel or toxic cattle prod or flaming beer bottle.
Which doesn't make sense. Why have a system of weapon degradation in a game where flaming beer bottles are normal weapons to be using against the unwashed zombie hordes? Why?
Often you'll be left with broken weapons you have to break down to craft newer ones, a cyclical process which will leave you wondering why you bother.
Dying Light, or Mirror's Island Fallout Cry, is a perfect example of a game that shines in many respective fields, but oft will leave you yearning for the deeper glow of a pure game. Jack of many trades, master of none rings too true.
Whilst I think this game is a stellar improvement over Dead Island or Dead Rising or the many swathes of zombie games out there, showing graphical enhancements such as dynamic weather and a nifty draw-distance, it still lacks a focus that makes so many other games beautiful.
