In the lead up to its release each and every time I saw Dying Light I was impressed. Large scale, smooth controls, interesting world, cool places to explore. But the release of Dying Light was a strange one: hardly anyone had reviews before or even on launch day. What did everyone have to hide?
We’ll have our full review soon, but for now you’ll have to make do with these in-depth impressions from the first couple of hours with the game. The verdict based on that experience? We’re looking at a very solid open world game with parkour/climbing mechanics. The thing I keep hearing over and over again: it’s a bit like Dead Island. That in itself isn’t terrible, but Dead Island was hardly a world beater in the AAA grand scheme of things.
How are you all finding the game so far? Anyone pick it up? The gaming landscape has been dead (or dying if we’re making terrible puns) and I think I might put some time into the game based on that fact alone.
Comments
65 responses to “Community Review: Dying Light”
I haven’t played it so can’t offer a review, but I have to say that the lack of reviews put me off. Seems like some kind of embargo dodginess where they don’t allow reviews to be published until after the game is already out? Or did they just not send out review copies at all? Certainly rang alarm bells with me, anyway, whatever the reason.
Reminds me of the launch for The Crew. That game had an unsettling small amount of fanfare upon release.
The reason why there were so few reviews around on launch is because they only have out the review copies 12 hours before the game launched to the public, which isn’t a great deal of time to play, form an opinion, then make and upload a video/type an article on it. I think TB, Jesse Cox and Dodger talked about in in the latest cooptional podcast.
They told everyone they wouldn’t place an embargo but they didn’t send review copies until the day it came out.
It’s dodgy as hell and screams red flags.
What feedback I have been seeing has been fairly positive though. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say some sort of logistics must have fallen apart and the late delivery wasn’t intentional.
I would dare say it has something to do with the push back of physical release.
They said themselves there would be no review embargo, obviously something bad happened with the disc release so no review copies can go out if they have none to send.
Personally – loving the game, hit the nail on the head after learning from dead island.
A good amount of Youtubers and/or Twitch streamers had copies of the game before release… Some of them quite a long while before release.
And before anyone goes on a rant about how Let’s Plays, etc, aren’t reviews… They aren’t, I’d say they’re actually better. Because there’s no bullshit associated with just watching the game in action for yourself and making your own call instead of letting someone else do it for you.
The game itself is quite fun. Some quests are boring. Voice Actors annoy me, and the scripts don’t help. Gameplay is ok. It’s all irrelevant though since I get 27FPS average on lowest settings with an i5 2500k/AMD 290. Literally like watching a GIF play out.
There’s got to be something else going on there. Did you read the article about performance? Tried turning the resolution down to see it you can crank the details up? I’ve also heard that if you remove the film grain effect you get some extra fps.
Lower view distance, it’s the biggest factor in fps in this game, for some reason.
Yep and you’ll get your account banned in the process 🙁
What do you mean? You’re not supposed to be able to turn the film grain off?
Techland for some reason have issued warnings to people installing that mod. I dunno why, it’s retarded. People have been getting their accounts banned for it. Seriously.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2uaqvs/dying_light_is_filing_dmca_claims_on_mods_and/
Oh ok well I won’t have my copy until the end of the month but this is good to know! Thanks! I’m pretty sure that I’ll be able to max it out so I probably won’t have to mod it…
To be fair, I don’t think Techland are trying to ban those ‘using’ the mods, just those creating and hosting them. Not that I agree with their stance anyway, ‘mod-ability’ should be a sales point not a flaw. In all honesty I don’t know how anyone could be banned for doing the process to remove the film grain themselves. Reminds me of the whole apple vs jailbreaking thing which was ultimately ruled in favour of customer’s have the right to play with their property? We’re not leasing the game, we’ve paid for it, what I do to my system should be my own right as long as it does not interfere with other users.
its ridiculous. Look at what modding has done for Bethesdas games and Rockstars? The mods for this are insurmountable. I would LOVE to increase zombies in this by a factor of 10 to give it a true Day of the Dead flavour, zombies packed wall to wall, no specials, just plain zombies, for running over the entire map having fun.
No they wont.
I’m yet to see a single person who was banned for disabling film grain… Try providing a source before throwing bullshit claims like that around. Because that reddit link sure aint proof of anyone being banned for it.
On another note, they would pretty much have to change the entire game file system to stop people doing it themselves.
Everything is on lowest (EVERYTHING). I don’t know why else it would be at this level, yet BF4, MGS5PP, Dragon Age:I, AC4:BF all play at comfortable 60FPS
That is odd the r9 290 should be more than capable. Have you checked what the gpu usage is when running the game? Have you tried turning the view distance down? Apparently if you reduce it to 50 percent it makes a massive difference.
I’m being literal when I say everything is on lowest. GPU usage fluctuates quite a lot from 40% to 70%.
I7-2600k and gtx780 here, plays smooth with almost max settings, CPU is doing a lot of work in comparison with other games though.
I downloaded the torrent to “test” ( I was never going to buy this game ) and the performance my my SLI 680s was pretty amazing, only had to turn some settings down from max at 2560 X 1440 res.
Naughty! But to be honest, I really don’t care.
Turning down the view distance also helps a lot apparently, but you may already have it turned down.
I got a massive jump in frame rate from turning down the view distance.
Can someone let me know? Better, worse, or about the same as Dead island?
From the little that I’ve played (two hours or so?), feels about the same as Dead Island. A little better but not much. So far, anyway.
Very different. Dead Island is all about the combat, this, you cannot keep weapons forever, they have limited repair amounts and WILL inevitably break. But the environment and your acrobatics are your best combat friend, not your weapons. It’s a mad game, solid 8.5/10
It’s Dead Island, with some game mechanics altered to focus the player into other avenues of surviving the zpoc.
