I'm continuing to enjoy Dying Light and it reminds me so much of what I liked about Dead Island (but better).

• Growing power through skills. The skill trees are generally good and I love that you level them up separately. You can definitely tell the value of some of the skills in how much better you become at different things when you learn to use the skills well. You can quickly go from bumbling pipe monkey to confident beheader in 4 hours or so.
• Big backpacks are nice. It's easy to store lots of stuff and the equipment is relatively easy to use/make. Unlimited storage for crafting is pretty much the best.
• Missions are sometimes long and creative. Not every mission is a simple fetch quest. Several side missions have layers, deception, good characters, etc. A few even change the environments in useful ways. I enjoy "making a difference" in the environment.
• Random events are usually a fun diversion between point A & B. Helping survivors, fighting bandits, picking drops. Generally very rewarding, too.
• Love the setting. I love the idea of a progressive, "Turkish" city as the backdrop, but not playing overtly with religion. Bold.
• The locomotion can be great. Especially with the grappling hook. As bumbling as you can feel early on, it really opens up as you and your character get better with the terrain. First person platforming is always hard and TL does a solid job with it here.
• Rewarding rewards. I'm rarely bummed with my rewards. Cash becomes less useful, but blueprints and mods/upgrades are pretty common and great. Always feels like you're making equipment progress. Some missions even give you better "common" gear, too.
• Strong voice acting, as well. As hokey as the content can be, the actors carry it well.

Needless to say, I'm very impressed and this is in my "Surprise of the Year" category, for sure. If you someone enjoyed Dead Island despite itself, Dying Light is an improvement in dozens of ways and well worth your dollar.

I have not bought Dying light yet. But besides some glitches I am reading about, I am getting a positive vibe.

I was surprised how much i liked it once i got into a groove with it. Only at the 2bd mission but i got really into it last night. Being outside at night, at least at this early stage, is a bit frightening.

the only thing holding me back from getting this is the first person aspect. all that shaky camera falling over bullshit is really getting on my nerves in Far Cry. Is it just as prevalent here?

I've been really impressed by the large majority of the content. I guess there have been loads of zombie type games, but I haven't played almost any of them. Coming into this though, has been amazing, the combat is really tactile and the movement stuff is really gratifying. I love the tech trees too, even small stuff like the shoving ability changes how you play. It has a really great sense of progression from having a table leg and running from all zombies to doing a 360 with a heavy axe and beheading 6 at once. I'm at 45% right now and the only problem with the game I've had is the scripted story missions sometimes. There's one where you have to escape and there are loads of dudes shooting at you and I must have died over 10 times just trying to figure out what to do. Really though, its a very well put together RPG with a nice mix of Romero/28 Days Later/ Left 4 Dead style zombies.

You're surprisingly thoughtfully designed.

I agree @scottg13. I'm really liking the game. I like how the game gives the player the choice of fighting the zombies, or just by running by them with parkour. I'm kind of sick of zombie games, but I've really enjoyed it so far.

I liked it at first too, but I've soured on it quite a bit as I've gotten further into the game. I think it's OK as long as you don't think about anything too hard. That works in the early game when all you're doing is smashing zombie skulls and the platforming isn't too taxing. As you play more and the game makes you do more and more advanced stuff however, there are a ton of small problems that get more and more annoying until they just sort of overwhelm the experience. To wit:

1. You can platform up just fine, but going down is a major chore. First of all, it's stupid that you can't climb back down anything, but are instead forced to do this sort of controlled fall thing that usually forces you to take at least a little damage.

This is exacerbated by the fact that the level design frequently doesn't give you quick ways of descending. Most of the really tall points with the flags on them provide no means of getting back down quickly - all of the ziplines/trash piles must be reached from several levels down. Your only recourse is to fall to the lower level, hope that doesn't kill you, and then descent the way they want you to.

Also, the fast descent methods themselves do not always work. The zip lines frequently do not provide a button prompt unless your cursor is on the exact pixel the game wants it to be on. The trash piles also seem to work inconsistently. Sometimes they break your fall, sometimes you jump into them and die. This inconsistency has caused me to stop using them entirely and just look for other ways down.

2. The combat is really fun at the beginning until you realize there is zero reason to craft due to both the way the weapons you find magically get more and more powerful as well as weapon degradation making your add-ons useless after a time. Overall, I though the weapon degradation stuff was handled really poorly. I don't have a problem with the concept, but I don't see the point of giving me a limited number of repairs. It's just sort of a useless system. The amount of time it takes to repair is negligible and usually puts you at a negligible risk even when in combat. All it serves to do is stop the gameplay flow, which is never a good thing.

