Dying Light is a surprisingly long game! In lieu of a timely review amidst a hectic week, I’ve decided to write a mess of words in response to the first half of the game. Ordinarily I’d quality check my writing to make sure it all flows together and makes sense, but I did none of that for this. That being said, check back for our review later this week – which surely will benefit from both better organization, some semblance of fact-checking, and actually having finished the game.
Dying Light exhibits a dynamic relationship between its systems and the player. Whether or not it swings your way is (sometimes quite literally) the difference between a swift execution and an intolerable mess.
If Dying Light were a language, it would undoubtable be some form of English – but vaguely unfamiliar and slightly uncomfortable. Operating under the guise of realism typically disposes of certain “videogame-y” caveats, which Dying Light doesn’t seem to acknowledge. Or, to put it differently, accepting Dying Light means coming to terms with some of its more insane contradictions. Parkour is a major part of the game, and falling too far down is a very real consequence – but it’s a penalty that can be mitigated entirely by landing in a blue trash pile or on top any available car. Similar to the (automated) Assassin’s Creed hay-dive, the world is basically yours as long as you land in the right place. Dying Light’s visual fidelity may imply that it takes place in a very real world, but it’s thoroughly a goal-oriented and heavily abstracted videogame.
Similarly, Dying Light’s cache of zombies are some of the most physically realistic specimens I’ve seen. Most of their time is spent idling in the middle of the street, but they absorb and deal with impact with remarkable fidelity. They’ll misstep and tumble over a railing, get tangled up together and collapse into a huge pile, and cascade off buildings with remarkable clumsiness. There’s a real sense of weight to everything about Dying Light. When you drop-kick a zombie in the chest they’ll fly into groups like a bowling ball. When a limb is severed it hits the ground with a satisfy thing thud. Part of the fun of combat is testing the fidelity of an in-game physics system and watching the results work in your favor. In this regard Dying Light feels like a comfortable medium between the floaty mash of an Unreal Engine 3 ragdoll demonstration and the plodding Euphoria physics that drove Grand Theft Auto IV and V.
Another positive, Dying Light has the darkest, blackest night of any game in recent memory. Games with day and night cycles typically reduce the latter to a blue-light Hollywood special, where visibility is barely hampered in the interest of actually seeing what’s ahead of you. Dying Light goes the other way, adapting principles of a stealth game and forcing the player to use their map safely and effectively. Use of the flashlight or noisy parkour antics will encourage pursuit by nighttime-exclusive Volatiles, who will typically rip the player to shreds if alerted.
Interestingly, there’s an entire metagame built around more risky night time player. The experience system that drives the combat and agility skill trees is doubled during night, and the length of time in which one evades an alerted Volatile earns points for the third and final Survival skill tree. It’s a tremendous risk/reward, and one that’s at its peak when a learned-player is instinctively running on rooftops and playing cat-and-mouse with Volatiles.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like the depth of Dying Light’s challenge is qualified to match the player’s progression. When I first started playing Dying Light there were mostly “normal” zombies, Biters, shuffling about the streets. With time came Runners (run fast and pursue relentlessly), Spitters (acid projectiles), Exploders (suicide bombers), and several varieties of thugs (monstrous but slow and powerful). As I keep playing it now seems like Runners are everywhere and its ruining any sensation of travel or exploration. I’m constantly harassed everywhere I go, and the once enjoyable parkour mechanics aren’t enough to successfully evade anything with reasonable accuracy.
The apparent solution seems to be crafting better (or at least more efficient) weapons, but I don’t find group-combat all that engaging. Sure, swinging around flaming knife-staff with poison capability or an electrified baseball bat is great for racking up experience points and sort of funny the first time around, but it’s boring to find and craft that stuff over and over. One-on-one battles with conscious humans make better use of Dying Light’s jump/dodge mechanic, and are much more satisfying. Ideally, with my Level 12 fitness skill tree being far more fleshed out than my Level 8 combat skill tree, running should (usually) be a viable option. Instead it feels like an aimless concession. It’s cool to do, but ultimately ineffective.
This was ultimately the problem that crippled Dying Light’s spiritual prequel, Dead Island. Toward the end of that game the balance between player and systems strongly started favoring the latter. I was no longer playing the game for enjoyment, but rather to push my way through it solely in the interest of writing a qualified review. I stopped doing sidesquests, I stopped looking around, and I ceased having fun. Abrupt difficulty spikes seemed groomed exclusively for cooperative play, and at one point in Dead Island it was impossible for me to progress without enlisting randoms online. It wasn’t a great time.
One particular aspect of Dead Island, significantly penalizing the player upon death, actually makes an appearance in Dying Light. When you die, you actually lose experience points for the Survival skill tree. The survival tree fuels abilities that are all but essential when moving through its systems. Any sort of death, whether it be an unplanned fall or accidental undead homicide, negs points to the tune of 2000 a pop. At Survival Level 10 I need 60000 or so for my next level, but and repeating deaths puts a huge dent in that progress. On one hand I love it when a game says fuck it and plays for keeps, but on the other, well, the focus-group-fueled, overly-controlled content of 2015 has made me soft.
Item durability, a statistic/attribute I typically loathe in games, actually comes out fairly well in Dying Light. Items you craft, either with consumable powerups or forged from loot-fueled blueprints, have a limited lifespan. While I hold my flame sickle precious, for example, I have to understand its use is finite. This sort of bums me out, but it also forces experimentation with new and different types of weapons. If I stuck to the same one or two weapon types I’d probably never learn about the joy slicing off appendages, or how effectively poison can control crowds.
It’s also important to recognize the glut of content Dying Light is prepared to offer. At 23 hours I’m only 46% of the way through the story, and I have more sidequests available than I know what to do with. Existing sidequests have felt every bit as fleshed out as the main game, with the concession that they often make use of existing geography (campaign quests, by comparison, tend to break out into their own one-off levels). I’ve stolen batteries from busses, discovered the horror of a mass suicide, helped a pyromaniac light gas lines, converse with men who think I’m a brainless sycophant, and aided in an imminent pregnancy that was really a company of drunks. There’s an incredible amount of content there, and while some of it is your usual open-world collectable filler, most appears to be hand crafted affairs.
To be continued!
