Dying Light: 100% COMPLETION REVIEW
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Ok so, games where you forget completely what your objective was supposed to be due to getting distracted with its own gameplay and just roaming around are absolutely awesome. Dying Light AKA the Vertigo Simulator just so happens to be one of them. You can completely ignore quests and instead go apeshit, killing every zombie in the open world, much like I myself did before doing the quests! I suggest completing them however, to start leveling up and making combat that much cooler. I keep laughing my ass off when I climb high buildings, then grapple the zombies and throw them off. I then watch them fly!
Where Dying Light shines, is definitely on the gameplay. It has the perfect recipe: responsive parkour movement, and zombies. The cherry on top is the punchy feeling of melee combat. Crane feels very nimble as we control him. And I have to mention how well optimized this game is, despite the graphics being pretty high quality!
The story is where it drops the ball. I wouldn't say it sucks exactly, since you do feel motivated and truly understand Crane's feelings and actions. Things are justified, and the environmental lore is not too bad either. Harran feels very much alive, like there used to be an actual thriving city before chaos struck. However, it's nothing to write home about, in essence. It's your average Far Cry-esque plot, with a villain, people you're supposed to root for, a reason is given to hate this and that character, etc. Everything is there, but it's not incredibly well written.
The Following DLC manages to have an even worse story than the base game, with poorly written characters, and nobody's personality is expanded on. The whole plot could be summed up to two or three sentences. Again, the gameplay is to be celebrated here: despite parkour being one of the selling points of Dying Light, The Following cuts down on it and instead has us explore the countryside, with significantly less opportunities to climb stuff, but gives us a pretty cool buggy to drive instead! Running over zombies never gets old, and it's a nice breath of fresh air.
Hellraid is a strange DLC, to say the least. It's a totally separated short story that looks like a Skyrim quest mod more than anything. The "Mostly Negative" reviews for it here on Steam speak for themselves. Terrible DLC, that feels like a boring hack-and-slash fest. Even though this game genre is absolutely amazing, Dying Light does NOT pull it off well. One of the worst DLCs I have ever played, despite having a bit of fun.
There's a Co-Op multiplayer component in Dying Light. Personally, I didn't enjoy it too much, since the game is now pretty much dead. Every player is either AFK on the pause menu and doesn't acknowledge your presence at all, or just runs laps around a safezone, or kicks you instantly. Zombie invasions where people "invade" your lobby and have to attack you while playing as a night hunter is too unbalanced to be fun. The concept sounds great, but once you start getting stomped by players with 3k hours in the game while you want to play the game at your own pace, you'll realize it's poorly executed. Dying Light is best played entirely as a singleplayer experience. Plus, seeing other players ruins the immersion entirely, since the story is about YOU, Kyle Crane, being the best runner in The Tower capable of everything, and having someone else just throws that narrative point right out the window.
When it comes to achievements, it's where the game gets EVEN worse, and it hits the fan... As a committed achievement hunter for 5 years at the writing of this review and 55 finished games on my belt, I declare Dying Light the WORST completion I have ever undergone. The vast majority of them can be obtained solo and pretty easily. Some are extremely difficult to pull off, but doable, shall you put on your try hard shoes. But the ones that require the cooperation of other players towards the same goal, and the ones that directly need RNGesus' blessing are the equivalent of waterboarding torture. Trying to accomplish and/or organize anything with the VERY few people playing a dead multiplayer game is a terrible endeavour, and I'm referring to the "Together Till The End", "Polyamory", "Harran Athletics" and "Lucky 7" achievements. Relying on pure luck and exploits is also an idiotic move from Techland, when it comes to the stupidly named "Homo Homini Lupus Est" achievement, that is IMPOSSIBLE to unlock once you advance enough in the main story, and the only mean to farm for it is by using a famous exploit.
Despite all these negative points I've listed, Dying Light remains one of my favorite games of all time. This game is incredible in what it does well! I expect to put more hours in it in the future, long after reviewing it, since it is permanently up for revisiting for me! Before I forget, here's a guide to help with the atrocious completion of its achievements: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2882328771