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When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth. And by earth, I mean that they'll turn up in every third video game released. I'm a zombie fan myself, but even I have to admit things are getting a little over-saturated. And now we have Dying Light, the new zombie game from Techland, the makers of Dead Island. Though not Dead Island 2, which is being produced by another group of programmers. Confusing, eh?
Fortunately, Dying Light is, for the most part, pretty straight foward. There's none of this Silent Hill/Limbo style 'What the heck was all that about?' stuff about. The game is best described as Mirror's Edge meets Dawn of the Dead, with a whole load of open word gameplay thrown in for good measure. The game casts you as a guy called Crane who is tasked with entering a quarantined zombie-filled city to retrieve information about a possible cure for the zombie plague.
Not that any of that really matters, since Dying Light's plot is pretty thin on the ground. It's also fairly predictable. For example the people you, as Crane, are working for sound particularly dodgy, despite being the 'good guys', and so are almost certainly going to turn out to be evil. The plot is also faintly xenophobic, casting you as a 'mighty whitey' - a stereotype particular present in colonial era fiction - being the only person who can sort out the locals problems. Those same locals being almost entirely incompetent.
What this really means is that, after a very short opening section, you get to tool around a small city - a second map unlocks later - undertaking various missions. You might noticed I didn't say 'kicking zombie bottom' since the zombies are background detail for much of the game. True, they can mess you up if you get cornered, but they're not present in huge volumes, so you'll probably encounter ten or so at a time at most.
Granted, that might sound like a lot, but the Dead Rising series give you hordes to content with. Plus, you can take to the rooftops which is the coolest part of the game. Your character is a bit of a parkour expert - that's French for clambering over walls without breaking your neck - and will leap and grab onto most of the objects/ledges in the game. The system actually works better than Mirror's Edge own system, although very occasionally your character will fail to grab onto poles or ledges that you'd expect him to be able to latch on to.
You can upgrade your character's abilities, which also gives you the ability to more or less one-shot kill zombies at later points in the game. But in Dying Light, the real threat comes from the humans and the super zombies. The former turn up as the game progresses, and despite not being undead can be harder to kill.
The latter show up during the game's night sections - the game has a day/night cycle, night cropping up every thirty minutes or so. These super-zombies have a Metal Gear Solid style cone of vision and they will mess you up should they get hold of you, so sneaking around becomes the order of the day, er, night. The catch here is that the regular zombies are also still around so it can get very though to survive. Even the guns you get later on in the game won't save you.
All of which sounds cool, and there's no denying that Dying Light is a fun game. But it is far from perfect. I've already mentioned that the plot is a bit rubbish, but the missions themselves can also get a bit samey at times. It feels like the missions have been padded out to increase the game's running time, which has been clocked at around fifteen hours or so. And while the graphics are overall pretty good - you can see quite far in the game - the zombies themselves are a bit similar. It's not unusual to see three identical zombies standing near each other, wearing the same clothes.
So is it worth buying? If you're a zombie fan, then yes, it's worth snapping up. Similarly, if you enjoyed Mirror's Edge, then the parkour aspect is great. But if you're just a general action gamer, then you might want to wait for the price to drop to below thirty quid on the consoles or below twenty quid on the PC. It's not perfect, but it is a lot of fun.
Pros:
The parkour moves work really well.
It is fun to play.
You have the freedom to wander around the city at will.
Cons:
The storyline's a bit boring.
As are some of the missions.
Fortunately, Dying Light is, for the most part, pretty straight foward. There's none of this Silent Hill/Limbo style 'What the heck was all that about?' stuff about. The game is best described as Mirror's Edge meets Dawn of the Dead, with a whole load of open word gameplay thrown in for good measure. The game casts you as a guy called Crane who is tasked with entering a quarantined zombie-filled city to retrieve information about a possible cure for the zombie plague.
Not that any of that really matters, since Dying Light's plot is pretty thin on the ground. It's also fairly predictable. For example the people you, as Crane, are working for sound particularly dodgy, despite being the 'good guys', and so are almost certainly going to turn out to be evil. The plot is also faintly xenophobic, casting you as a 'mighty whitey' - a stereotype particular present in colonial era fiction - being the only person who can sort out the locals problems. Those same locals being almost entirely incompetent.
What this really means is that, after a very short opening section, you get to tool around a small city - a second map unlocks later - undertaking various missions. You might noticed I didn't say 'kicking zombie bottom' since the zombies are background detail for much of the game. True, they can mess you up if you get cornered, but they're not present in huge volumes, so you'll probably encounter ten or so at a time at most.
