Dying Light

The Good
Dying Light is a zombie game played from a first-person perspective, with parkour and crafting elements blended in.

I felt that this game was very entertaining and fun to play not only by myself, but also online with friends. The combat system works pretty well, with the exception of a few miscues and annoyances. The weapons featured in the game range from water pipes to swords to hammers to machine guns. Weapons can also be crafted with various elements such as fire and electricity, and can be upgraded to cause some serious damage. Though it isn't exactly a fresh or new idea, it was fun anyway.

The graphics in the game are beautiful and zombie damage is pretty accurate for the most part, as well as environments being vast and well-designed. Lots of areas are rigged with traps that can be used to the player's advantage, nearly all obstacles can be climbed or scaled, and one could easily spend all day exploring the entirety of the map - including inside houses, sewers, cars, vans, rooftops, and so on. The only real fresh idea introduced in this game is the parkour/free-running element which really helped to navigate around the environment faster, easier, and safer.

As I said earlier, Dying Light is a fun game but it doesn't have a lot of substance to it...

The Bad
... Dying Light is what I call a cocktail of popular gaming titles; games of the past all consolidated into one game.

A lot of the gaming mechanics are things that we've already seen in previous games. Some examples include: weapon crafting which is similar to Dead Rising's style (i.e. finding cards/blueprints to craft weapons), the environment, while expansive and fittingly atmospheric, looks a bit too much like Dead Island, and every now and then it feels like I'm playing Left 4 Dead 2 rather than Dying Light. These similarities don't really take away from the gaming experience, but also offers virtually nothing new that horror gamers haven't seen.

Dying Light also features a bit of a lackluster story that actually isn't all that bad, but again its a story that seems pretty familiar with a typical love interest and an antagonist that terrorizes the survivors. The protagonist's voice acting is also a bit inconsistent, as some dialog sounds great while other bits sound unintentionally humorous.

Lastly, the game can seem quite unfair with thugs being overpowered - both defensively and offensively - and enemies such as spitters having precise aim which seems like it guarantees unpreventable damage to players.

The Bottom Line
Here's the thing: despite my negatives with this game, I really do enjoy Dying Light. It's a very entertaining game with the different combinations and upgrades for your weapons and the parkour is quite fun, however it's just one big concoction of previously successful horror games. The critic in me doesn't want to like this game, however the gamer in me has a blast with it which is what I think ultimately matters the most in the long run.