Dying Light is easy to underestimate, something about its art style seems off or maybe it's the Chrome Engine, I dunno. Sure, it came out in 2015 and it's by no means an ugly game, but it has the usual blemishes of an open world game like stretched textures in more hidden areas, you might fall through the map here and there or notice some floating plants occasionally. You know, Skyrim. I guess it comes with the genre, so you take it in stride. I recommend getting the Enhanced Edition, cos you'll be wanting to play The Following right after you finish the main game. A combined 70+ hours of quality zombie killing later, I gotta say, this thing is pretty special. It's an open world game with breakable melee weapons, an endless supply of zombies and guns that never jam. In a way, this is the best Far Cry game I've ever played. Techland has taken Ubisoft to school with a few key elements and it doubles down where it matters. It's all pretty simple stuff and yet it has enough personality to stand above similar games. The combination of parkour, melee fighting, FPS and driving a dune buggy in the expansion is a brilliant mix of fun. You upgrade your survival, agility and power skills, while the buggy has its own skill tree, though it is not sentient, so upgrade that as well. DL and The Following are separate games though, launched from the same menu, so you can't fast travel between the maps (like between the Slums and Old Town), but skill progression and stash are shared between them, which is neat. The slums of Harran and Old Town provide a nice contrast and variety, while The Following might as well be a full-fledged sequel. I made the mistake of playing them on story difficulty, so I bit through The Following a lot faster than I was expecting, roughly 17 hours. Why the rush? Well, I liked the characters, I liked the quests and I really liked helping people and I hate people. I got entirely fed up of looting and lock picking in the main game, so I focused on the stuff that motivates me the most, the story.
This might not make much sense, but Kyle Crane sounds like a fun work colleague who hates his job but is always professional. The voice work doesn't get enough praise, it's so crucial in making the protagonist feel personable. I honestly don't have much to criticise about the dialogue and the supporting cast doesn't fall far behind. His tone of voice just does it for me, I don't know what to tell you. It is so easy to tack on meaningless side quests in games like these and here when they do annoy you, Crane becomes the vessel that takes the brunt of your frustration and voices it, so the game introducing you to some pretty strange people with ridiculous requests felt like another day in Harran. Dying Light in 2022 just makes sense to me. Headlines in The Onion seem entirely plausible these days, there's a pandemic, hysteria, protests, war. Dying Light fits into my current state of mind perfectly, an actual zombie apocalypse wouldn't even surprise me at this point. The concerns of isolated community members felt entirely valid, people depending on runners for their basic needs. Problems that required immediate attention like lack of water, despite quests usually having no time constraints, compelled me to act. Dying Light keeps you on your toes, day or night. You have to get some drugs for people, coffee and cigarettes, people can't leave their homes, a lockdown on life and some with complete disregard for their own or the safety of others risk the safety of their entire communities. Feels somewhat familiar. The day and night are two very different experiences as well, you get twice as much XP during night runs, for one thing. Since I rarely went out at night, I never used a UV flashlight or a flare against a Volatile, cos when one saw me I just legged it and hoped for the best. Volatiles are the fiercest enemy in the game, who can pounce on you and rip you to shreds without much effort. Whoever has finished it on Nightmare, I tip my imaginary hat to you, sir.
I never played Dead Island and I don't have much experience with games where weapons break permanently, but it's a great mechanic. Life's fleeting, nothing lasts forever and while many devs yap about the realism in their games, Dying Light still keeps a wider audience in mind and that's why it's sitting comfortably at 95% by 226,000 people. That and the insane level of post-launch support that continues to this day. I'm glad I finally finished it on my third attempt, hence the total play time. Dying Light has got heart is what I'm trying to say in a very long-winded way, it might not be apparent from the get-go, but it's there.