My general impression from watching trailers is that it’s kind of like Mirror’s Edge with zombies. Is that accurate? I like Mirror’s Edge and I like zombies, just not sure if these guys can actually manage the quality of execution to match those ideas.
The movement aspect and parkour are excellent dude. It really feels free and easy to get around the map. Very rarely have I become ‘stuck’ on something or come across things I can’t navigate unless it’s the edge of the map obviously!! That free flowing feeling really makes being chased at night and exciting prospect.
This. This to the point we’ve been saying if Ubisoft leased their engine and made an Assassins creed First person game with it, it’d IMPROVE the series.
Yep. Agreed wholeheartedly dude. That would probably be a really sick game!!!
Ten fold better than dead island, they took the good and made it better along with a large number of new and awesome additions.
Feels pretty far away from dead island.
I only lasted a couple of hours in Dead Island and got bored. I’m up to 12 hrs on this and like it a lot.
I wanted to pick one up, but with the new delay of the physical release I’m stuck waiting till late feb for it.
From what I’ve seen, combat seems slightly better than dead island might be an over reliance on booting zombies to preserve your weapons. I do wonder if we’ll get to run into another horror icon like jason from the first DI game
I think I could have spent over 100 hours if the dialog and quests weren’t so cliché.. I don’t understand why they can’t just make people more believable. Instead of having everyone react to a zombie apocalypse like they expected it any day make people mentally breaking down and unable to accept the reality or give your character options / decisions with real weight even if it doesn’t actually change any gameplay.
Two words stopped me from buying this game.
Toe Shoes.
Monster hunter 4 Ultimate next friday!
Gawd I want to play that but its only on the WII U isn’t it?…
Not even, it’s 3ds exclusive!
I’d give a nut for a wii u version, I feel like the more complex environments would benefit massively from the improved screen size.
Would you lose a whole sack for a PS4 version?
…3DS mega pass
Yeah I’m surprised they didn’t make a WiiU version also, like they did with MH3U but who cares lol I got my new MH4U new 3ds waiting for me with my copy of it. Going to be a lonely valentines day 😛
The mh4u 3ds looks pretty badass, way better than the mm one!
I’m fine with my non xl, the demo plays well enough and the new weapons, movement, and monsters blow mh3 away!
I’ve gotta say that the game has impressed the shit out of me. Co-op is awesome fun and really adds another level and different aspect. Watching each others backs when lock picking made us want to pick every freaking lock we came across. Me and a friend were literally having a blast last night carving up zombie meat. It’s just good solid fun!!!
Is the whole main story co-op?
The intro isnt, which is like the tutorial…but the rest of the game is 🙂 The wife and I are loving it on the Xbox.
That’s awesome! I think making any games main story co-op adds so much. In fact, an average game can become really fun.
How does it run on xboxone? Any frame drops?
Holds its frame rate very well IMO except during a very few sequences I did notice a drop in performance.
If it’s the same as Dead Island I won’t complain. I had great fun with that game
It’s fun as hell dude
Do the weapons have a colour rarity system?
Yep in that stat ranges are colour coded
I’ve grown bored of everything being about zombies so I won’t be buying it.
But how else are you going to learn how to survive that actual zombie apocolypse…?? 😉
It’s ok man, while the zombies are chowin’ down on him it’ll give the rest of us time to get away.
I will never, ever, ever stop loving zombies. I am the mass consumer who actually awards points for zombie themes. 🙂
It’s a cheap gimmick at times but I’m the same, I love me some zombie stomping fun and there’s the added bonus that they’re already dead so there’s no remorse or hesitation over killing them. Although I must say the first time one of the fast zombies screamed “no please, stop” as I bashed its skull in I actually took a step back and thought “shit was that thing alive”.
Wait, they do what? Eeeerrgh, that’s unsettling! All the same, from the comments here I’m kinda looking forward to picking this up next year.
Having said that two of my favourite games of the past couple years are Walking Dead 1 & 2 and the Last of Us (not quite zombies but zombie-ish). If the story is good I will like them.
One of my most favorite games to date has been state of Decay. Open world Zombie games are great IMO.
Best soundtrack ever. 80’s dirty synths.
I was going to pick it up but with the physical delay and other games I want coming out around the same time now I’ll probably pass on this.
I’m really enjoying it so far, there are some really tense moments when your being chased at night and you’re running for your life, and climbing onto a roof and kicking zombies off never gets old. That said, It’s basically Dead Island with parkour, so if you enjoyed Dead Island you’ll like this, if you didn’t then stay away.
I was really disappointed with the way it was released though, I really would’ve preferred to buy a physical copy, but I wasn’t prepared to wait a whole month for it, so I was forced to buy it digitally. A delay that big between digital and physical releases will definitely cost them sales.
Overall I’d give it 7.5/10 for the game and 2/10 for the release.
Good fun game, especially playing coop with friends.
I’ve spent 6-7 hours playing coop and the running drop kick never gets old.
With 3 players you almost feel invincible… but not at night time.
It runs better than I expected on my i5 3570/GTX 670 setup with details all set to high at 1080p.
You get a bladed weapon and cut open a hole on the back of the hazmat zombies oxygen tank they fly away Just Cause 2 style then explode while you parkour across the roof tops and swan* dive into a dumpster.
What more do you need? (Also night time is legit terrifying)
*not actually swan dive.
I prefer to try those games based on my favorite mangas or animes, like Bleach Online, published by a new game company GoGames.
http://www.gogames.me/
You may have a try.
Hey Dudes… anybody still play this game?
I may have too much time on my hands but im into tactical coop squad based gaming, this game has unlimited potential for this kind of scenario.. if anyone is keen on doing this please let me know.
Cheers
Xbox Username – TyrantOfRage