Granted, that might sound like a lot, but the Dead Rising series give you hordes to content with. Plus, you can take to the rooftops which is the coolest part of the game. Your character is a bit of a parkour expert - that's French for clambering over walls without breaking your neck - and will leap and grab onto most of the objects/ledges in the game. The system actually works better than Mirror's Edge own system, although very occasionally your character will fail to grab onto poles or ledges that you'd expect him to be able to latch on to.
You can upgrade your character's abilities, which also gives you the ability to more or less one-shot kill zombies at later points in the game. But in Dying Light, the real threat comes from the humans and the super zombies. The former turn up as the game progresses, and despite not being undead can be harder to kill.
The latter show up during the game's night sections - the game has a day/night cycle, night cropping up every thirty minutes or so. These super-zombies have a Metal Gear Solid style cone of vision and they will mess you up should they get hold of you, so sneaking around becomes the order of the day, er, night. The catch here is that the regular zombies are also still around so it can get very though to survive. Even the guns you get later on in the game won't save you.
All of which sounds cool, and there's no denying that Dying Light is a fun game. But it is far from perfect. I've already mentioned that the plot is a bit rubbish, but the missions themselves can also get a bit samey at times. It feels like the missions have been padded out to increase the game's running time, which has been clocked at around fifteen hours or so. And while the graphics are overall pretty good - you can see quite far in the game - the zombies themselves are a bit similar. It's not unusual to see three identical zombies standing near each other, wearing the same clothes.
So is it worth buying? If you're a zombie fan, then yes, it's worth snapping up. Similarly, if you enjoyed Mirror's Edge, then the parkour aspect is great. But if you're just a general action gamer, then you might want to wait for the price to drop to below thirty quid on the consoles or below twenty quid on the PC. It's not perfect, but it is a lot of fun.
Pros:
The parkour moves work really well.
It is fun to play.
You have the freedom to wander around the city at will.
Cons:
The storyline's a bit boring.
As are some of the missions.
PS4. It's one of the few games I actually paid PSN's exhorbitant price for, rather than waiting till it dropped. Maybe it wasn't so obvious in Dead Island because you figured everyone would be wearing trunks or a hawaian shirt, but it's more obvious here.
Nice review.
What format are you playing on? I have it on PC, and honestly, in the first mission I faced off against at least 30 zombies milling around a couple of cars, with more turning up the more noise I made.
Admittedly, many of them appear to be siblings that share the same wardrobe, but then, that's much the same as in Dead island.
What format are you playing on? I have it on PC, and honestly, in the first mission I faced off against at least 30 zombies milling around a couple of cars, with more turning up the more noise I made.
Admittedly, many of them appear to be siblings that share the same wardrobe, but then, that's much the same as in Dead island.
When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth. And by earth, I mean that they'll turn up in every third video game released. I'm a zombie fan myself, but even I have to admit things are getting a little over-saturated. And now we have Dying Light, the new zombie game from Techland, the makers of Dead Island. Though not Dead Island 2, which is being produced by another group of programmers. Confusing, eh?
Fortunately, Dying Light is, for the most part, pretty straight foward. There's none of this Silent Hill/Limbo style 'What the heck was all that about?' stuff about. The game is best described as Mirror's Edge meets Dawn of the Dead, with a whole load of open word gameplay thrown in for good measure. The game casts you as a guy called Crane who is tasked with entering a quarantined zombie-filled city to retrieve information about a possible cure for the zombie plague.
Not that any of that really matters, since Dying Light's plot is pretty thin on the ground. It's also fairly predictable. For example the people you, as Crane, are working for sound particularly dodgy, despite being the 'good guys', and so are almost certainly going to turn out to be evil. The plot is also faintly xenophobic, casting you as a 'mighty whitey' - a stereotype particular present in colonial era fiction - being the only person who can sort out the locals problems. Those same locals being almost entirely incompetent.
What this really means is that, after a very short opening section, you get to tool around a small city - a second map unlocks later - undertaking various missions. You might noticed I didn't say 'kicking zombie bottom' since the zombies are background detail for much of the game. True, they can mess you up if you get cornered, but they're not present in huge volumes, so you'll probably encounter ten or so at a time at most.
Granted, that might sound like a lot, but the Dead Rising series give you hordes to content with. Plus, you can take to the rooftops which is the coolest part of the game. Your character is a bit of a parkour expert - that's French for clambering over walls without breaking your neck - and will leap and grab onto most of the objects/ledges in the game. The system actually works better than Mirror's Edge own system, although very occasionally your character will fail to grab onto poles or ledges that you'd expect him to be able to latch on to.
