• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Dying Light IOTI A dead island on the mirror's edge.

Fucking kidding me that we're only getting this on the 27th of February here in Europe? What the fuck is this? I thought we were done with this. Good luck coming out in this area with The Order releasing a week before.

And I know, digitally, yada yada. I want my box, dammit.
 
Fucking kidding me that we're only getting this on the 27th of February here in Europe? What the fuck is this? I thought we were done with this. Good luck coming out in this area with The Order releasing a week before.

And I know, digitally, yada yada. I want my box, dammit.
It was delayed.
 

Flunkie

Banned
After having played Dying Light a number of hours now, I have a new title for it (I made it):

KFmsm15.png
Soooooooo good
 

Tunesmith

formerly "chigiri"
Fucking kidding me that we're only getting this on the 27th of February here in Europe? What the fuck is this? I thought we were done with this. Good luck coming out in this area with The Order releasing a week before.

And I know, digitally, yada yada. I want my box, dammit.
Physical edition delayed due to distribution problems. There's always digital.
 
Sound Design in this game is top notch. From the blood curdling screams to having distorted hearing when you're floating in water. Good Stuff

It is good but I wish they didn't put so many ambient sounds on high rotation.

That clanging pipe, that sounds like someone dropped one. The scream in the tower. You start to notice them repeat very quickly.

In GTA5 the only random ambient sound that outstays its welcome is the "distant motorbike accelerating in the city" one.
 

jesu

Member
Fucking kidding me that we're only getting this on the 27th of February here in Europe? What the fuck is this? I thought we were done with this. Good luck coming out in this area with The Order releasing a week before.

And I know, digitally, yada yada. I want my box, dammit.

I keep telling myself we won't have to worry about the losing our progression bug by then!
 
It is good but I wish they didn't put so many ambient sounds on high rotation.

That clanging pipe, that sounds like someone dropped one. The scream in the tower. You start to notice them repeat very quickly.

In GTA5 the only random ambient sound that outstays its welcome is the "distant motorbike accelerating in the city" one.

just like real life
 

Garuda1One

Member
Damn it i just cant seems to understand the lockpicking mechanic here.. help ?

Im using a mouse and kb so there will be no vibration..
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Hopefully this will help out anyone on the fence!

A little background: I never played Dead Island at all, it just didn't appeal to me. Really never stood out. The last Far Cry game I played was 2 so I may be missing out on a lot of the parallels people are drawing to that franchise as well. On the other hand, huge Mirror's Edge fan, open world/sandbox fan in general.

First off, it's really fucking good. Any qualms about the delayed reviews indicating poor quality can be quashed. It's not going to be for everybody, and if you're predisposed not to like it (don't like parkour, don't like sandboxes, can't take another zombie game), it's not going to win you over. But it's a damn fine, polished piece of entertainment.

