I value Dying Light the same way I do with Dead Island. Both developed by the talented folks at Techland, the two games present a unique approach to zombie slaying that few other studios have managed to emulate. Where Dead Island felt like a test run for the formula, Dying Light allowed Techland to go away and patch up a few holes, the spiritual successor weaving in a few original ideas of its own.
Still, when the game launched last year, the similarities were there – both the good and the bad. Although Dying Light’s chunkier enemies and solid parkour helped to set it apart, core elements like game flow and mission-tracking felt as though they were still stuck in 2011.
That’s not to say it’s not enjoyable. When partnered with other survivors, Dying Light can be an absolute hoot, outside of matchmaking issues. Then there’s the sheer viscera of the melee combat. Although you’re gradually dulled to the brutality after a while, that initial sense of power when crushing skulls and hacking off limbs is quite the rush.
Despite some initial reservations, I was finally ready to dive back into Harran last month with the release of Dying Light’s new expansion, The Following. Sure, the prospect of driving a buggy through hordes of infected was a huge draw, but Techland had also been teasing a raft of new features and improvements to the core game.
Whether or not you purchase Dying Light’s season pass or The Following, everyone’s entitled to most of this bonus content. Its release coincided with Techland’s new boxed release of the game, dubbed the “Enhanced Edition” on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Although far from groundbreaking, this suite of bonus features is testament to the developer’s dedication in supporting its product and fanbase.
Aside from secondary elements such as more character models, better AI, improved facial expressions, and a performance upgrade, there are more substantive add-ons too. These take the form of the new “Legend” and “Bounties” systems. Together, they look to extend Dying Light’s replay value once players have beaten the main game.
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Conceptually, it’s a great idea. One of my biggest issues with Dying Light was the lack of incentive to engage in much of the side content, especially once the story missions had dried up. With experience points and the prospect of better equipment the key driving force, it often felt as though I was grinding away with no final destination in mind.
In some ways the Legend system looks to remedy this. It’s essentially an extra skill tree that showers veteran players with rewards for their character across a whopping 250 ranks. That’s pretty generous to say the least and will no doubt help to accommodate players as Techland roles out the rest of its season pass content.
Then there are the Bounties to consider. Much like in other games, they give players small tasks to carry out in tandem with the main objectives. These include all sorts of actions that look to incorporate combat and parkour as well as driving.
In truth, this pair of new systems is what had me excited to return to Dying Light. However, even after booting up my save game and roaming Harran for a good dozen hours, these cool new features were kept out of reach.
You see, although bounties are made available after completing the main game, in order to earn Legend experience, you need to have maxed out one of Dying Light’s three skill trees. These come in various guises and have you performing all sorts of basic actions as well as participating in challenges and side missions. However, having explored much of the side content and almost completing The Following, I was still quite a way off unlocking the Legend skill tree.
As much as I’ve enjoyed my recent visit to Harran, I wasn’t prepared to grind out the experience points needed by using a combination of cheap boosts and tricks. The real intention here is that people play on higher difficulties, with Hard difficulty and the Enhanced Edition’s new Nightmare mode offering up much more XP in order to help you level up quicker.
Luckily it didn’t matter too much. Before I could become frustrated at being locked out of the Legend content, the same niggling issues that had originally warded me away from Dying Light were started to appear again. Combat, although cool at first, was starting to develop into a joyless slog, as were the glut of secondary missions The Following bombards its players with.
When alongside friends, it’s likely that many of these issues would become easy to overlook – Tef had an awful lot of fun playing The Following in co-op for review. However, for someone who loves a single player open world game, Dying Light rapidly begins to lose its appeal as soon as I stray from the beaten path.
Youles
A good and accurate write-up in my opinion. I love and hate things about this game.
I think the Enhanced Edition is an excellent, complete game that presents a lot of value and arguably a “must buy”. The game has some great features such as parkour; day-night cycle where the entire dynamic of the game changes; good variety of DLC; fair/balanced weapon & vehicle “maintenance” (it doesn’t become too frequent or a chore); and despite some of the NPCs lacking charisma the main protagonist is actually genuinely sarcastic and funny at times with fairly realistic reactions to some quests he’s asked to undertake.
However, there are equally frustrating elements – server problems, repetitive A-B missions, combat becomes boring, parkour can be inconsistent and frustrating. I found The Following map a bit annoying – it might have been deliberate but so many paths were blocked off by cliffs and high drops that I’d have to constantly consult the map to get to where I want to go.
All in all though, I think it’s a rather impressive game and I’ve had a lot of fun with it, mostly in co-op though.
Forrest_01
Have to say that I find it quite strange that you had not managed to complete at least one of the skill trees – By the end of the game (vanilla), the only one I had left was the agility skill tree, which was just one level away.
So whether you get more xp for playing in co-op throughout, or whether it was just generally a case of us going for the ‘completed all side missions‘ trophy, I found that returning to finish off the last few bits & pieces after the following was released rewarded me with legend stuff immediately. Of course, my objective was to finish it off, not to plod on for hours on end (as I didn’t have the DLC), so I didn’t put much stock into it or pay it much attention tbh.
bunimomike
I have the golden double barrel shotgun. It makes me so happy it’s silly! Teflon will tell you. The power… oh god, the power of it! Also, I used my first Legendary point last night and the damage goes up 10%. That’s 10% more fun right there. :-P