Dying Light: Mirror's Island Rising.

[Zhukov]

So I got to play a good chunk of Dying Light.

And it's actually pretty fun.

The story is standard video game garbage mind you, and it's Yet Another Fucking Zombie Game, but the gameplay is a good time.

Unlike the developer's previous Dead Island games, the combat allows for a bit of variety beyond just mashing the 'murder' button. There are plenty of environmental hazards to make use of and you can knock, kick and throw the zombies around in a way that gives a pleasingly weighty feel to proceedings.

My one major gameplay gripe is that the intro/tutorial is very dull and the gimp you pretty hard at the start. The game only really gets fun when you unlock a bunch of parkour abilities which make the traversal smooth and fun. Before that it feels like a poor man's Mirror's Edge wearing concrete shoes. I wouldn't be surprised if a few players give up before getting to the good stuff.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Looks like a lot of fun. Love me some Far Cry Zombie Parkour Island.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I might check it out, but nothing about it seems particularly fascinating. It just looks like parkour Far Cry with zombies, and I already played FC4 not too long ago. And the zombie setting doesn't appear to have anything fresh or interesting going for it apart from 'Look, zombies... Go smash!'.

And first-person melee never sat right with me.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

It just looks like parkour Far Cry with zombies

What part of that isn't appealing! Besides having played FC4 more or less recently and being a little burnt out on the gameplay.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It just looks like parkour Far Cry with zombies

What part of that isn't appealing! Besides having played FC4 more or less recently and being a little burnt out on the gameplay.

Well, that and I don't know for how long the gameplay will engage me. I stopped playing FC4, because I was getting tired of its open-world structure, and the story and characters didn't really hook me to keep playing. Dying Light seems constructed along similar lines, and its story doesn't sound that riveting either.

 

[Jandau]

The game is genuinely really good. Sure, when you sum it up in a few words, it might not sound all that amazing (Dead Island with parkour, etc.), but the individual elements are really well done.

The parkour is the main star here, and it's just awesome. It has a real weight to it, and it really feels like the main character is struggling and exerting himself. Moments like leaping between buildings, slamming into the wall on the other side and grabbing the ledge for dear life have impact to them and merely traversing the world is great fun, more than in open world games where the main character has more mobility.

The melee combat is also enjoyable. There is a solid feedback to it, getting smacked around doesn't just make your screen flash red, it shakes your viewpoint, makes it harder to retaliate. Getting caught in a mob of zombies and pummeled down can be quite disorienting. Along with the parkour, the combat adds up to making you feel like you're controlling an actual person instead of a floating camera that most first person games have.

Sure, the story isn't blowing my socks off thus far, but it's serviceable. And more importantly, the voice acting is pretty damn well done. The delivery is spot on and really adds to the atmosphere. In general, the world has a good feel to it - I especially approve of setting the whole thing in the middle east.

A lot of people have been comparing this to Far Cry 3/4, but I'm not really seeing it. I found both those games interminably boring. However, I'm greatly enjoying Dying Light. Perhaps it IS simply me enjoying the parkour, the atmosphere and the combat, but isn't that enough?

 

[Zhukov]

And first-person melee never sat right with me.

Personally I've always had a soft spot for it.

Although, granted, it does get done very poorly very often. Plenty of games where you just mash the 'hit' key, a weapon/fist waves in front of the camera and the enemy loses health. Very unsatisfying.

It can be done well though. The Riddick games, Mirror's Edge and Zeno Clash (except for that stupid fucking lock-on) all did it well. Dark Messiah and Dishonored did it... well enough.

Dying Light does it passably. Enemies react believably to being hit and there is a tangible connection between blow and reaction. It's not on the level of, say, The Last of Us where there is a specific reaction animation for each kind of blow, but it works well enough.

Plus you can do things like grapple and throw enemies in a chosen direction (think the grab button in early Assassin's Creed games), hurling them onto spikes or off high places.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

About how long is the single player campaign on Dying Light? Anyone know?

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

You know, the first thing I thought when I played it was "this isn't mirror's edge". The free running you have (at the start especially) is kind of limited mostly just jumping and mantling. You also don't have any of the complex chain moves you had in Mirror.