What works:
  • Massive fun factor. If you are the kind of gamer who can just make your own fun, it's tough not to recommend this game. Set up traps with gas tanks and alcohol and ignite them with flaming shurikens. Vault over a zombie onto a roof and leap onto a rock outcrop, then scale a radio tower and zipline down. Affix a torch lighter to a butcher knife and slice people in half while cauterizing them at the same time. In pitch darkness, sneak up on shambling enemies and dropkick them into walls of spikes. As a zombie, grab another player from behind with your tentacle-arm and devour them. There are times while playing this that it's really a good thing the people of Harran can't read my mind and see how little I care about their troubles; I'm just having a blast.
  • Pretend this game has no zombies for a minute. Does an open-world parkour game appeal to you? Then just buy it. Honestly. It's scratching the itch I've had for an open world Mirror's Edge for over 6 years now. It starts out feeling deceptively clunky, but with a few choice skill unlocks it becomes sublime.
  • Choose-your-own-playstyle. The biggest surprise for me in the game was how you level up. The three trees- Survival, Agility, and Power- are completely separate, and you gain XP in each by doing the relevant actions. Survival XP you get for completing quests, establishing safe zones, looting and scavenging at night, surviving until dawn, etc. Agility you level up by doing parkour. Power you level up by killing stuff. In other words, the more parkour you do, the more XP you earn to unlock better parkour abilities, which enables you to take your parkour further, earning more XP, and so on without engaging in any combat... or, you could be a powerhouse zombie slayer, focusing all your efforts on your melee abilities and crafting powerful weapons. Or you could be "Bruce Wayne: Zombie Hunter" and craft gadgets and distractions and use environmental traps and stealth to accomplish your goals. You could even be a kind of zombie-fighting alchemist by focusing on crafting powerful boosters that make you faster and stronger, give you night vision, and more. Or of course, anywhere in between. Succeeding by doing what you want gives you more toys to do more of what you want. It's an incredibly addictive feedback loop that has seen me ignoring mission objectives altogether for "a quick jaunt" only to notice that over an hour has passed.
  • Nighttime changes gameplay dramatically; while during the day you've mainly got the shambling Romero-style biters, who are more dynamic geometry for vaulting over than a threat to your life, as darkness falls a legitimate tension takes hold and the gameplay shifts to an unexpected hybrid of MGS stealth complete with zombie vision cones and GTA-style "all hell breaking loose" chases when you're seen. And even at night, a huge variety of playstyles are viable and fun to succeed with- in a brilliant move, all XP gains for Agility and Strength are doubled at night, and surviving through til dawn gives you a huge Survival bonus. So there's a great risk vs. reward setup to encourage you to play at night, even though many people will skip it altogether since you can sleep at any time to get back to day.
  • While I wish I was playing on PC, game looks good on the PS4. I feel like "at least it's 1080p" is something I'll wind up saying to myself a lot this generation. Everything just looks sort of competent and solid so far; there hasn't been much opportunity for memorable art design, while creating a believable atmosphere is where the engine seems to excel. I should mention there's a very noticeable film-grain filter that I find sort of distracting, but I think it's doing a yeoman's job obscuring the aliasing and rougher textures the game needs to work with on consoles. Clearly locked at 30fps, with occasional unfortunate dips. Not ideal, but generally speaking, it is a good-looking game.
  • Sound design is phenomenal. Really, really above average. Raw materials like pipes, wood planks, concrete all sound spot on. Your character's breathing is realistic. Whenever you make a bunch of noise, there's a satisfying (or at night, bloodcurdling) response from nearby zombies. Wind whipping by sounds perfect, especially when in a freerunning flow. The score is an unexpected standout. All driven, synthpop tracks of various tempos, it's like 80s-action heaven; channeling Romero's flicks, John Carpenter... hell, it reminds me of Drive at times. It's a perfect match and really elevates the package.
  • Co-op is hellaciously fun, seamless, and well-implemented. You can just drop in and out of games at will and retain everything you accomplish or find in multiplayer. Loot is instanced. It's all just really well done. The asymmetrical invasion multiplayer can be tense, compelling and unique gameplay when played as intended, but there may be some disincentive for the human side to do so that the devs might want to tweak.
  • Lots of little touches that make it clear this is a labor of love for Techland. Books in houses and storefronts have legible titles on their spines. Certain diegetic sounds like radio comms, clicking your flashlight on and off, and your watch alarm indicating the start of nightfall come out of the PS4 controller. A good portion of the flavor text on craftable items is hilarious. Powerful zombies that are weak to sunlight don't just jump around a corner and despawn if you're facing them when dawn comes, they run like wounded dogs leaving a trail of smoke behind them. A multitude of easter eggs. Random locations seem to frequently contain "little stories" you can piece together, like someone having locked himself in the bathroom before starting to turn, or a strong zombie having knocked one of the barricades off a safe house still lying in wait inside. Kudos to Techland, they really didn't go lazy with one. It's packed with broad swaths of content alongside lots of endearing little touches and attention to detail.
What doesn't:
  • Personal pet peeve here, but the intro and tutorial are boring and awful and boring, and there's no ability to skip them. I could talk about this at ridiculous length, but... suffice it to say your don't want the very first things players do in your game to be the most boring things you can do in your game. Just set me free!
  • The story... eghhh... while the quickly-established premise to get you doing menial favors for everyone around you is solid enough... the narrative tropes immediately on display here are so well-worn that I could barely pay attention to the plot points in the first mission. Oh, the government has quarantined the area after the outbreak and lost control in the aftermath. Oh, a resistance faction and criminal faction have arisen to fill the void. Oh, medicine is needed to protect the survivors but the supply is short and always contested. Oh, a character we knew for 10 seconds has nobly sacrificed himself endowing those remaining with redoubled purpose. Oh, we're seeing some unusually developed, more powerful zombies crop up among the basic ones. Oh, we're worried that our friend and comrade might be turning. You could play bingo with this stuff, seriously. The lone note that
    your character is actually a secret agent for the government attempting to infiltrate both factions
    is enough of a hook to keep me from dismissing the storyline altogether, but my expectations are a flatline. I'm happy to be pleasantly surprised if things take an interesting turn somewhere in there, but thus far we're not exactly in uncharted territory here. There has been one "twist" so far
    when you are ordered by your government contact to destroy a bunch of medicine to provoke the factions, and you comply after stealing just one vial
    . It fell flat for me... it really hasn't been established that I should care. But, I'll keep an open mind.

