Mister_Prophet plays Dying Light

[Mister_Prophet]

Hello citizens.

Some of you may remember some time back I made a promise to post more new game impressions since I get to rent new stuff from my day job. I kinda fell off of that since I didn't know how interested you guys were. But now I've got a PS4 so I can actually record gameplay and upload it. Showing is sometimes more than telling.

I also made a thread some years back when Dead Island came out. I re-read the old thread and saw that I was somewhat favorable of the game, but in reality I ended up not playing it too long. It was fun in COOP but some aspects of the game and story didn't keep my interest and I moved on to other games. I also found some of the gameplay mechanics tedious.

So those guys, Techland, made Dying Light. It's essentially Dead Island with Parkour, a more interesting to explore game world, and a complete refinement of all the gameplay things I disliked in Dead Island. There's a night/day cycle that kind of dictates the pace of your exploration. At day, typical shambling corpses and special zombies. At night, mutated cretins from the dark holes in the Earth pop out attack the nearest living thing they see and rip it to shreds. They are sensitive to light, so if you stand a chance you and your buddies need to toss UV flares and flash UV bulbs, Pitch Black style, to keep them at bay. The benefit of staying out at night is all experience you earn for level-ups is doubled.

Main thing I like about the game is the interactivity with the environment. You can climb, mount and touch most every surface you see, and there are a ton of traps and craftable gadgets you can make to enhance you ability to dismantle the undead. There is still a heavy emphasis on melee combat, which is always twitchy in first person, and Techland still covets their Chad Chaddington protagonists. But overall, good game for you guys that have next gen console or PC.

Some vids I made of my exploits with friends on PS4. Video 2 shows some of the nighttime stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNnj4qwbzE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7130GRgar0

[Semfry]

This thread's a little old but I thought I'd add to it now I've played the game.

Given I'm getting sick of the typical open-world AAA formula this was a pleasant surprise for me; I was already intrigued when it was obvious Mirror's Edge was an inspiration for the navigation mechanics, but it worked better than I expected. Dead Island was heavily flawed and fell apart towards the end, but a few parts of it really resonated with me; namely the second chapter in the town which felt like a true survival experience of working through overwhelming odds with what little you had. Dying Light feels like an attempt to transpose that over a whole game, and it generally works, even if your improved capabilities make it easier (but also much less janky) than that section of DI. It kind of reminds me of Red Dead Redemption (one of the only other open-world games to transcend the formula for me), in that the standard cliches of the genre are mostly leveraged as part of the game rather than just being added because that's what open-world games do. For instance, with the movement mechanics, the "run to the icon on the other side of the map" design actually feels like a innate part of playing the game rather than open-world dumbing down/filler, as there's always the drive to do it as efficiently as possible, and plenty of ways to screw that up (or optimise further).

I also like how all the side-quests have actual narratives to them and frequently visible effects on the world when they're done, even if they're mostly subtle, like seeing people you've helped in safe places. Even the grindy challenge missions have some sort of resolution when you finish them. It's also one of the few modern AAA games to get an upgrade system right rather than just tacking it on; you start off a bit weak but the vast majority of upgrades have a very noticeable effect, and right up until I was almost maxed (which requires some effort to do) I had to keep choosing between multiple abilities that sounded very enticing, and wasn't just picking options because there was nothing better.

I was also surprised how much I liked the main character as things went on; in the end I found Crane to have enough personality to transcend how generic he seemed at first, though I felt the initial concept of multiple conflicting loyalties got dropped a bit too fast. I also have no idea if the villain was supposed to be taken seriously or not, because half the interactions with him seem to involve the main character telling him he's full of shit, but then the other half seems to try and make him a legitimate threat, and the implementation feels a bit confused. On that note the main story is surprisingly brisk by open-world standards, and the amount of missions is relatively low but most involve substantial content, rather than endless filler missions that most open-worlds go with. It also stays away from instanced content (one of the biggest things I dislike in current open-worlds, as it removes the whole point of having one in the first place) when it can, and when it does it's confined to buildings and other places where it's somewhat logical; outside of that the world functions the same during missions as it does elsewhere.

The day-night mechanic is nice too, although removing the XP penalty for death at night is weird, and actually sort of makes it safer when you know what you're doing (especially when you realise that the Volatiles are pretty blind). I'm still not sure what to think of the multiplayer invasions; I think they're a bit disruptive rather than being smooth Souls-esque ones, but as the game went on I started to learn more tactics and gained a certain appreciation for them; I mostly won easily, but in the endgame I came across one or two invaders who kicked my ass, so I guess more knowledgeable players are capable of keeping up with late-game Human players.

It felt like there were too many attacks that had a "shit on the screen" effect which got obnoxious at times, and also a few too many random instant kills and similar (to that point that towards the end most of my deaths came from random explosions and similar, some of which I still have no idea of the origin of), and fuck the suicide bomber things. The weapon damage scaling also felt a bit extreme; at the start I could slice a Zombie in the head ten times and have it still get back up, then at the end I could one-shot everything short of a miniboss. I did play on hard which may have affected some of this, but from what I've heard most of it applies normally too. Also a QTE final boss fight when there are no others in the game, and actual boss fights earlier? FFS. Those were the only major issues I had though, outside the weird respawn system that's obviously balanced for co-op. Finally the free developer support is nice, and just as I finished an upgrade came out with some content and multiplayer changes and a new weapon tier, and that's on top of it having mod support, which is all motivation for me to revisit it later (which I normally never do with open-world games).

[Mister_Prophet]

I'm glad you gave it a go. Sounds like your reaction was a lot like mine, as in I expected one thing and was pleasantly surprised to get another. I would have continued playing but my COOP crew (I have only played the game this way) disbanded and started playing other games. I should go back to it seeing as I did not complete the game.

Speaking of which, are you actively in position of a PS4 now? Hit me up with a private message if you wanna play some games.,

[Semfry]

Speaking of which, are you actively in position of a PS4 now? Hit me up with a private message if you wanna play some games.

No, I'm on PC. I do plan on getting a PS4 around Christmas though.