 Beware the night. After an outbreak of zombies on an island, one man is sent by a secret organization to recover important classified documents pertaining to the outbreak. However, after getting bitten, his perspective on the entire event quickly changes and he finds himself in a fight for the lives of the remaining survivors, including himself.
1. Gameplay
Dying Light feels like a Dead Island sequel but in a very good way. It features the same sort of landscape and crafting mechanics as Dead Island but includes a relatively smooth parkour system and a significantly more difficult set of enemies. While fighting enemies does get significantly easier as the game progresses, the first few hours will essentially force the player to run from almost every combat encounter. You start out having to fight for your life just to kill one or two normal zombies, and the special infected will force you to run for your life. This is exactly the kind of zombie game I have been looking for.  Now might be a good time to run... The story in this game is better than Dead Island but only in that it actually has a story. Some of the characters were decently written but it often felt like the developer meant to include more missions with the main characters but eventually cut them. This was blatantly obvious when one of the characters got in over his head while trying to plant explosives, then gave me the armed explosives with instructions to run across the whole city and plant them by myself. After that character dies, people refer to him as my “good friend”. I had no idea what they were talking about. He had guided me through the tutorial but that was just about it. When did I have time to become friends with him, let alone anyone else? But what the game lacks in story it more than makes up for in gameplay. The contrast between night and day, both visually and in difficulty level, is amazing. Even towards the end of the game when I knew I could take on a good number of enemies, I was much more cautious about how I moved at night than I was during the day. Standing one’s ground and fighting through the night is only an option very late in the game, and even then it isn’t a particularly intelligent option. This game constantly forces the player to keep moving, which also helps keep things fresh and fun.  Oh s*** oh s*** oh s*** Part of me wanted a newgame+ option so that I could go through the missions with all of the abilities and items I’d gained, but I know this wouldn’t be the same experience as a completely fresh game. Even against more difficult enemies (like volatiles in the daytime), it wouldn’t give the same level of tension as being stuck out at night with few weapons and abilities at your disposal. It’s tough to recreate that kind of experience. I would have liked more “haunted house” feelings where the tension came in a small number of very difficult enemies that could be anywhere. There were a few missions that gave off some great tension like that in claustrophobic settings, but not enough to satisfy me.  More like this! Either way, this is a great game and well worth the price tag. It may not have the replay value of Left 4 Dead, but it was a much more enjoyable experience than Dead Island. Oh, and don’t bother with the competitive multiplayer portions. I found it a boring, frustrating experience, especially when a low-level monster is pitted against high-level humans.
This is a fairly long game. I played around 30 hours and got around to most but not all of the sidequests and challenges. But a lot of the fun of the game came in scavenging for items and blueprints while killing zombies. There’s plenty of that in this game. The game could benefit with more missions, especially more main missions involving the main characters, but I felt like there was a good amount of content here to work through. The competitive multiplayer would add to the content but left a lot to be desired so I don’t expect it to add any significant amount of time to the gameplay. The cooperative gameplay can add to the fun significantly as long as you have some friends to play with.
There were a few elements that left me a bit frustrated in this game. The most obvious of these were the tank-like zombies (I believe the game referred to them as “destroyers”) that were heavily armored and would charge at the player with an insane amount of force. They had a nasty habit of breaking their stun and instantly turning to charge me and nearby allies. They weren’t really difficult, but it just took too long to recover after being hit by them. And whilst I was stunned by his attack, normal zombies would be quickly draining my remaining health. I eventually learned to just steer clear of them rather than try to take them on no matter what weapons I had.  C'mon Bruce, we talked about this! The final level involves some fairly ridiculous platforming that is supposed to be performed at speed. Compared to the rest of the game which, for the most part, included some fairly open spaces and allowed the player to choose how to approach a given situation, the final boss battle felt very linear and not particularly exciting. 2. Parental Notices
This game is insanely violent. I have probably said this before, but I am hard-pressed to find a more violent game than this. The player can use a variety of weapons to attack enemies, many of which will result in severed limbs or crushed heads.  What's wrong with your face? A number of the player’s abilities will increase the amount of violence as well. For example, the player can stab zombies through the chest easily by jumping on them and attacking with a one-handed weapon. This results in the zombies chest being crushed in and the ribs being exposed.  Squishy. Zombies can be killed with elemental effects like electricity and fire. These effects can be added to weapons, but I tended to kill zombies with fire since the Molotov cocktail was an extremely effective tool.  Who wants toast?! If the player hits an enemy hard enough with a blade, the enemy can be chopped completely in half.  Zombie on the left, zombie's legs on the right. This kind of stuff happened all the time. This was the majority of my gameplay.  This zombie will never be whole again. I’m not sure that the violent content in this game was more graphic than Gears of War, but it certainly happened more often.  I don't think putting a battery and some wiring onto a machete will get this result.
