Dying Light is a first-person, action survival horror game set in a vast and dangerous open world. During the day, players traverse an expansive urban environment overrun by a vicious outbreak, scavenging the world for supplies and crafting weapons to defend against the growing infected population. At night, the hunter becomes the hunted, as the infected become aggressive and more dangerous. Most frightening are the predators which only appear after sundown. Players must use everything in their power to survive until the morning’s first light.
In the city of Harran, a mysterious viral outbreak has turned most of the population into hyper-aggressive zombie-like creatures, forcing Harran's Defense Ministry to quarantine the entire city. The Global Relief Effort (GRE) assists survivors still trapped in the city by regularly airdropping supplies. The GRE hires Kyle Crane to infiltrate Harran in order to retrieve a sensitive file stolen from them by Kadir Suleiman, which he is using as leverage to blackmail them, with the threat of publicizing it if anything were to happen to him. Crane is airdropped into Harran, where he is ambushed by a gang of hostile bandits. As the infected attack, Crane is bitten and infected, but rescued by Jade Aldemir and Amir Ghoreyshi. Amir sacrifices himself to buy Jade and Crane time, and Jade takes him to a survivor sanctuary called the Tower. Crane wakes up and is introduced to Rahim Aldemir, Jade's brother. Rahim then teaches Crane parkour and sends him to Spike, who gives him his first task as a resident of the tower. Crane learns that the Tower, which seeks to help other survivors, is being harassed by a gang of bandits led by a warlord named Rais who steals and hoards the supplies from the GRE airdrops, including Antizin; a vaccine that suppresses symptoms of infection and keeps bitten people from turning into the infected. After Harris Brecken, leader of the tower is nearly killed by a rival runner in a mission to retrieve an Antizin drop, need for the drug becomes immense. Crane volunteers and manages to reach an airdrop containing Antizin, but despite the dire need of the vaccine by the survivors, Crane is instructed by the GRE to destroy the airdrop, instructing him to reach out to Rais in order to buy the vaccine in order to confirm his identity. Crane reluctantly complies and informs the Tower that the supplies have been looted.
Upset, Brecken tasks Crane with the job of making a deal with Rais. Upon meeting Rais, Crane is able to confirm that he is indeed Suleiman. He carries out a series of unethical tasks for Rais under the assumption that he will be rewarded with two crates of Antizin. Crane is unable to locate the file, and is later betrayed by Rais, who only gives him five vials of Antizin. He later breaks off business with the GRE when they halt the supply drops and refuse to help the Tower. The situation in the tower worsens, and a whole floor is sealed off when an outbreak occurs. While doing an errand, Rahim tells Crane that he and Omar were planning to bomb an infected nest. Crane is opposed to this plan. After an argument over the radio, he gives chase to a fleeing Rahim. Upon catching up to him, he finds that Omar is dead, while Rahim has been wounded. He then executes Rahim's plans, resulting in the killing of the infected in the compound. When he gets back to Rahim he discovers that he was actually bitten and had turned while Crane was gone, forcing Crane to respectfully snap Rahim's neck when he attacks him. When Crane returns to the tower to inform Brecken of the news, Jade overhears them, and visibly upset, takes off.
Meanwhile, a scientist at the Tower named Dr. Imran Zere, who was attempting to develop a cure for the virus, is kidnapped by Rais, prompting Crane to attempt a rescue mission. Crane is also captured by Rais, who reveals that the file he stole contains proof that the GRE intends to weaponize the virus rather than develop a cure and releases the file to the public. Crane manages to escape before being executed, resulting in Rais losing one of his hands during the process. Dr. Zere is killed in the rescue attempt, but manages to tell Crane that he had entrusted his research to Jade, who is tasked with delivering it to another scientist named Dr. Allen Camden. As Crane goes to look for Jade, he finds out that the Defense Ministry is planning to bomb Harran in an effort to completely eradicate the outbreak, claiming that there are no survivors left in the city. He manages to reactivate a radio tower and broadcasts a message to the outside world, thwarting the Ministry's plan. Jade was captured by Rais, who also steals Dr. Zere's research. Crane manages to rescue Jade and recover a part of Dr. Zere's research, but Jade admits that she has been bitten, and pleads with Crane to stop Rais. Jade then succumbs to the wound, forcing Crane to kill her. After killing Rais' assistant, Tair with his own machete, Crane delivers the tissue samples to Dr. Camden, who believes that he is very close to the cure, but needs the rest of Dr. Zere's data. Crane then finds out that Rais has cut a deal with the GRE, in which he will hand over Dr. Zere's research data to them in return for extraction from Harran. Crane then assaults Rais' headquarters (filled with infected) and battles him atop a skyscraper, eventually stabbing Rais in the neck and throwing him off the building. He recovers the research data and decides to turn it over to Dr. Camden instead of the GRE, intending to stay in Harran to help the survivors.
