Dying Light has been one of those most anticipated titles for 2015 and the time has come to see if Techland could hit another home-run in the zombie outbreak genre of video games. This time it not only builds off a formula that they set up but adds in the mix of parkour and a day/night cycle aiming to make Dying Light a truly horrifying, exciting, and story driven title that we all will want to play for days and nights to come. Did they hit the mark again or does Dying Light just keep the genre shuffling on? Here's my review of Dying Light.

Story

An outbreak has occurred in the fictional land of Harran and it has left the major city kind of ravished and overrun with zombies. In traditional actions the governments have sealed off the city and left everyone not dead and turned into a zombie to fend for themselves. You start off with a small group whom seems to have worked things out and created what they call The Tower and you are a secret agent smuggled in to usurp the powers that be and report back to your puppet masters what is going on. You know, because drones, rescuing people, and normal research would not make for a fun game in Dying Light.

Hated

I was going to start this off with a major gripe I thought I had with the parkour/free movement mechanics in Dying Light. At first they seemed clunky and very poorly implemented. Then I thought back and realized that wasn't the issue. The issue was that you can't remap the controller scheme to better fit with how one normally plays. For instance the jump button is always a trigger or bumper and to run is always a thumb stick press; at least for the consoles. This just did not allow for as much free flow when actually in use. This has worked in other games like Mirror's Edge but there is so much more going on in Dying Light that it really breaks the gameplay flow. At least id did for me.

Another major issue I found with Dying Light is that the dynamic day/night cycle was not as dynamic as shown or described. It should really be said that the dynamic day/night cycle is perfect when story missions don't need to alter reality and force a day/night switch because Techland said so. Not as catchy but none the less true. There were many times when playing Dying Light that when free roaming the day and night cycles felt real for the game world. Like I was able to run from one side of the map and back without the sun setting at all. Then I went into a story mission, starting at dawn, and made it to the mission location and then magically it was night because the mission needed to have the Nightmares. How is that truly dynamic? It wasn't at least when it came to random story missions.

Loved

I hate comparing games to other games but Dying Light is more fun than Dead Island and builds upon the great formula that Techland set up there. Pretty much take everything awesome about the zombie killing, weapon crafting, and story for Dead Island and make it all about 10 times better and you have Dying Light. In fact one of the issues I had before with the prior title was that there was little interest to play that game from start to end and would just go off to my own devices. Dying Light actually kept the story and side missions fun and captivating so I never felt bored and looking to just move on. This is not usually the case for these kinds of games and this made the loved list for a reason.

Building off of that and it may sound like a drawback but Dying Light wasn't much of a horror game in the traditional way that zombie games generally are. Dying Light is more of a thriller and suspenseful title in ways of horror than just jump scares and loud noises. Think more along the lines of The Walking Dead with more zombie killing. The zombies are just there to get the heart pumping and wanting to keep moving through Harran than waiting for one to pounce from around a corner. Hopefully all of that makes sense to you as this is the best way to describe the themes and tone I found in Dying Light outside of what most would think to be the case.

Lastly, the parkour is really amazing and does add some great mechanics into the game here. Once in the groove of the running and jumping it feels worlds more natural and allows you to actually try and play the game as you might do if you were really in the game and had the skills of the main character. It always bothered me in other games that you couldn't climb up a level where zombies couldn't reach and slowly kill them instead of wading through and spraying and praying. This goes back to almost all zombie games in the past and I love it. Dying Light really does let you play a zombie game as you would really want to all while keeping you on task and wanting to following through with everything in the game.

Overall

Even though the controls on the consoles are quite a bit difficult to master or to that matter generally nailed down well Dying Light is a fun game. To be honest if both of my above gripes would get patched out I'd already place Dying Light in my top games for 2015 and we just started the year. I totally recommend picking the game up and setting aside some good time to play through the game. This is just the single player on top of that. There is the whole multiplayer and Be The Zombie mode to keep you entertained when not wanting to play the game proper. There is so much to do and Dying Light is insanely fun once you get past the slight issues mentioned above.

I give Dying Light 987 broken teeth on the zombies eating rock candy scale.

Dying Light was developed by Techland and published by Warner Bros. for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Dying Light was released on January 27^th, 2015. A PS4 copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.