It would have been simpler to just make the weapon last three times longer. I feel it also would have been better had there been some sort of "professional repair" option that allowed you to keep weapons more permanently, and make that the only way to repair weapons. Then you would have had to balance the wisdom of using your "favorite" weapon in a pinch at the risk of destroying it entirely, versus saving your better weapons at the risk of being less effective in combat.

3. I agree that the voice acting is actually pretty good, but its too bad there isn't much of a story to back it up. Unfortunately, the plot relies on all the characters acting in the DUMBEST manner humanly possible. For example:

• I was given a quest to pick out some super-powerful UV bulbs from a quarantine checkpoint so they could be repurposed to protect the Tower. I'm told I need to do this at night because not all the bulbs actually work and going during the dark is the only way I can know which ones to bring back. All of that is perfectly fair. That is, until I'm told that while I'm safe while the lights are on, removing them will cause zombies to congregate, making the mission SUPER DANGEROUS!!!!

Yeah, or, I could just go to the location during the day, wait for the lights to come on, mark the lights that are still good, chill in a guaranteed zombie-free zone until dawn and then take the lights that I had marked back to the Tower during the day while it's safe. You know, the smart way to do things?

• Anyone else find it strange that these giant cargo planes the world is using to drop supplies seem to be able to carry - at most - two crates? Maybe if that's all that's going to be in a drop they should use helicopters. That would allow them to actually make drops directly to survivors as opposed to dropping them in the middle of a zombie-infested wasteland.

I dunno. I'm probably being too harsh. I suppose after 2014 I should just be glad the industry managed to release a game that actually functioned with a consistent frame-rate and doesn't appear to have any game breaking bugs in it. Still, it feels like a lot of this stuff, the platforming in particular, was something that easily could have been hashed out with a little thought.

If you're kind of on the edge, don't let Brad's poor QL play make you think this is overly difficult or punishing. Once you get some skills and good equipment, you can really hold your own. And most of the time you die, you know it's your fault. You get lots of tactical options and the skills all have good uses. The parkour gets particularly good as you get some additional skill levels in it. I can't believe they didn't send this thing out early. PS4 version has been rock solid.

Yeah, I'm loving it. As a fan of Dead Island, I was already predisposed towards this style of gameplay, but I feel specifically that the parkour is brilliant. My favourite parts of the game have been the simply dynamic escapes from a horde of zombies, clambering swiftly onto the roof of a van, leaping over to a nearby awning, and flinging myself across a street packed with the moaning corpses, all without breaking stride. It's incredibly smooth, and very rewarding. I don't feel like the combat is quite as satisfying as Dead Island, but I'm happy to focus on the parkour anyway. Here, avoiding combat is a legitimate option, and I always love that in games.

I'm about 25 hours in and really digging it.

Quick points:

I like that the save system and respawn system is forgiving with with the progress you make.

The game does good job conveying a sense of height. Climbing the radio tower and large suspension bridge was kinda dizzy inducing.

The lighting is good, and it feels like it is actually dark during the night and sunset.

The game has gotten me a couple times with jump scares in non-scripted places.

Facial animations could of been better and they reuse the same male model way too much.

Some people have complained about a partial nude female zombie model and that the violence is pornographic. I guess options to switch that stuff off would of been nice.

Overall, I'm glad I took a chance on the game. It's not the best game, but a really solid experience.

Just started playing last night, the movement and controls feel much better than Dead Island. Combat-wise, I'm having more difficulty getting attacks to hit where I want it to, maybe it's because I have melee auto-aim turned on?

I love how dark the game is at night, you can't see shit without a flashlight. However, the vision cones on the Volatiles is a horrible idea. It leads to nights being less scary, cause you are just staring at the mini map the whole time, and as long as you don't stand inside a vision cone for like 5 seconds, they never spot you. The grappling hook made everything better, too. It solved the issue of having to do a controlled fall, you just grapple to the ground. I commend them for going with Bumper Jumper as the default controls, disappointed that Titanfall didn't commit to that, that is how high mobility games need to be played.

The game is definitely slower in the first 4 hours, you can't sprint for that long and the climbing takes a bit too long. Once you get to level 12 though, the game definitely hits its stride. Story is fine, it's not memorable or good, but it fills its purpose to keep the game moving. The story has 3 or 4 characters, and doesn't do jack shit with them. I really like Crane, though, RCS does a great job at expressing emotion, infact he is the only character in the game that does.

As someone who thought Dead Island was a dull, boring slog of a game, I love Dying Light.

Love this game. I got to the second area but immediately went back to the slums to clean up all the sidequests since I've already encountered a continuation of a quest from the slums there. Night is dark and scary. The combat is fun and I love that they give you abilities like the drop kick and the dodge so you can really take advantage of the zombies slow reactions. The human enemies are great, I love that some will surrender or run as soon as you point a gun at them, also they will sometimes leave you alone if you just back off and don't get involved. I could go on and on, great game.