| Minimum System Requirements | Recommended System Requirements | |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-2500 3.3GHz / AMD FX-8320 | Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz / AMD FX-8350 |
| VRAM | 1 GB | 3 GB |
| RAM | 4 GB | 8 GB |
| OS | Win 7 64 | Win 8 64 |
| Graphics Card | nVidia GeForce GTX 560 / AMD Radeon HD 6870 | nVidia GeForce GTX 780 / AMD Radeon R9 290 |
| Direct X | DX 11 | DX 11 |
| SOUND CARD | Yes | Yes |
| HDD Space | 40 GB | 40 GB |
| Game Analysis | Dying Light is a first person action survival game with a reportedly vast and dangerous open world. With classic night and day cycles, in the day, you explore urbanised settings that were devastated some unknown epidemic, where you scavenge weapons and equipment to aid in your survival against the hordes of mindless, flesh-hungry enemies the plague has created. | |
| High FPS | 86 FPS ( GTX 1060 ) | |
| Note | Windows-compatible keyboard, mouse, optional controller (Xbox 360 Controller for Windows recommended) | |
| Optimization Score | 8.4 | |
| Minimum System Requirements | ||
| CPU | Intel® Core™ i5 @3.20GHz | |
| RAM | 4 GB RAM DDR3 | |
| OS | macOS Sierra 10.12.1 | |
| Graphics Card | AMD Radeon™ R9 M370X (2GB VRAM) | |
| HDD Space | 40 GB free space |
| Minimum System Requirements | ||
| CPU | Intel® Core™ i5-2500 @3.3 GHz / AMD FX-8320 @3.5 GHz | |
| RAM | 4 GB RAM DDR3 | |
| OS | Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit and newer recommended | |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560 / AMD Radeon™ HD 6870 (1GB VRAM) | |
| HDD Space | 40 GB free space |
Tons to explore
Great Sound FX
Very Replayable- especially with friends
Poor story
Paper thin characters
Before I jumped into just playing it by myself, I did have a good 40 hrs of playing it with friends… but seriously this game is very easy. Fun, but WAY easy and short.
Score Breakdown
“The Tale”
Story- 3
Pacing- 5
Characters- 4
Originality- 5
Linearity- 9
Length- 8
Epicness- 5
“The Presentation”
Visuals- 8
Display- 8
Music- 5
Sound FX- 9
“The Mechanics”
Ease of Use- 8
Innovation- 7
Replayability- 9
Visuals
Sound Design
Roger Craig Smith
Seamless Online
Lack of story
A little buggy
EyeCandy: The visuals in the game are good. Animations are smooth and the camera feels well and ‘natural’. It never went out of whack for me. It’s mainly based in a poor slum area and I believe Techland nailed it in the head (pun intended) with the environment. The rundown city has everything. Sewers, highways, caves, tall buildings, fishing ports, everything. They did a damned good job. Not to even mention the texturing and the gore. When you smash a zombies head you see pieces of its skull scattered and brain matter gushing. You can cut off arms and legs and even break their bones to stun them. When you shoot them, you see the hug gaping hole and all of their insides, it is phenomenal. AND all of the infected look disgusting (which is a good thing) and all of the people are diverse which makes the whole thing believable. If something like this were to happen, this is how it would look. Nothing is out of place. You will catch a bug or two, but they’re not frequent and they’re laughable. Overall, it looks damned good.
SoundDesign: I would have to say what stood out to me the most was the main character’s voice. Roger Craig Smith is mostly known (if you didn’t know) for being Ezio in Assassin’s Creed. He sounds good, and gave the best emotional performance out of the rest of the cast. There’s few times where Dying Light actually has music. It’s mostly your basic ambience with screams and other random noises. It sounded good until I figured out it’s actually part of the soundtrack and the sound wasn’t based on my location but it was just a repeating track pretty much. All of the thuds and cracks and booms sound good. You can hear the feeling of your character vaulting and falling and punching. So in that aspect it was fine. But other than that, there’s not much else.
