The Beginning:

Dying Light, The Following Released in 2015 after a long run of zombie/slasher games.  The game was told to bring a new imaginative story of a city that got hit with a virus that turns people into different types of zombies and bring parkour as one of the foremost major way to travel. An open world game with many side quests and the DLC The Following added in 2016.  Dying Light brings more horror to the story with daytime and nighttime timeline which can increases scare tactics and level of zombies. A sequel to Dead Island, the bases of the story start as the you the main protagonist Kyle Crane, an undercover Global Relief Effort (GRE) agent meant to infiltrate the city of Harran Turkey to find and capture a rogue political figure Kadir “Rais” Suleiman. Rais is holding a file that could show light to the world and ruin the reputation of the organization. Once airdropped Kyle Crane gets jumped by some of Rais’s goons and uses his handgun, which attracts zombies, to protect himself. Kyle gets bit before he gets saved by two different “runners” part of the “Tower’s” members, Jade Aldemir and Amir Ghoreyshi. Unfortunately, Amir dies, and Jade takes you back to the Tower where you sleep for a couple days before hazelly waking up and learning about this refugee camp/tower. You learn how the city is very quickly and how-to parkour. You finally get to meet the leader of the Tower Brecken. You/Kyle must now earn the trust of the people while keeping your cover to find Rais and take the file.

 

Learning Curve and Decision Making:

As someone that is new to the PC world, I had a long and steep learning curve of the mechanics of the game. In game, you immediately must learn how to parkour by using what the Tower members call their gym.  Their gym is parts of a building jumping from platform to platform learning running, jumping and grabbing a ledge, scaling walls using parts of the wall to get high and using resources like boxes to maneuver to get to more ledges. One of the most difficult parts was having to stare and using the crosshairs to point exactly at a ledge to even have a chance to grab it. The first city (yes I said first) of Harran is called the Slums which is a very poor town that mainly consists of random small buildings, electrical grids, signal towers, gas stations, a destroyed bridge over a waterfront village and small sections of safe zones that must be recovered from the zombie invasion. Initially, the game asks what difficulty you want to be in, Normal mode, Hard mode or Nightmare mode.  I played through in normal mode and I tell you that normal mode is hard itself.  The game pushes playing through for hours of free roam and side missions to gain skill points for multiple skill trees. The skill points depending on what you do gain a certain amount of experience points to Agility, Power and Survivor to help as the game progressively gets harder. You must constantly learn the game to be able to get through the missions which start at a medium difficulty. As you achieve higher skills you get to pick where on the tree you want to pick from being able to use a combination of keys to avoid being grabbed by a zombie to jumping over them.

 

Rules of Fun and Decision Making:

You as the player must constantly be deciding what the next is whether to run from a fight or stand and fight. The player gets to learn about the different zombies very early and must face some of the hardest and biggest variations of the zombies early in the game. Some of the zombies grew to three times the size of a normal human and wield giant concrete iron weapons that swing and sends the player flying or can ground pound and incapacitate the player for a couple of seconds. So, the choice to run from them to capture the safe zone or similarly the mission. This type of “Hard Fun” game stated by Lazzaro’s four keys of fun makes you the player enjoy the game and creates a want for more. One of the most enjoyable parts of the game is just the main mechanics of the game, killing zombies and the parkour of the game. Some of the fun of the parkour is reaching the highest points and viewing the games amazing graphic scenery then ziplining down and finding other places to do it again.  Unfortunately, as the main story goes there are not major choices that changes what happens other than the end of the DLC The Following, which I will not disclose (go play the game it is definitely worth it).

Weapons are the make and break in fighting the zombies off. Dying light has a range of weapons from one-handed, two-handed regular weapons that can be upgraded in different variations. As the player goes through side quests and explores the player will find blueprints for upgrades which make certain weapons that improve its damages and possibly added effects like paralyzing or burning. Deciding which upgrades to make in the beginning of the game is crucial since weapons are everyone from inside of locked/unlocked crates and buying them, and the possibility of finding a better one. There are two types of upgrades to the weapon, the one I already explained and what is just called weapon upgrades that do not need the use of blueprints. These upgrades slightly alter the weapons damage, durability or handling.  Durability is as the name states the strength of how many hits the weapon can take before it is unusable, some weapons can be repaired more than others with by using scraps of metal and sprockets found lying about the map. Deciding whether the weapon is worth upgrading is up to you as the player depending on what type of player are you. Are you the type of player that stands with two-handed weapons and faces the zombies head on or are you more of a player that moves around quickly and deals small damage while running in and out of the fight? There are even long-range weapons like a bow and arrow or throwable weapons that consists of throwing starts to military axes. One of the strangest skills that can be an acquired is throwing your own weapon at zombie, so choosing how you want to face the enemy is all up to you.

After two years of high ratings on gameplay the game put out the DLC The Following, which made the story go on and have an ending. One of the biggest changes was the ability to gain access to and use a dune buggy. Now just like the other skills from the skill tree and weapon upgrades the car has upgradable skills and parts to improve it. Including the car to this whole new map that you have traversed to right outside the city mountains of Harran just called the countryside. If, as the player, starts with The Following DLC the player will have not only the learning curve the regular campaign but driving. The driving mechanic is not simple, comparing to racing games the driving is not precise and will cause the player to adapt to on and off roads right away.

Multiplayer:

Dying Light is mainly a single player story campaign, the game developers did create two multiplayer additions. One of the multiplayer additions was the campaign, play the same campaign as a single player but all players (up to four) must be doing the same mission. Once a player gets to a checkpoint all players must be there and go through either a cutscene or part of the mission for the game to progress. The second is called Be the Zombie where you can choose to be a zombie or a human and fight each other in the Slums. Multiplayer games have been one the verge of Battle Royals, strategy RPG’s or just first/third person shooters with either no campaign or is an afterthought. Bringing multiplayer to the new online scene is difficult due to many people wanting to play with their friends from the comfort of their own home and gaming set up. Luckily Dying Light is still around available to play with your friends to explore and kill zombies in new ways to be enjoyed. As I played and progressed in the game, I did not have the chance to play with my friends (don’t get me wrong I do have friends) I had to seek other means of learning how the game was in those settings, which turned me to videos on the internet. Watches how they played with their friends and how they interacted with the new mechanics is exactly how I was and thought. One of the things that came to my attention when thinking of what makes the game fun while watching the people play was the way they reacted to dropkicking the zombies. Dropkicking is one of the Agility perks from the skill tree, by running then pressing the E key with in midair. Not sure why this skill is enjoyable till you start doing it yourself more times and seeing them fly when on top of buildings (Really try it, it is really fun). I did not talk much on the second story line of the game, better known as The Following, but as the multiplayer goes, it is pretty much the same.

Conclusion:

Dying Light, The Following is a game that breaks the mold of regular slasher games, zombie killers and parkour with the in-depth story line. The game brings together all the major components to make a game fun.  Dying Light even pulls all of Bartle’s Taxonomy of players into one game; Killers, Achievers, Socializers and Explorers by having an open world that could be multiplayer, killing zombies and having tons of achievement awards. Playing through the game you get a sense of worth as helping everyone with surviving and finding new ways to kill zombies and get through. Having a day cycle increases the suspense and difficulty, either sleep the night away at a safe zone or track through the worst of the zombies, the Volatile, which are the strongest, fastest and creepiest looking zombies in the game. If that is not enough to make someone play there are tons of Easter Eggs like a homage to the first level of the first 8-bit Super Mario Bros and many more. Are you brave enough to play the game through Nightmare mode?