Dying Light - Reveal Impressions

Like most zombie fans, I'm a bit jaded when it comes to zombie games. Everyone has that game that made them reach their breaking point. Games like Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil, Dead Rising, Call of Duty's zombie mode, The Last of Us, and State of Decay have tried to recreate an enjoyable zombie experience by adding their own twist to it. As a result, of course, that has burned many people out because there's never a perfect game.

For me, I reached my burn out point with Dead Island. Until then zombie games had always been about scavenging for ammo and avoiding enemies when you were on empty. Never before had a game tried to make melee combat a focus by letting you use almost anything in the environment to crack a few undead skulls. I was in love for my first few hours. The dissonance between a tropical island resort and a veritable massacre worked surprisingly well together to keep the experience tense without constantly being a downer.

However, Dead Island was plagued (get it?) with bugs, including one that literally left me stranded in a sewer with no way to move forward and no way to exit and try again. Admittedly that did me a favor, because I had been struggling to enjoy the game for awhile, and this gave me a reason not to finish a zombie game. Bad gun controls, weird "super zombies," and nausea-inducing melee combat took a fantastic idea and ate its brains.

Why do I bring all that up? Because of an amazing 12 minutes I just spent watching pre-alpha footage of Dying Light, a next gen zombie game that shows a lot of promise.




Take the parkour style of Mirror's Edge, the melee focus and "super zombies" of Dead Island, the zombie hordes of Dead Rising, and (when night falls) the intense run-or-die moments from Left 4 Dead. Take out the bad parts of each and you basically have an idea of what Dying Light is all about.

When I first saw the subitle on IGN, I almost didn't watch it. "Left 4 Dead + Mirror's Edge + Dead Island = YESSSS!" Now I suck at math, but I'm pretty sure that's a formula for disappointment. However, even in its pre-alpha stage, what they're trying to accomplish seems to be pretty successful.

The idea of actually being punished for playing the good guy, as seen by a gang reaching an airdrop first because you rescued a little girl, is intriguing. After playing through Infamous 1 and 2 as a bad guy, I wouldn't mind a game that actually had meaningful choices for generosity or selfishness, bravery or self-preservation, right or wrong. Since the crate was so necessary because someone needs medicine, saving that little girl from her zombified father may end up killing someone at the home base. How's that for making you debate your choices?

The melee combat seems better than Dead Island, with meaningful ways to escape (including Mario-hopping on heads), or just various kill animations depending on what's happening and, I assume, based on your surroundings. The weapons look like they take damage too, so that will keep you scrounging about for weapons and adding tension.

Also, shuffling zombies! After so much time spent with marathon runners, it will be nice to outrun my enemies. What's brilliant, of course, is that this game is all about corridors and confined spaces. Every time he encountered the undead, he barely had room to maneuver, let alone fight off a large number.

That of course, leads to the excitement of a free running environment. Assuming poles, ledges, boards, etc are spread liberally throughout the level, this could add a lot of fun to the game. The game's final moments of watching the player run for his life, taking advantage of everything in the environment to keep him safe and away from the suddenly-aggressive zombies (and clickers from The Last of Us, apparently). If the player can scale things quickly I will be in love with this idea. Games like Assassin's Creed have a similar vibe, but anything not involving running takes way too long. And in a survival horror game like this, you don't want to be at the mercy of slow climbing when you have an army of rotting corpses snapping at your ankles.

Now for the thing that makes me less excited, and that's the actual gameplay. Before I go in to this, I completely understand that this is an open world game and that the demo was purposely set up to demonstrate many of the game's aspects. I also know that pre-alpha means a load of things are subject to change, so I'm trying to evaluate things that seem pretty core to the game itself.

That being said, I can see this being as much of a drag as Dead Island was. The combat is very monotonous, with each melee weapon taking a couple swings to bring anything down. With guns you at least have to aim and can move about while fighting, but with melee you're basically stuck in a boxing ring until they die or you run. I love killing zombies, but Dead Island's good idea/bad execution should be something to learn from, not something to copy.

Also, time seems like it will be an annoyance. The supply drops happened at a time when no one would feasibly be able to go out, gather the huge crate(s), and get them back home before night fell. After the encounter with the local gang/militia at the first crate, it took 3 minutes for the sun to set. That means that the games created this scenario:

• Airdrop crates at several points.
• As the player approaches the closest crate, trigger a morality event.
• If they choose to help, they won't be able to make it to the second crate and back home before night fall.
• Enjoy your death.

I get that there's a lot of emphasis placed on changing strategies between day and night, but I don't want it to be such an emphasis that I'm strong-armed in to dealing with it, despite my best attempts at only travelling during the day. 

And finally, Dying Light's version of night vision. Ewwww. It's hard to tell how much of this is pre-alpha and how much is the actual design, but nothing about the night looks fun. I have a feeling that the game will push realism so much that night will be like most dark situations in video games, where you "realistically" can't see anything but you still don't get the use of your other senses and instincts, making for a cheap experience. 

I'm also not digging the overused "sensory pulse," where your senses act as a radar. Outside of Splinter Cell I've never seen anyone rationalize how it makes any sense, and in a zombie game where you're fighting for your life it's even more awkward to "sense" through walls.  

My primary complaint with the night stuff is that you have to sneak around in an action game. Who knows, maybe a next-gen title will be able to balance the two, but I'm not terribly confident. I also wonder how cheap my deaths will be at night. The player was fortunate that everything he snuck up on had its back to him. With zombies seeming to turn in to adrenaline-fueled killers at night (but not in dark houses?), it seems like the player has no fighting chance at night. I suppose that's the point, but then all you're seemingly left with is "run like a madman" or "hide like a coward," and who knows how long the latter option will work. 

My complaints at this stage are minimal, of course, because the bad stuff usually gets hammered out while the good gets better. If they can tighten up combat, avoid centering missions around night and using it as a crutch, and then make night a part of the game where I'm excited to fight for my life, then we may have a winner. We know very little about the game at this point, but the reveal trailer definitely has my interest. 

I'm still waiting for a zombie game to be done right. State of Decay came close, and that was just an arcade title. Who knows what the next generation will hold for us? All I know is that I'm ready to see what's in store for us.

See you tomorrow!

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