WeView Verdict: Dying Light

It seems my views on Dying Light don’t really fit in with the general consensus. While it hasn’t really done much to grab hold of me, the rest of the community seems to be pretty supportive of the game. Jag, for example, called it “one of the most fun games of the year”, while JustTaylorNow simply said it’s a “Brilliant game”. Even Tuffcub, who is normally incredibly tough to please when it comes to WeViews, called it “An awful lot of fun”.

However, Tuffcub did have a caveat, saying that although the game is “surprisingly tense” initially, it starts to wane a bit as the game goes on. It seems it was the game’s ambient sound that lead to this, with the need to hide from the sound of a “zombie banging on a door trying to get out” evaporating once you discover “it means nothing”. That being said, Tuffcub was very positive otherwise, praising the co-op, the campaign and the fact that the side missions are good enough to keep you playing once you’ve finished the main story.

While Tuffcub may have liked the story, kjkg wasn’t quite as enamoured, calling it “woeful” and saying they “genuinely couldn’t care less about what is going on”. Bunimomike was slightly more positive, calling the main missions “forgettable but still enjoyable to do”. He preferred the game’s side missions, which seemed to be a fairly common theme.

DrDamn was clearly in this camp, saying that one of the game’s failings was that “a lot of the creativity in design and storytelling was reserved for the side quests and areas you had to explore to find”, although they did say that if you take your time to explore everything the game has to offer you’ll find “a much better game, an exceptional one for me”. Jag took a similar view, feeling that although “The story isn’t anything to write home about… you’ll find more interest in the side missions”.

The other element that seems to be worth touch in is the way the game utilises parkour in its movement system. Youles called it “by far this games best feature” and “a great way of utilising and exploring” the game’s “huge world”, while kjkg said “The climbing mechanics are brilliant”. Bunimomike also highlighted the game’s movement system, praising the fact it gave him “levels of freedom I’ve not felt before with regards to how you move and the world itself”.

Finally, we turn to Youles again. Although they had a fairly mixed view of the game, they ended up ultimately praising the game overall:

The more I think about it, and everything Dying Light has tried to achieve, it’s probably a very underrated game despite some minor flaws (cheesy characters). For the type of game it is, the story is never going to be it’s strongest point, but it’s good enough and the main path takes you to a couple of nice additional unexpected areas too.

So all that’s left to do is count up the votes that Dying Light received. It’s a pretty simple results this week, with just one person selecting a verdict of Sale It, while the other six of you plumped for Buy It. That’s a fairly strong statement of support for the game, so you should clearly go and pick it up.

In tomorrow’s WeView we’ll be taking a look at Evolve. Replacing it in the poll for next week’s game is The Order: 1886.