Still fun though. The element that I like is the economy of fighting. Every item and action has a big list of + - that all feed into each other. You know like how guns can easily kill the big zombies in one hit, but they summon runners, or how fire crackers can be used to lure zombies into a group so you can fire bomb them. The economy is a little broken some times though. Like how the firebomb and the med-kit use basically the same materials, but a firebomb is way way more useful then a med-kit.

 

[Casual Shinji]

And first-person melee never sat right with me.

Personally I've always had a soft spot for it.

I think it's the same as first-person platforming, where I just can't really judge the distance well enough. And ofcourse the feeling that instead of punching I'm just firing a fist gun, though that seems to have decreased in recent games. Still, I can never get used to the boxing camera set-up.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

And first-person melee never sat right with me.

Personally I've always had a soft spot for it.

I think it's the same as first-person platforming, where I just can't really judge the distance well enough. And ofcourse the feeling that instead of punching I'm just firing a fist gun, though that seems to have decreased in recent games. Still, I can never get used to the boxing camera set-up.

What games have you tried for FP melee?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

About how long is the single player campaign on Dying Light? Anyone know?

On average, main story is about 12-13 hours.

http://www.howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=21252

 

[InsanityRequiem]

My one gripe with Dying Light is that when you use melee weapons and a zombie attempts to grab you, the camera automatically makes it so you hit the zombie in the head. This has been pissing me off a lot, because there is a challenge where you have to break zombie legs (25 legs in roughly 2 minutes). It'd be easy, accept that suddenly I'm facing head height and breaking skulls instead of looking at feet and breaking legs.

Other than than, I'm enjoying the game immensely. And if people are curiously, you can spend hours upon hours breaking the game early on. The prologue does not advance time, so you could go crazy looting everything one hundred times and murdering thousands of zombies off the start for experience. It isn't until you do the first drop that time then can advance.

But yes, lots of enjoying. Though I shouldn't be surprised, I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor a lot while I couldn't get into Mirror's Edge/Dead Rising/Dead Island/Assassin's Creed.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I think it's the same as first-person platforming, where I just can't really judge the distance well enough. And ofcourse the feeling that instead of punching I'm just firing a fist gun, though that seems to have decreased in recent games. Still, I can never get used to the boxing camera set-up.

What games have you tried for FP melee?

Well, there's the Elder Scrolls games, not the best example, I know. Condemned 2 and Dishonered, though with the latter I hardly remember the combat at all. I think I just mainly stealthed my way through that one.

I just prefer seeing my character within the environment in brawlers/hack 'n slashers - I can properly see the wind up animation, and make sure no one is flanking me etc.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

I think it's the same as first-person platforming, where I just can't really judge the distance well enough. And ofcourse the feeling that instead of punching I'm just firing a fist gun, though that seems to have decreased in recent games. Still, I can never get used to the boxing camera set-up.

What games have you tried for FP melee?

Well, there's the Elder Scrolls games, not the best example, I know. Condemned 2 and Dishonered, though with the latter I hardly remember the combat at all. I think I just mainly stealthed my way through that one.

I just prefer seeing my character within the environment in brawlers/hack 'n slashers - I can properly see the wind up animation, and make sure no one is flanking me etc.

Condemned 2 was good still one of the best. Though ya the flanking thing it's still a problem in dying light. I can't count the number of times I have jumped back into a zombie that I couldn't see. There has to be a way to avoid that. I just don't know what.

 

[sXeth]

So I got to play a good chunk of Dying Light.

And it's actually pretty fun.

The story is standard video game garbage mind you, and it's Yet Another Fucking Zombie Game, but the gameplay is a good time.

Unlike the developer's previous Dead Island games, the combat allows for a bit of variety beyond just mashing the 'murder' button. There are plenty of environmental hazards to make use of and you can knock, kick and throw the zombies around in a way that gives a pleasingly weighty feel to proceedings.

My one major gameplay gripe is that the intro/tutorial is very dull and the gimp you pretty hard at the start. The game only really gets fun when you unlock a bunch of parkour abilities which make the traversal smooth and fun. Before that it feels like a poor man's Mirror's Edge wearing concrete shoes. I wouldn't be surprised if a few players give up before getting to the good stuff.

I'll preface by saying I'm enjoying the hell out of the game, even just messing about the city with friends.

