LONDON: Get ready for the real apocalypse. Dying Light game is coming with zombie apocalypse-proofed houses, fully equipped with live-in amenities, sheds and parkour training.
The game also includes trip to Poland to meet the team, living room setup, and in-game goodies for the players.
Dying Light is an easy game to dismiss, because it looks terribly derivative of a million things we’ve seen before, and because it’s by the same people behind another zombie game – 2011’s Dead Island – that didn’t live up to its potential.
But give this title a chance to sink its rotting, bony fingers into you, and you may find it difficult to shake off. It’s a long, steady burn – the game can easily occupy 40 or more hours of your time if you let it – yet unlike its decomposing antagonists, it remains surprisingly fresh throughout.
Dying Light places you in the role of Kyle Crane, a special forces-type dude dropped into the quarantined city of Harran, where a virus outbreak is turning people into shambling, flesh-consuming monsters.
As zombie apocalypses go, this one is definitely apocalyptic. Harran, located in some fictional corner of southeast Europe, is a burning, bloody mess. Two months into the outbreak, only small pockets of human survivors remain, holed up in makeshift fortresses to keep the horror at bay.
At first blush, Dying Light feels similar to Polish developer Techland’s previous game, Dead Island: as you explore this sprawling but self-contained world, you’ll need to undertake tasks for other survivors, fashion makeshift weapons like Molotov cocktails and electrified machetes, and either avoid or eliminate hordes of the undead.
But after investing a few dozen hours into this title – hence this fashionably late review – I think it’s safe to say that Dying Light is the game Dead Island wanted to be. As a strictly current-generation release, it’s loaded with tons of visual detail and atmosphere, making for a weirdly convincing depiction of the zombie apocalypse.
But Dying Light takes inspiration from a plenty of other sources, like the first-person parkour found in Mirror’s Edge, the skill trees of a role-playing game and a real-time day/night cycle that introduces an intriguing risk-reward element. Going out at night is significantly more dangerous (and pants-crappingly terrifying) as a brand new species of the undead emerges, able to sprint and climb with the same ease as Kyle himself.
And Dying Light doesn’t play its hand too early. Only after you’re a dozen or so hours into the game do you gain the ability to use a grappling hook to scale buildings and cross spaces in an instant, and it drastically alters the flow of movement, especially once a new and much more vertical section of the city opens up.
Three separate skill sets allow for tons of other character customization over time, whether you want to be able to stealthily snap zombies’ necks from behind or swing a two-handed weapon in a whirling tornado of death. (Be warned: The game’s gore is frequent and unapologetic. Weak stomachs should look elsewhere.) And while the story itself may not be a huge draw, it’s interesting to see how Crane’s motivations, and the agenda of his handlers, change over time.
Although it’s rewarding as a solely single-player experience, Dying Light’s story-based campaign supports up to four players working co-operatively, with the clever idea of salting in optional mini-competitions throughout. There’s even a mode that allows one player to take the role of a powerful zombie that invades other players’ games.
It’s tough to get excited by video game zombies these days, but by blending a detailed open world, cool parkour moves and a satisfyingly deep system for character and weapon customization, Dying Light has clawed out a novel space in this crowded genre. Long live the undead.
