Straight away, it’s plain to see this is a more polished
experience than the studio’s usual output, although there
are still some telltale signs this is a Techland production.
Dying Light casts you as an agent for some sort of evil
corporation sent in to…Zzz. Sorry – I dozed off a little
there. Basically, a zombie outbreak has occurred in a
place and you get wade in and smash their heads in with
a variety of interesting and deadly weapons. As usual, the
story is the weakest aspect, full of monotone characters
and jarring tonal issues. One minute you’ll be taking a
quest from a man whose mother is made of cushions,
and the next you’ll be “calming down” screaming zombie
children by suffocating them with your hand. Really. None
of the characters are remotely believable and only serve
to act as quest givers – you’ll likely find yourself skipping
through the dialogue about a third into the game.
Luckily, once you come to terms with this reality, the
world and your interactions within it are enough to carry
it. Harran, the fictional shantytown where events take
place, is a ramshackle, poverty stricken playground of
pestilence and death – yet, somehow, it’s still strangely
beautiful, particularly as the sun sets at dusk. By day, the
world is filled with shambling zombies that you have
to cut through or evade; by night, more dangerous
predators appear. The whole tone shifts as darkness
falls – suddenly it’s time to run and hide. It’s essentially
a stealth game at this point, with even enemies’ vision
cones appearing on the map. You can survive out the
night, but your best bet is to make your way to the
nearest safehouse – which you have to liberate yourself
– guided only by the light of your torch.
Parkour is mapped to a shoulder button – a tap will
cause you to jump and another tap makes you grab a
ledge. Another button is used for sliding under things.
It’s simple, but it works. Complexity is later added when
you unlock wall running and the ability to absorb falling
damage with a roll triggered by a timed tap of the slide
button just before landing. That roll comes in very handy
later, especially when you unlock the grappling hook
and can zip around the map like Batman; these aren’t
predetermined points, you can grapple pretty much
wherever you want. The parkour requires just enough
input from you to make you feel like you’re good at it –
it’s very rare you’ll do something unintended.
Like the traversal, you unlock different combat
techniques as the game progresses, allowing you to
adapt to suit your weapons and playstyle. Each weapon
hits with convincing force: bladed weapons cut away
at body parts precisely where you strike and blunt
weapons break bones. You can also use the environment
to your advantage, throwing zombies into spike traps
or launching them at things with the best dropkick in
any game ever. Dropkicking zombies off roofs never
gets old. I once dropkicked a zombie’s head through
a car window – it was stupidly satisfying. The damage
modelling on the game’s enemies is the best I’ve seen,
too: a vertical strike with a broadsword will cut an enemy
down the middle, leaving their dissected body to slump
to the floor like a discarded banana peel.
The zombies also move around convincingly, with
traditional undead shuffling around in massive hordes
and the recently infected sprinting and climbing like the
infected in 28 Days Later – the nighttime zombies, which
look like Blade 2’s hybrid vampires, are more ferocious
still. Being zombies, though, these enemies are still prone
to error. They’ll often fall up a slight incline or lose their
footing on the edge of a rooftop, falling off and cracking
their head open on the concrete below – this never
stops being funny.
The human's aren't quite as satisfying to fight, with
the game transforming into a first-person shooter
when they're introduced. Aiming feels a bit stiff, but
the red mist of a perfect headshot makes up for the
effort expended lining one up. You can sometimes
draw zombies to fight the other survivors, but the main
missions are often sectioned off into specific enemy
types. Unfortunately, these encounters increase in
frequency during the second half.
Just when you think Dying Light has run out of surprises
the world opens up at the halfway point, giving you
access to a whole new section of the map. This area
sports higher buildings – and therefore higher stakes
– and is reminiscent of an Assassin’s Creed map. The
new area changes how you approach the parkour, and
will be a huge challenge if you haven’t yet unlocked the
grappling hook.
Dying Light shares a lot of DNA with the De