26 Jan 2015
27 Jan 2015 - PlayStation 4
27 Jan 2015 - Xbox One
26 Jan 2015 - PC (Microsoft Windows)
26 Jan 2015 - Mac
26 Jan 2015 - Linux
Main story
Main story + extras
100% completion
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.
Audio | Subtitles | Interface | |
---|---|---|---|
Chinese (Simplified) | ✓ | ✓ | |
Chinese (Traditional) | ✓ | ✓ | |
Czech | ✓ | ✓ | |
Dutch | ✓ | ✓ | |
English | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Spanish (Spain) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Spanish (Mexico) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
French | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Italian | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Japanese | ✓ | ✓ | |
Korean | ✓ | ✓ | |
Polish | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Portuguese (Brazil) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Russian | ✓ | ✓ | |
Turkish | ✓ | ✓ | |
Thai | ✓ | ✓ | |
German | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Visually Dying Light aged quite well, the bright sunrise and sunfall over the city of Harran is still stunning, but some textures upclose tend to look muddy at times, the game also has so sort of problem with motion blur that messes up with the image, but it is still servicable especially thanks to current gen patch, making the game run and look the best it ever did in 60fps. Besides that zombies look great and are satisfying to brutalise, especially I enjoy the x-ray bone cracking effect the game often does when you use blunt weapons.
Narrative received a much bigger focuse this time around, Crane is a pretty good and iconic protagonist, he has a solid character arc that makes him truly care about the people of Harran and the change is well realised. Main villain though is just average, nothing to talk about but he is well acted, side characters are great though only a handful are a standout. It's nothing special, mostly the protagonist carries the story with his often interactions with the agency and some of the side charracters that provide some emotional story moments.
Gameplay is the highlight of Dying Light, especially the main new gameplay element added to the mix - parkour. It's rather rare to see parkour being such integral part in video games and it is integrated, animated and used quite extensively and well, jumping around zombies and fleeing running infected across rooftops is always fun, but I do dislike how you need to upgrade and grind for ability point so the parkour would become more usable throughout the game and not just give you to play with it properly right away. Combat is solid, weapons are satisfying to use, dismemberment looks great, guns though are pretty undercooked when it concerns their both sound and animations. Crafting is also big part of the gameplay and it rewards you with alot of good weaponry if you try focusing your time on it, but it does require grinding though. Side Quests and overall available activities lack variety and don't wildly change beyond go the and clear the area of zombies/humans, but some stories can be entertaining.
Have to mention seperately that Dying Light was surprisingly supported with conctent for around 7-8 years which is praise wortht to say the least, the game currently is highly different from what you could have played at launch. Also open world has an insane number of secrets and easter eggs that most give you some unique blueprints, it's always fun to find those organically.
To sum up, Dying Light is a well rounded zombie survival video game and probably is one of the best choices you can make if you decided to give this genre a try. Also a friendly reminder that nearly every piece of DLC content was made free for you to purchase, adding to every base copy an entire "The Following" expansion, which is well worth your time and makes the overall package quite appealing.