    [*]Characters are thus far cliché and unmemorable
    to me, your mileage may vary. Voice acting is hit or miss.
  • As I mentioned, you start off very weak in all areas, just sort of pathetically ill-equipped for the challenges around you. While this can be frustrating, I'm not actually counting this as a knock against the game- it makes the progression very satisfying. One negative I'd say is that you don't really have a good sense of the progression in the first couple of hours, after which it opens up gloriously. Freerunning Adept, for example, an innocuous passive skill, dramatically changes the feel and flow of the parkour for the better.

At this point I'm enamored with the basic sandbox structure, so my estimation of the game can only improve (if the story/mission design/late game is unexpectedly of higher quality) or stay the same (if it isn't). If the premise of this kind of sandbox appeals to you, buy it.

TL;DR: Parkour traversal, general mechanics, and progression in general are excellent, nighttime gameplay is refreshing and fun, lots of opportunities throughout for varied playstyles. Good graphics, great sound design and surprisingly awesome score. Co-op seems very promising. Awful intro/tutorial, cliché story and characters, early mission/quest design is unimpressive. Overall, very high-quality with lots of little touches that indicate the game is a labor of love.
 
They really made it super hard to climb down things. I've died 4 times trying to get back onto a pipe from the inside of the bridge strut. I hold R1 but he won't grab on to save his life. How are you supposed to climb down ledges also?
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Is this worth grabbing over Alien Isolation? Looking to grab one or the other tonight, and I'm kinda torn.

I'm leaning towards DL because it looks more fun to play, and the Melee combat reminds me a little of Condemned.
Alien seems less combat focused, but I can get it for $32 with GCU at Best Buy.
 
They really made it super hard to climb down things. I've died 4 times trying to get back onto a pipe from the inside of the bridge strut. I hold R1 but he won't grab on to save his life. How are you supposed to climb down ledges also?
Yeah. That's a complaint of mine as well. I had to climb down an elevator shaft, so I jumped in and tried grabbing hold of a ledge beneath me, where I had aimed, and my character was just like "nope", and fell to his death.

The grappling hook also frustrates me when it decides it just doesn't want to grab onto anything and you look like an idiot jumping off a building and falling to your death.

can you go back to the slums after going to the next area before beating the game?
You can go anywhere after beating the game.

I'm pretty sure you have to
navigate through the sewers again though.

Question about how far along in the game Im in.
I just got past the arena, and ended up in the safe house near the water. How much story do I have left?
About 50% of the way through. Maybe more.

I'm not entirely sure though, because I got really distracted in the second map, and even though I was keeping an eye on my progression percentage, I was very surprised when I checked before the end to find out it had jumped up to 90%.
 
Frankly I'm enjoying the story in this far more than I enjoyed the story in Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4, or Shadow of Mordor. Which I thought were all painfully lacking. I even sold FC4 off at about 50% story completion. There's literally nothing to keep you going with that game. You can't trade a decent plot for eccentric (and superficial) characters. The Yogi side missions... Jesus christ. At least in Dying Light there are several factions at play who all interlock and interact in interesting ways – and it's genuinely engaging to see who'll come out top and how they will develop. Even if, yes, a lot of the dialogue is shite.

Dying Light's protagonist isn't as awful as everyone makes him out to be, despite some very poor writing (specifically in the loading screen blurbs). He shows pretty sound principles and morality and is well written whenever he's being forced to do something he doesn't want to do. I like the dynamic that he's also basically a double agent for the GRE, and I LOVE that there are no arbitrary moral choices disguised as game mechanics. Fuck that shit.

