Mirror's Edge with zombies
The parkour was as good as advertised though, or at least once I got some upgrades. I was switching between Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and Dying Light before fully focusing on the latter. Jumping from Dishonored to this game was quite jarring. In Dishonored you're so light and quick. You strafe the same speed as you go forward. Hell, you can even sprint backwards.
The Dishonored games also have the weird thing how mantling on an obstacle magically negates fall damage no matter the height you dropped. The feature remains even in Death of the Outsider. In Dying Light you can fall into a mantle too but you do take damage. Mantling is slower as well -- or at least in the beginning, again. Dying Light is more realistic in many ways.
You get a nice sense of progression from the skill system as you go through the game. You gain Agility experience from simply doing different movement actions. By unlocking perks you learn more tricks and generally become faster at everything. Eventually you no longer run out of stamina either. I particularly liked being able to do a rolling landing to prevent fall damage (from a reasonable height) -- I wish Dishonored had that feature too.
There's an oddity skill perk in Survivor skill tree: a grappling hook. I thought it was going to be like the MAG Rope in Mirror's Edge Catalyst, something that (or rather the lack of it) is just used to block off areas in the game. But no. Instead it's like the physics defying grappling hook in the Just Cause series. I don't think it belongs in Dying Light -- it makes parkour obsolete. Why run and climb when you can throw the hook and fly through the air.
Neither does the game seem to know what it thinks of the grappling hook. In story missions you generally can't use it for whatever reason. You're either "exhausted" or the hook doesn't attach to anything like at a certain radio tower. It creates a dissonance between the open world adventure and the story. It's like they're two different games.
The story is terrible too. It's so incredibly predictable and cliche. The moment I saw the pretty Jade at the start I knew where things were going.
Kyle Crane, the protagonist, is infiltrating a Turkish city called Harran that has been quarantined due to a zombie virus outbreak. Kyle's mission is to acquire a sensitive file off a local bad guy for Global Relief Effort. Kyle's GRE handler comes off so cold that she telegraphs miles away the GRE might not exactly be the good guys either. And soon enough Kyle more or less abandons his mission to join the survivors and Jade.
I loathed the story boss fights. You're never allowed to use your own, upgraded weapons. Again the story is separated from the open world part of the game. The final boss then crowns the whole thing by being an asinine quick-time event.
Sometimes you have to fight human enemies with guns, mostly in the story bits. The best way tends to be using a gun yourself. There's nothing special about the shooting but at least it's nothing like in Mirror's Edge in which Faith is just terrible with guns. Dying Light also rewards for accuracy by making human enemies drop from one headshot.
Most zombies die to a headshot too but it's not worthwhile to shoot them. There are so many of them and ammunition is scarce. The sound tends to attract faster, runner type zombies as well. On normal difficulty they're not too bad however and I'd say it's totally worth it to pull out your rifle when you need to kill one of the large, rebar hammer wielding zombies. Their attacks knock you down and Kyle takes so long to get back up that I got tired of trying to hack them with a melee weapon. Rifles' stated damage value were considerably lower than melee weapons' but I guess they have a hidden headshot multiplier because the big zombies died to two or three bullets.
At night Harran becomes much more dangerous and using guns is generally a bad idea. Volatile zombies crawl out of their holes to roam the streets. They're really fast movers and kill you awfully quick as well. They're almost a certain death when you don't yet have Agility perks, the grappling hook, or high damage weapons to kill them. They remain dangerous even in late game but it is possible to dispatch them in melee. A shotgun blast is a one-shot kill but of course then attracts more volatiles to you.
I enjoyed hacking zombies even with eventually breaking weapons. The fun disappeared when the game's enemy level scaling made its presence known. I could no longer bonk a common zombie dead with a single hit. My weapons were breaking slower than I was gaining levels and had to jump over a few upgrades to keep up with the level scaling. Zombie killing becomes such a chore the moment they no longer die easily.
Dying Light uses Techland's own propriety engine and handles the detailed maps and zombie hordes amazingly well. I always marveled how after finishing a parkour challenge the game ports you across half the city back to the start without a loading screen. The difference between Dying Light and something like Just Cause 3 is huge in that regard.
The Following expansion takes you to Harran's countryside and adds driving as a gameplay element. The car you get is a buggy and thus somewhat open so it's not quite as claustrophobic as when entering a car in Far Cry 3 for instance. Driving in first person still isn't great though. They could've made the game go into third person while in a vehicle like in the Borderlands games.
The expansion's story isn't as dislikable as the main game's, although it isn't particularly engaging either. I got tired of driving across the map after objectives and didn't bother doing everything there was. Your driving capabilities are also gated by the new Driver skill tree and car upgrades. You get to experience the feeling of being too slow again. I found it much safer to get out of the car and grappling-hook my way to safety rather than try to out-drive volatiles.
Some community event hit the game towards the end of my playthrough. It removed falling damage and cooldown from the grappling hook, and made kicks to have much more force. Kind of a weird thing to have; maybe they should make such events opt-in rather than be always on.
Chris Avellone announced a sequel, Dying Light 2, at last year's E3. He's been working as the game's narrative designer and I hope he's able to give it a better story. From what I've seen so far, that might very well be the case.
Neither does the game seem to know what it thinks of the grappling hook. In story missions you generally can't use it for whatever reason. You're either "exhausted" or the hook doesn't attach to anything like at a certain radio tower. It creates a dissonance between the open world adventure and the story. It's like they're two different games.
Uninspired writing
The story is terrible too. It's so incredibly predictable and cliche. The moment I saw the pretty Jade at the start I knew where things were going.
I loathed the story boss fights. You're never allowed to use your own, upgraded weapons. Again the story is separated from the open world part of the game. The final boss then crowns the whole thing by being an asinine quick-time event.
Mostly satisfactory combat
Sometimes you have to fight human enemies with guns, mostly in the story bits. The best way tends to be using a gun yourself. There's nothing special about the shooting but at least it's nothing like in Mirror's Edge in which Faith is just terrible with guns. Dying Light also rewards for accuracy by making human enemies drop from one headshot.
At night Harran becomes much more dangerous and using guns is generally a bad idea. Volatile zombies crawl out of their holes to roam the streets. They're really fast movers and kill you awfully quick as well. They're almost a certain death when you don't yet have Agility perks, the grappling hook, or high damage weapons to kill them. They remain dangerous even in late game but it is possible to dispatch them in melee. A shotgun blast is a one-shot kill but of course then attracts more volatiles to you.
I enjoyed hacking zombies even with eventually breaking weapons. The fun disappeared when the game's enemy level scaling made its presence known. I could no longer bonk a common zombie dead with a single hit. My weapons were breaking slower than I was gaining levels and had to jump over a few upgrades to keep up with the level scaling. Zombie killing becomes such a chore the moment they no longer die easily.
Not the worst expansion
The Following expansion takes you to Harran's countryside and adds driving as a gameplay element. The car you get is a buggy and thus somewhat open so it's not quite as claustrophobic as when entering a car in Far Cry 3 for instance. Driving in first person still isn't great though. They could've made the game go into third person while in a vehicle like in the Borderlands games.
Some community event hit the game towards the end of my playthrough. It removed falling damage and cooldown from the grappling hook, and made kicks to have much more force. Kind of a weird thing to have; maybe they should make such events opt-in rather than be always on.
Chris Avellone announced a sequel, Dying Light 2, at last year's E3. He's been working as the game's narrative designer and I hope he's able to give it a better story. From what I've seen so far, that might very well be the case.
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