A few years ago Vampires were in, but Zombies are all the rage right now. Every where you turn there is a new book, movie or comic about zombies. I have followed Polish developers Techland and their latest zombie game since before E3 last year. I was super pumped to hear the makers of the Dead Island series would be back. I enjoyed Dead Island to 100% completion and was excited to see the next game they came up with. I got a chance to play a demo at E3 last year and was hooked.
The game is set in an open world environment. This allows you to have some what of a free play style while you travel around completing missions. The inital getting use to the controls can take some time as there are quite a few “parkour” skills to learn, but there is a detailed tutorial to get you through it. There is a very heavy melee style combat system. You can loot or create lots of items and you will see first hand lots of gore zombie crunching details. If you’ve played the Dead Island series you understand pretty much the environment. Techland in the previous Dead Island serious tended to have… well.. some bug. Things wouldn’t load quite right or you could get stuck in areas. Over all they were not things that mattered because the story and game play was over all good. Dying light has similar issue. You also understand that with a world of this size and nature, sometimes things can be well, glitchy. You can quickly over look that when a group of zombie swarm at you in ways that make your skin crawl. Dying Light is a dark and serious drama with a compelling story that wraps you in pretty quick. This is not Shaun of the Dead by any stretch. If you can look past these you will be given an amazing entry into a world of zombie and the undying. There is SO much tension put into this game! It makes it a lot more horror filled that others in the genre. It really gets to you when you are playing at night and the zombies are.. ‘just behind you”.
The battle sequences are truly enjoyable! When you first start out the melee and stamina system will take a bit to take down a zombie. With time, leveling and crafting better weapons, you will become a force to be reckoned with. But as promised, this is not just another zombie game. Dying Light lives up to its name with shambling hordes of the undead during the day – and fast super scary zombies at night. Basically don’t wonder around at night time.
The multiplayer on this game lacked… a lot of substance. I felt it was hard to use and hope that updates in the future make the game easier to play and use. DLC is coming and thats always great for the games being released today. I look forward to seeing where this franchise goes and what will become of the IP. Happy Zombie hunting!
Dying Light is available now from Amazon and available on several platforms
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