Quick edit: wanted to add that the Xbox One version has run for hours and hours for me without any kind of glitch other than the typical open world jankiness

Just finished Dying Light on PC. Overall I loved it, I found it to be sort of a mix between Dead Island and Mirror's Edge.

I'm going to start a New Game Plus to see what that's like. From the main menu, select Play, go to your completed save file, hit Advanced, and you'll see New Game Plus there. Quests are reset, you retain your progression and inventory, enemies are tougher and give more XP. It skips the Prologue for you too, which is nice.

Time clocked was 33 hours, I did a fair amount of side quests but not nearly all of them. I finished up at Survivor 18, Agility 19, and Power 24. My favorite weapon type, as it was in Dead Island, was machetes. I could never get into any of the larger, slower, or two-handed weapons. They just weren't fast enough and by about midway through the game my fast machetes were doing so much damage I never felt the need to go two handed. I didn't use any of the two handed special abilities a single time. Same goes for any throwing weapons and the trap bombs. I saved guns for use against humans.

Final boss fight spoiler: Reminded me in a bad way of the Shadow of Mordor QTE ending. At least there was a little bit of good parkour leading up to it.

@mb: Just finished it at about twenty two hours, with all my skill levels at around thirteen or fourteen. Since you can fast travel between the sections in the post game, I figure I'll play with that and co op for a while.

I dug most everything about it, especially the parkour aspects. I did have some issues with having to kill a certain type of zombie. Oh, and losing survivor points when you die is just dumb. But whatever, it's more Dead Island, so of course I'm going to like it.

@sparky_buzzsaw: I got a "New Recipe Learned" message after finishing the game, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Did you get the same thing?

@mb: I did too. Not sure what it was, but I'll do some digging.

My friend and I are huge zombie fans. I went over to his place for beers and gaming. After a few hours with this steaming pile of trash, I can unequivocally say that I will finish the year feeling about this game the way Jeff did about Destiny. Fuck this game. The combat sucks, jumping onto ledges fails most of the time, and the graphics are mediocre.

@probablytuna: Yup, Melee auto-aim makes the combat feel really weird. It's like the game is trying to guess where you want your hit to land, instead of just going where you're looking. I'd recommend turning that off.

Totally agree!
Been enjoying the hell out of it.
Holding off on finishing though since a buddy's One shit the bed.
Another friend may have encountered the horrible vanishing equiptment/progress bug.

I'm loving it so far, have played a ton of coop and we are barely into the game so value wise it seems solid, the combat is way better than its given credit for and I have no problems just running around the game its isn't Mirrors Edge good but I can get where I need to go it feels good to play. Bashing zombies in the face feels very satisfying.

I agree. It's a fun co-op game. I enjoy the parkour/agility element the most. Getting experience points for running away from zombies is fun. I avoid combat as much as possible.

So much love.

@scottg13: I agree that this game was a huge suprise in a good way, wasn't expecting allot but man this game is pretty damn great

Not necessarily on topic. I just got the game and am really liking it. I only just stepped outside though, out of the complex, so things can change, who knows. That said, I just wanted to bring up that I'm surprised this is Troy Baker doing the voice; he does a pretty good job in my opinion of not sounding like himself, as he does in many games, which can get kind of tiresome to me. There are a few lines, like when I just stepped outside, which is also in the trailer, where he says "It's Crane kid." That sounds like him, but otherwise, it kind of sounds like Troy Baker doing an impression of Roger Craig Smith (wait, or is it Roger Craig Smith? The more I play, it just sounds like him. I'll have to look into it). Wait, it is Roger Craig Smith! I honestly couldn't tell if it was Troy Baker or not. Anyways, other than that, the visuals (aside from the grain, though I don't mind it too much) is great, and the sound design is really great too. I like how it plays so far as well, and the setting is good. I'm not a huge zombie fan, but if you can create an interesting, grounded world, then I'm all for it.

Edit - I like the combat. It feels brutal, in a way that for once, I actually feel like I'm hitting something that was once alive, so in a sense, it's kind of sad to kick a zombies head in as it's on the ground (and no, that doesn't really do much if they're still alive and not already weak). The way they react to the environments, like slumping over railings and falling over looks pretty good, and can also be kind of funny to see, same as how they can fall down stairs when you make contact with them. The only downside is that they can clip through one another, which also goes for you when it comes to some of the environment, but it's not a big problem. The parkour is good too I think.

@scottg13: I've been genuinely surprised how lukewarm the response to this game has been. Good to see another fan, because I was starting to think I was one of the only people who thought this game was worth more than a few hours.

Also, I didn't think of it as "lumbering" movement in the early game. It just felt like how a generally fit person would move in a scenario involving jumping between car hoods and buildings. It helped me get involved in the roleplay of the character a lot more, because in everything you do, from fighting to running, you have to be precise. Careful. Y'know, like if you were actually in a dangerous situation. I don't always like overt realism in video games, but I do when it's conducive to good design. The beauty of course is that it doesn't take long to get good and eventually fast at all these things.

