![]() ![]() It's a nice way to handle progression, ensuring even the most aimless jaunt serves a purpose, but you have to play for a very long time to unlock the really fun abilities.Īlso holding you back from taking a proactive approach to undead clearance is the heavily punitive weapon damage system. XP for each is earned ambiently - so for every leap and climb, you add a few points to the Agility total, while the same is true of Power and every point of damage dealt. ![]() There are three upgrade trees - one for general survival skills, one for agility, and one for attack power. Weapons feel nerfed, even once you've advanced beyond the basic starter arsenal, and zombies too quickly become damage sponges. With its emphasis shifted to avoiding zombie confrontations rather than revelling in them, Dying Light can't help but lack the sort of energy needed to keep your attention throughout a prolonged but repetitive campaign. It knew that what players really wanted was to carve the limbs of zombies using an electrified machete, and it made sure that opportunities to do so were never far away. Dead Island was a shambolic mongrel, but it had a cartoonish verve that made it surprisingly likeable. It's just hard to muster much enthusiasm for the end result. There are human enemies in the game, and they'll put up a lot more of a fight than the undead. The script, sadly, hasn't seen similar evolution, but the predictable tale of government malfeasance and despotic survivor cults does what it needs to do, and gets you up to speed on how to play and keeps you moving around the map. It's not uncommon to see these "biters" lodged in scenery, or getting themselves in a right mess as the AI pathfinding struggles to pick a route through the rubble.īut the game is capable of moments of beauty, and the character models are a vast improvement over Dead Island's balloon-limbed marionettes. There are still some creaky bits - textures pop in, sometimes zombies flicker in or out of existence, and while the environment has had some attention lavished on it, the zombies themselves are fairly crude up close. The game certainly looks and performs better than Dead Island, which was always a diamond in the rough. Parkour has long since lost its novelty, both in real life and in games, and the nocturnal race for safety feels like a grungier, bloodier riff on Minecraft - or any of the dozens of other zombie survival games around at the moment. ![]() You're advised to take shelter in one of the many unlockable safe houses dotted around the city and speed the arrival of the dawn by sleeping through the carnage outside.īoth are solid ideas, if hardly original. Once the sun goes down, deadlier mutated creatures are on the prowl, and they are both more tenacious and agile than the basic shambling ghouls. The other notable addition to the Dead Island formula is a day and night cycle which dramatically alters your chances of survival. There's a definite Ubisoft influence in the icon-spattered map, but also in the missions that have you ascending Far Cry-styled radio towers before ziplining back down again. Your common or garden walking corpse can't climb, so providing you stick to higher ground, you'll be unmolested as you chase quest markers across the averagely sized map. That job, of course, is keeping you out of the clutches of the undead which congregate in Harran's streets and shanties. It's never particularly elegant - this is more frantic scramble than effortless grace - but it gets the job done. Hold that shoulder button down when sprinting or leaping, and you'll grab whatever ledge you're looking at. This is a one-button affair, mapped to the jump command. One major difference is parkour, that once-zeitgeisty method of locomotion that sees you mantling up ledges and leaping from rooftops like an excitable flea. And the co-op gameplay is the same, as up to three others can join you as you leg it around the quarantined South American city of Harran, performing fetch quests, looting crates and earning XP. The crafting is identical, in function if not form, allowing you to add elemental damage to your weapons through blueprints and upgrades. Even the stamina bar, which depletes every time you swing a pipe or wrench, is the same. The kick you use to keep the undead at bay is the same. Price and availabilityĭying Light doesn't just resemble Dead Island in its setting or style, it repeats entire gameplay features. The developer is back with a new open-world zombie game that is almost exactly the same, but more polished and with added parkour. Good news for everyone who fell for the scruffy charms of Techland's Dead Island back in 2011. ![]()
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