Gameplay: Dying light plays like a Mirrors Edge (Which I f*****g loved!) x Dead Island. It’s all about the free running, parkour, and collecting loot by day, so you can survive the night because night is when the special infected come out of hiding, the zombies are stronger, and all of your points double. It. Is. HARD. There have been plenty of times where I had to run to the nearest safe house and sleep the night away. It ain’t no joke. But at least the free-running mechanic is simple. There is a tiny learning curve to it, but once you get it, it’s butter. So basically it’s easy to do, but challenging to master. And since this game is a zombie game it tends to favor melee weapons. There’s all sorts of them too. Everything from pipes and hammers, to swords and concrete chunks on metal rebar. The variety of weapons are fantastic. But then it goes even deeper with the customization of not only the weapons with their crafting, upgrade, and blueprint system and durability/strength stats, but with also your main character. As you fight, kill, and scavenge all game long you earn points to level up. Within their upgrade system you can learn new moves, gain more health, become more efficient at parkour, it’s all there, and it’s pretty fair to. When you play online you can easily tell apart the low levels from the high levels. Speaking of which…
Online Gameplay: Dying Light has a competitive multiplayer, and as well as a cooperative mode. And it’s all seamless. If you join someone elses game you keep all of your loot and experience points and can continue where you left off in your own game and vice versa to other players that join you. The game will also tell you if you’re ahead in the main story or behind when you join another game, kinda cool. I didn’t want to write this game until I played a full four player coop and versus. And it was fun. I got all my buddies in and we’re running around, jumping, rolling, fighting off hordes, competing in loot and race events, you name it. This is easily where this game shines. And when night came the special infected jumped in (another player) and we had to destroy these nests while they had to protect them. If you don’t work as a team you will lose. Plain and simple.
Conclusion: Notice how I didn’t mention the story? There’s nothing to mention. It’s predictable and full of cliches. At times it gets interesting but there was only two “WOW” moments for me, and even then they were during cinematics.This game is literally a polished Dead Island.
side-missions, characters, graphics, environment, enemy design.
lackluster main story, steep learning curve, complex controls, tedious game mechanics, many aspects of the game simply are not fun - they just evoke anger and frustration.
Dying Light had the chance to not merely be a great Zombie game but to be a GREAT GAME, but unfortunately some of the game’s mechanics and controls make it tedious and outright difficult to the point of pulling you right out of the game and questioning, “Aren’t i supposed to be having fun and not shutting down my PC mid-game out of shear rage?”
The graphics, environment, and character design are absolutely jaw-dropping – I never realized i had a scare of heights until i played this game – the wind, the character using his arms to balance himself, the sound of objects dropping down below – whew, i had severe vertigo. The various missions and voice-actors are also very impressive (and what reminds me a lot of the Metro 2033 series).
The deep intergration of parkour means that you can not get ANYWHERE without jumping, climbing, and falling your way there – this can be fun…sometimes, but to integrate it as the main form of player transportation throughout the game is gimmicky and tiresome. Also, it is simply unrealistic that the MAJORITY of citizens (zombie and normal) would be parkour experts.
The constant need to repair and place weapons because they “wear” out, also makes the game very tedious…i understand that this would happen with SOME weapons, but not metal bats and crowbars, c’mon!! Furthermore, the controls for various “skills” that one aquires throughout the game by earning points completing missions are so complex and similar to eachother, that i often end up performing the wrong skill, sometimes even literally throwing away one of my best weapons at an enemiy (after which it cannot be retrieved).
The enemies were really awesome and well-designed, though i wish there had been a little bit more variety with enemy types (although there was a lot of varieties WITHIN each enemy type – which is awesome).
Finally, although the various side-missions are intricate and intersting – the overarching main story of the game is rather lackluster.
(p.s. i didn’t check my spelling because i’m used to spellcheck already incorporated into a website’s text fields – HINT HINT igdb)
Conclusion: Perhaps you are thinking that i just suck at gaming and maybe i do, but the fact is that i downloaded a trainer to cheat/complete this game (so i didnt kill myself or smash my monitor out of frustration) and the game is STILL tedious and difficult. I give this game a 7 for great story, characters, graphics, environment but VERY tedious and difficult gameplay.