You can upgrade your character's abilities, which also gives you the ability to more or less one-shot kill zombies at later points in the game. But in Dying Light, the real threat comes from the humans and the super zombies. The former turn up as the game progresses, and despite not being undead can be harder to kill.
The latter show up during the game's night sections - the game has a day/night cycle, night cropping up every thirty minutes or so. These super-zombies have a Metal Gear Solid style cone of vision and they will mess you up should they get hold of you, so sneaking around becomes the order of the day, er, night. The catch here is that the regular zombies are also still around so it can get very though to survive. Even the guns you get later on in the game won't save you.
All of which sounds cool, and there's no denying that Dying Light is a fun game. But it is far from perfect. I've already mentioned that the plot is a bit rubbish, but the missions themselves can also get a bit samey at times. It feels like the missions have been padded out to increase the game's running time, which has been clocked at around fifteen hours or so. And while the graphics are overall pretty good - you can see quite far in the game - the zombies themselves are a bit similar. It's not unusual to see three identical zombies standing near each other, wearing the same clothes.
So is it worth buying? If you're a zombie fan, then yes, it's worth snapping up. Similarly, if you enjoyed Mirror's Edge, then the parkour aspect is great. But if you're just a general action gamer, then you might want to wait for the price to drop to below thirty quid on the consoles or below twenty quid on the PC. It's not perfect, but it is a lot of fun.
Pros:
The parkour moves work really well.
It is fun to play.
You have the freedom to wander around the city at will.
Cons:
The storyline's a bit boring.
As are some of the missions.
Fortunately, Dying Light is, for the most part, pretty straight foward. There's none of this Silent Hill/Limbo style 'What the heck was all that about?' stuff about. The game is best described as Mirror's Edge meets Dawn of the Dead, with a whole load of open word gameplay thrown in for good measure. The game casts you as a guy called Crane who is tasked with entering a quarantined zombie-filled city to retrieve information about a possible cure for the zombie plague.
Not that any of that really matters, since Dying Light's plot is pretty thin on the ground. It's also fairly predictable. For example the people you, as Crane, are working for sound particularly dodgy, despite being the 'good guys', and so are almost certainly going to turn out to be evil. The plot is also faintly xenophobic, casting you as a 'mighty whitey' - a stereotype particular present in colonial era fiction - being the only person who can sort out the locals problems. Those same locals being almost entirely incompetent.
What this really means is that, after a very short opening section, you get to tool around a small city - a second map unlocks later - undertaking various missions. You might noticed I didn't say 'kicking zombie bottom' since the zombies are background detail for much of the game. True, they can mess you up if you get cornered, but they're not present in huge volumes, so you'll probably encounter ten or so at a time at most.
Granted, that might sound like a lot, but the Dead Rising series give you hordes to content with. Plus, you can take to the rooftops which is the coolest part of the game. Your character is a bit of a parkour expert - that's French for clambering over walls without breaking your neck - and will leap and grab onto most of the objects/ledges in the game. The system actually works better than Mirror's Edge own system, although very occasionally your character will fail to grab onto poles or ledges that you'd expect him to be able to latch on to.
You can upgrade your character's abilities, which also gives you the ability to more or less one-shot kill zombies at later points in the game. But in Dying Light, the real threat comes from the humans and the super zombies. The former turn up as the game progresses, and despite not being undead can be harder to kill.
The latter show up during the game's night sections - the game has a day/night cycle, night cropping up every thirty minutes or so. These super-zombies have a Metal Gear Solid style cone of vision and they will mess you up should they get hold of you, so sneaking around becomes the order of the day, er, night. The catch here is that the regular zombies are also still around so it can get very though to survive. Even the guns you get later on in the game won't save you.
All of which sounds cool, and there's no denying that Dying Light is a fun game. But it is far from perfect. I've already mentioned that the plot is a bit rubbish, but the missions themselves can also get a bit samey at times. It feels like the missions have been padded out to increase the game's running time, which has been clocked at around fifteen hours or so. And while the graphics are overall pretty good - you can see quite far in the game - the zombies themselves are a bit similar. It's not unusual to see three identical zombies standing near each other, wearing the same clothes.
So is it worth buying? If you're a zombie fan, then yes, it's worth snapping up. Similarly, if you enjoyed Mirror's Edge, then the parkour aspect is great. But if you're just a general action gamer, then you might want to wait for the price to drop to below thirty quid on the consoles or below twenty quid on the PC. It's not perfect, but it is a lot of fun.
Pros:
The parkour moves work really well.
It is fun to play.
You have the freedom to wander around the city at will.
Cons:
The storyline's a bit boring.
As are some of the missions.