Then you get the grappling hook and my head explodes.

This game deserves a lot better than the general response I'm seeing.

"Dying Light is surprisingly thoughtfully designed."

Not really, it just not as bad as it could have been.

- The climbing isn't as robust as it could have been the lack of an elegant way to get off or climb down, those zip lines as finicky as hell, is a huge down check.
- The city itself is rather oddly put together, as if real people didn't live in that city. There are blocks and blocks of similar sized and shaped unfinished buildings punctuated by larger more complete structures. The landscape and city are uninspiring.
- Most of the NPCs just stand around blankly as you pass by, either teh ideal animation are rather limited. You would think jumping into a safe compound out of nowhere woudl make the mercenaries move around or say, "What ho good sir?" But no the just stand there looking dumb with nearly non existent idle animations or patrol patterns.
- The combat feel ham-fisted. You just 'whale-away' at things until the fall, most enemies who are generic have this I will lumber around a bit until I decided to move fast and lunge for a few seconds. That just adds up to tedious combat. And don't get me started on zombies on fire who just sort of seemingly walk around burning for hours.
- The story (what it is about) and the plot (how it gets teh player to each incidence of the story) are just weak. Its a poor story that is very loosely told, there is no real drama there. Also, I just don't buy anyone motivation for anything that is happening. Story is drama...but just silly meaningless choices real people woudl never make isn't a good way to make drama for a weak story.
- The weapon degradation sucked in Dead Island and it still sucks. Most of teh zombies you cna just run past or avoid...but if you do figh them it take 3x as many hits to bring them down...so why bother. It is a dumb system that lacks motivating, except to gain skills by grinding through a few zombies time to time to improve your stats.

Why people seem to give Techland a pass their slap-dash game development is beyond me. These games are very simply poorly constructed junk. Sure it would be nice IF THEY were good, but having a nice idea poorly done does not make them good by magic.

Didn't want to start a whole thread about this...but I noticed zombies crawl from under buildings and such. I swear at night a Volital burst out of the back of a Van in front of me when I was running in absolute terror. Did I imagine this? Did they put thought into where the Volitals hide? Anyway I thought this was a cool added touch.

No, you didn't imagine this. They hide under cars, in the back of vans, and in the sewer grates and then crawl out, It's fine at first, because it doesn't happen all the time and they actually have the potential to hurt you. Later in the game though . . . well, let's just say the developers were clearly a fan of the "more, not better" school of game making. The coolness factor definitely wears thin when they are jumping from virtually every single van and sewer grate you pass by. Seeing as how I can now kill them in one shot, it's more tedious than anything else.

I'm enjoying this. It makes me angry at times with the clunky parkour stuff, but its keeping me entertained for now.

Also is it just me, or is anyone else hearing Mass Effect style/type music playing through out the game. I hear music that sounds almost exactly like music that played in ME, and I think every time, is this the same music? And I stop and listen to it until it stops. Because I love that type of ambient music.

@sterling: I just think it's like an 80s synth sort of soundtrack, which is fucking awesome in my opinion.

Are you guys talking about Virals (recently turned zombies) or Volatiles (only appears at night and have Predator faces)? I've never seen a Volatile climb out of buildings/cars, most of the time they just appear out of thin air for me.

@probablytuna: It's a little bit of both. The volatiles have lairs that they go to during the day. If you enter anywhere that gives you the notice "Entering Dark Zone," you will find Volatiles crawling out from places even during the day.

At night, the Volatiles come out of their lair and wander around, however, the Virals will still pop out of their hiding places. That said, there's sort of an "evolution" system for the zombies at night. If you hang around a swarm too long, some of the regular zombies will start mutating into Virals who will cause an alert if they see you. Very rarely, a Viral might mutate into a Volatile, although I've only had that happen when I kill a Volatile with Virals around.

I put about 11 hours into Dying Light this weekend. I'm really liking it. I see some people complaining about the parkour, but I've had very little problems with it. There is a time or two where I think I should be able to jump up to a ledge, but like it tells you in the tutorial, look at the ledge you want to grab on to, and hold the right bumper.

I'm also digging the story. It isn't revolutionary, but it is keeping me interested, and I want to see what happens next. I also like how varied the side quests are. Most of them are "go here and collect stuff," but they give you different scenarios to deal with. I'm also at a point in the combat where I can take out the Biters with one or two hits, and with blade weapons, it is so satisfying.

Overall I'm really surprised by this game. I was expecting something competent like Dead Island, but it is way better than Dead Island. I like how the game gives you the choice of fighting the zombies with the parkour mechanic.