Review In Progress:
I recently picked up Dying Light and have put about 5 hours of gameplay into it. I’m estimating the the single player campaign is around 20 hours long since I’m 25% completed with the campaign.
Graphics: 8/10. They resemble far cry 4’s detail and draw distance. Developers seemed to purposely wash away the color and contrast much of the time to give a bleak feeling. Details and gore up close when squaring off against zombies is sharp.
Story: 6/10. Keep in mind I’m only 25% through the story, but thus far it’s pretty average and quite linear. At the moment, I don’t really care that much about what’s happening or the characters.
Gameplay: 8/10. I’ve mostly enjoyed parkouring zombies in the face and jumping off of buildings or sliding into holes to escape chasing zombies. The level up system is broken down to survivor, agility and power. Survivor increases scavenging stats for constructing and building weapons & tools, agility increases speed, sprinting endurance and parkour stats and power increases toe to toe abilities. Each subsequent progression unlocks new abilities through a typical skill tree.
I’ve rarely felt scared, under tension or very pressed during the day. There was only once where I was on a bridge being chased by a “viral” with nowhere to go and ran out of stamina and could no longer sprint or move quickly. The virals are very agile and can climb and sprint as fast as you can without fatiguing. They’re previous parkour humans who have recently turned and haven’t yet lost their strength.
During the night is when shit goes down and if anyone has ever seen Omega Man or I am Legend with Will Smith, it’s the same exact feeling. When the sun goes down, your stop watch alarm goes off because you literally cannot see anything and the “volatile’s” come out.
Volatile’s are extremely hard to kill and the best option is almost always to run away and try to find safe houses, which are best to unlock during the day. Volatiles are only susceptible to UV light and flares will keep them back until they burn out, but you’ll still get attacked by the regular zombies.
At my current level of progession, when my alarm goes off indicating the sun is going down, I immediately head to the closest safe house because moving at night is so difficult without being seen and once seen by the volatiles, so far I’ve had about a 50% failure rate because it’s just so dark. Even using your UV flashlight, flares or fireworks, you still then have the regular zombies that start to swarm you.
Overall: 7.5/10 at 25% completion and with 0% multiplayer so far.