Events develop nicely (and I'm not even at the second map) and some of the side quests are excellent, reminding me a lot of Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Even ignoring the story of the side quests, some of the level design is fucking sublime. The 'Gassed Out' quest or whatever it's called is amazing, when the pipelines burst and you have to deal with Virals while working out how to turn all the pipes off (genuine emergent level design and objectives in there.) Or the one where you run errands for a crazy guy, and there's emergent level design where you have to climb on the underside of a bridge to reach your objective (and the game doesn't signpost this AT ALL, it's up to you to work it out). There are little puzzles and exploration moments like this all the time, and I don't think I've played a game which does it so well in an open world context before.

I agree with everything you said. The only thing Far Cry does better is shooting & animals.

Question: Is there a respec potion?

i think I want to start over because I don't believe I'm a be able to max out any skill tree. Now that I think about it, that'll give me a reason to do multiple playthroughs. God I love games that allow multiple builds.
 
Regarding the Floor is Lava image..would you play this like Sunset Overdrive and Infamous? In the sense that you never want to be on the ground, as that's your weakest positioning.
 

drotahorror

Member
Anyone have any tips on the Cut 30 infected in half challenge from Jeffrey?

i think I want to start over because I don't believe I'm a be able to max out any skill tree. Now that I think about it, that'll give me a reason to do multiple playthroughs. God I love games that allow multiple builds.

I don't see why you couldn't max all 3 skill trees in 1 playthrough.
 

M.W.

Member
Sat in a pipe all night and got 5500 survival points. Might as well just spam this method for a bit and rank up.
 

SeanTSC

Member
Can't for the life of me find Syringes and Painkillers for the "Bandages and Meds" quest and Lighter Gas for the "Lighter Gas" quest. I've searched dozens of medical wall cabinets to no avail and I've seen a whole *1* Lighter Gas the entire game so far. Really annoying not being able to finish these.
 
I wasn't sure if I was going to like this game but so far I love it. I like just running around finding crap and doing side missions.

And then I found a different type of zombie
the hazmat (?) guys that explode
and was even more into it. Great game
 

Mengetsu

Member
Are any of the sidequest missable? Me and my friends just finished it and we felt like we have done every sidequest in the game. Do the challanges count?
 
I agree with everything you said. The only thing Far Cry does better is shooting & animals.

Question: Is there a respec potion?

i think I want to start over because I don't believe I'm a be able to max out any skill tree. Now that I think about it, that'll give me a reason to do multiple playthroughs. God I love games that allow multiple builds.

There's a new game plus that leaves you with whatever level you're at with all the skill tree empty for you to respec.

That'll be much easier than you releveling everything.
 
I need to stop hoarding weapon upgrades and use them. Thing is that none of my weapons have been that great outside of the odd couple, so I don't want to waste them. Even then, I know that I'll find better than those two modded ones in the future and they do the job alright.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
There's a new game plus that leaves you with whatever level you're at with all the skill tree empty for you to respec.

That'll be much easier than you releveling everything.
Whoa, like you have all the points in each category to spend right up right? That's a really cool way of doing NG+
 
There's a new game plus that leaves you with whatever level you're at with all the skill tree empty for you to respec.

That'll be much easier than you releveling everything.

Thanks for saving me all that time.

Whoa, like you have all the points in each category to spend right up right? That's a really cool way of doing NG+

Great review, I loved the game for all the same reasons you did. The story started out ok then soon as u encounter Rais it just becomes quest givers. I do like how the main character reacts when given these quests and when he completes them. At least the premise is good.
 

zychi

Banned
Finished the main story. Took me a little over 10 hours. Nice little filler game for January. Would have been pissed if I paid $60 for it, but the Gamestop mess up made be impulse buy it and it was worth it.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Thanks for saving me all that time.



Great review, I loved the game for all the same reasons you did. The story started out ok then soon as u encounter Rais it just becomes quest givers. I do like how the main character reacts when given these quests and when he completes them. At least the premise is good.
yeah, I'll admit the main character "works" at least, it's not like he's inexplicably willing and eager to do all these odd jobs. "There! The power's fucking ON!"
 

WarMacheen

Member
Watching a stream after having essentially avoided all info about his game.


Hot damn it looks like fun. More visceral than Dead Island with parkour, good graphics and pretty good sound from what I hear.

Going to have to get this one fo sho.
 
Don't know if his where to post it but my PSN is CheesyPolenta and I'm looking to do some co op right now

I mainly need help finding a gun- add me if you're down. I'm 22% through the story, on
Siblings
 
Top Bottom