Since sections of the game feature long beaches, zombies that are closer to these beaches often wear swimsuits or bikinis.  No, still not sexy. There were also some pin-up pictures in some of the rooms. These were the only remotely sexual elements in the entire game.  This was strange.
The player can craft some potions using local mushrooms and herbs that can be collected around the worldspace. The potions have different ingredients that lead to different effects. They seem a bit like an energy drink but there’s no way to replicate them in real life. For example, one potion mixed using local mushrooms can significantly improve the player’s ability to see in the dark. I made use of this potion frequently because of how dark the nights could get.  Definitely safe to turn these into a nice smoothie. In one section of the world I stumbled upon a character who informed me that his wife was going into labor and that they needed alcohol to sterilize the room. After going to get some, he requested some more since they had run out. After completing this task, I returned to find him very drunk. I forced my way into the room and found that he and a group of friends were sitting around a table singing a song and very, very drunk.  99 bottles of beer on the wall... The player can eat smaller food items for a small amount of health. These items can be anything from a chocolate bar to a hamburger. The animation is fairly simple and there are no side effects of eating any of these items (other than the health gain). Some of the characters might have been seen smoking, but if this was the case it was easy to miss and not an important part of the story.  I'd probably be okay with smoking in the event of a zombie apocalypse.
Gambling is not a factor in this game.
While the developers have announced that they will eventually release modding tools for this game, they are not currently available and are therefore not a factor in this game.
There are a number of very large structures that are clearly designed to look like churches or missions. However, there do not seem to be any religious symbols in the area.  Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between a turret and a minaret.
Anti-law is not a factor in this game.
This game can be played cooperatively with friends or random players online. I played some of the missions with a friend and this was decent but the story doesn’t really fit more than one player, so it always felt a little bit disconnected. The competitive multiplayer is a frustrating experience because of its mechanics even before the online community comes in, so I never tried this outside of just between my friend and myself.  Friends to the end. I’d recommend playing this game alone. It loses a lot of the difficulty and tension when playing with friends.
This game does involve some freerunning elements, but for the most part these aren’t particularly extreme. They involve jumping and climbing on just about everything (including from rooftop to rooftop), but the player can still take damage if he falls.  Newton is rolling in his grave right now. However, the player can completely mitigate the falling damage by falling onto piles of trash. The game even makes fun of how ridiculous this is at one point. While I tended to not need these particular “soft” landing zones too often, I did end up using them numerous times in my playthrough.  Think about what you put into your trash. Now think about landing on that from 50 feet off the ground. There are a number of ziplines that the player can use to cross large distances in relative safety. I didn’t use these much in the first area, but they become very useful in the city area.  What am I holding the zipline with?! The player can eventually gain access to a grappling hook. This isn’t an ordinary grappling hook though, it’s a full on physics defying hook. The player can use it to pull himself across long distances, up tall walls, and even down cliffs without taking damage. What I mean by that is the player can look down a slope that would normally kill him, throw the hook onto a bus at the bottom of the slope, and pull himself via the hook onto the bus and take no damage.  I'm Batman.
One strange character describes herself as a witch and is supposedly able to walk through the zombies without getting attacked, even at night. She never explains exactly how she’s able to do this, but she does give the player a potion that mimics the effects. I debate whether or not there is magic involved, but she definitely implies it even if it’s difficult to believe.  This is what you look like after too many mushroom smoothies.
Human Disfigurement Considering this is a zombie game, a degree of human disfigurement should be expected. The extent of the disfigurement depends mainly on the mutation of the zombie. Normal zombies look fairly human (aside from the pale skin, dead eyes, open wounds, etc.).  You might want to see a dermatologist about that. However, while the special infected do retain some human elements, they can be so disfigured by their infection that they barely look like their formerly human selves.  Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope Disturbing Images This game isn’t really scary but there was one side mission in particular that stood out to me. The player is tasked with searching for a boy’s lost friend named Max. Max was lost somewhere in the boy’s apartment complex. After a murder mystery like scavenger hunt, the player eventually founds out that Max was actually the boy’s dog, and that the dog was killed by a maniac in the complex’s basement. Max, the now dead dog, lays on a table with his intestines hanging out. I was fairly horrified by the entire experience.  Dude... wtf... Suicide A number of scenes and locations depict characters that look like they committed suicide so that they didn’t have to deal with the zombie apocalypse. Most of these suicides involve overdosing on pills.  I could think of worse ways to go. Kidnapping Kidnapping occurs a few times in the game although, for the most part, it isn’t a serious element. It’s most obvious with the weird torture dungeon mission. An infected mother and her two kids are taken in by a man who says that he will take care of them and provide them with the necessary medicine if the mother does anything he asks (if you know what he means). She declines and her kids manage to escape but she doesn’t get away.  50 Shades of Nope. Rape
(Continuing from above) They don’t explicitly say that the mother is raped but it’s pretty heavily implied. She’s definitely down in the dungeon tied up if nothing else.
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