I wouldn't even say you're so much gimped as dumped out woefully ignorant of basic combat mechanics. You get out of the tower and you've fought one zombie (after a brief tooltip) that goes down in one hit. Nothing about kicking not using stamina, or blunt vs bladed weapons, or anything.

Despite being generally good, the combat seems to lack a few basic things as well. Unless I (and every forum I searched via google) missed it, there's no block/parry, despite enemies doing it to you regularly, or any way to control whether your swing is vertical or horizontal (critical when you're attacking a downed zombie's head or faced with a group wall).

My other nitpick would be that horizontal leap distance seems to be ridiculously inconsistent. Jumping off a ledge hang seems to be able to go an insane distance, while other jumps often barely exceed walking off. Odd lock on mechanics with dropkicks and similar attacks sometimes create hilarious missile moves as well.

The Hunter invasion MP needs some streamlining too. If you turn it on, the second night falls, dozens of people try and connect to you. One eventually gets in, and you play it out, then come back out at the same time because of the pause effect. Then almost immediately the process repeats itself. Short of disabling the Hunter mode altogether, you're liable to become stuck in nighttime indefinately.

 

[Sassafrass]

I've put in four hours and I'm enjoying it so far. It's really Dead Island, with parkour, a more interesting environment and a less annoying stamina system. Combat stamina and sprinting stamina are seperated from each other, something which I'm grateful for. It means my tactic of "Swing, batter batter, swing and then run away like a *****" is a good one. Although to begin with, the parkour is a bit clunky and not as free flowing as I'd like, although a skill upgrade later on changed that for me.

Plus the voice acting is pretty good, the story so far hasn't made me stop and think "What the fuck is going on." and it is quite pretty, even on medium settings. Overall, solid game, would recommend.

 

[Barbas]

The weapon variety is fantastic. It does parkour better than the AC series. You can jump from rooftop to rooftop with a bastard sword, leap down onto a zombie's head and split them down the middle like a ripe mango, then do a jumping kick that'll send another one literally flying off the roof. There are improvised bombs and grenades that you can craft, as well as throwing axes, knives and shurikens. It's the bee's knees, the hedgehog's snuffle and the best bits of all the other animals.

But yeah, the story's pretty crap.

EDIT: Two Easter Eggs that might sway people:


Bear in mind that the second Easter Egg is only attainable once you reach the second overworld area.

 

[Rednog]

My one gripe with Dying Light is that when you use melee weapons and a zombie attempts to grab you, the camera automatically makes it so you hit the zombie in the head. This has been pissing me off a lot, because there is a challenge where you have to break zombie legs (25 legs in roughly 2 minutes). It'd be easy, accept that suddenly I'm facing head height and breaking skulls instead of looking at feet and breaking legs.

Other than than, I'm enjoying the game immensely. And if people are curiously, you can spend hours upon hours breaking the game early on. The prologue does not advance time, so you could go crazy looting everything one hundred times and murdering thousands of zombies off the start for experience. It isn't until you do the first drop that time then can advance.

But yes, lots of enjoying. Though I shouldn't be surprised, I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor a lot while I couldn't get into Mirror's Edge/Dead Rising/Dead Island/Assassin's Creed.

Oh god don't remind me of the Psycho challenges. What a load of horse shit those were. Those and the movie guy's challenges are the worst. No only do they never give you enough zombies in the general area, but the mechanics just really don't work well with what you have to do. The force swing up is bad but I just rage when I get chain grabbed by the zombies and haven't invested in the reduced grab time. They literally bleed 5-7 seconds off your time each time they grab you.

If you're still stuck on them someone told me this trick after I had managed to finally beat all of them after like 20+ tries. I honestly was kicking myself how much easier these challenges would have been if I had known this prior.

Spoiler

Use the firecrackers, the zombies will all turn their attention to it and you're free to pretty much line up all your shots. Works very well for the leg and chop in half challenges.

 

[Loonyyy]

About how long is the single player campaign on Dying Light? Anyone know?

I've played 17 hours so far, at under 20% completion. I haven't been grinding, or anything, just exploring and completing sidequests. I just run from place to place by whichever is closest, and then move outwards, so far, seems that there's an alright balance between the two, although I don't think the main missions will last too long, so if you only play them it's probably significantly shorter.