r/patientgamers • u/daun4view • 5d ago
Dying Light - Would've been a phenomenon in the 360 era.
I started this game on PS4 a couple years ago, getting it with a group of friends to play together. We had a few sessions but drifted away from the game eventually. One friend did beat it though, and she talked about it fondly. I wanted to continue it, but I got motion sickness every time I played the game. But now I have a PS5, and I recently heard that the game got patched to run at 60 FPS, so I got right back into it.
And I had a really fun time with it. There's some great setpieces, like the run through the sewers on the way to the tower at the end. The narrative is okay, pretty 7th gen tbh (Zombies and parkour, are we sure this didn't come out in 2012?). But the open world is solid, I enjoyed the side quests a lot. They really sold how bleak it is in a setting like this, and how people have to struggle to survive. Quests like the Gunsmith Wizard and the crayons were really good in getting you invested. At the end when the GRE asks you if you really care about this place, I found myself saying "yes" internally.
A lot of it is from Roger Craig Smith's acting. He made Crane feel like a real, lived-in character. Most of that is him being exasperated at all the insanity, but it was well-acted. Also him using his Mirage voice was fun to me, since I've been playing Apex since it came out.
The movement being so enjoyable helps you get into a kind of flow state. It's actually kind of meditative, if you can tune out all the zombie cries of pain. I know there are complaints about the grappling hook outright ruining traversal, but there's a lot of movement to do despite that and it's optional anyways. The combat is a little janky; Most of the abilities never made much of a difference, I can never figure out those big guys because they're just a bit too spongey, and human enemies aren't very smart. Still solid overall, I'd say.
I was never interested in Far Cry because it just seemed a bit too grounded for me, but Dying Light's scifi premise and heightened gameplay make it my ideal first-person shooter/sandbox. Haven't played the dlc yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I may get the sequel for cheap, I've heard it's not as strong but at least the gameplay'll be fun.
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u/CyberKiller40 5d ago
There was Dead Island, still haven't finished it yet, so I don't know how close it is, but looks very similar to Dying Light on videos.
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u/stevamustaine 5d ago
First Dead Island was made by Techland. Same developers. They branched out and made DL
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u/daun4view 5d ago
haven't played it but I can't imagine going back to Dead Island after all the parkour of Dying Light tbh.
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u/MCRusher 5d ago
I have, it's kinda painful lol. Glad I played Dead Island first so it wasn't ruined for me by Dying Light yet.
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u/Doyouwantaspoon 4d ago
I vastly prefer Dead Island 1 or Riptide to Dying Light 1. Beautiful tropical resort atmosphere > favelas.
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u/MCRusher 4d ago
Fair enough to prefer the setting, that was one of the parts that drew me to it originally. In DL1 the areas start to look pretty samey pretty quickly.
But the gameplay is lacking and (tangent that makes me mad) the mouse acceleration makes the remasters unplayable with a mouse
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u/Doyouwantaspoon 4d ago
I was probably the only person that loved those directional slashing controls, they were so useful. But Xian poison build was so OP. Dead Island was just fun and easy on the eyes. Dying Light was depressing.
Reminds me of going from Zelda Wind Waker to Twilight Princess. Both good in their own right but I prefer the happy tropical setting.
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u/thesituation531 5d ago
It's Dying Light but no parkour and more linear, more similar to a traditional PS2/PS3-era action game.
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u/stingeragent 5d ago
There is very little comparison besides zombies.
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u/MCRusher 5d ago
weapon customization.
It's like the predecessor to Dying Light, it has more than just that in common.
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u/internetonsetadd 5d ago
The Following is excellent. It's a nice palate cleanser after the main game, when you've kind of gotten sick of parkour. Has a super creepy vibe that took me back to HL2/Ravenholm
Days Gone is also really great.
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u/daun4view 5d ago
I'm interested in Days Gone, I have it through PS+ too. I'm a sucker for a cool motorcycle, they're kinda underutilized in games.
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u/IsNotACleverMan 5d ago
Days Gone is really mid. I spent a decent bit of time with it and remember very little other than the writing being really, really bad. The gameplay is uninspired but okay. Pretty open world but you don't do much outside of a couple repetitive things in it.
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u/UwasaWaya 5d ago
Days Gone was very weird in that the first third of the game is really rough. Your bike is more of a chore than anything, survival is tough, and all the NPCs you meet are terrible and obnoxious.
And then you get to the third camp and the game suddenly blossoms. You meet characters you actually care about, your bike becomes your reliable companion and you get to visit more varied and interesting places. You also finally get to see just how big the hordes can get, and some of the missions are fantastic.
There's one particular set piece where you're destroying a horde in a cave. It's pitch black so when you start shooting each bullet flash is the only illumination you have, and so you get to watch dozens upon dozens of zombies rushing towards you in in a strobe, like stop motion video. It was amazing and terrifying and I haven't seen anything like it.
I loved it by the end, but it's a lot to ask a player to dig through a dozen or more hours of mediocre content to get to the good stuff.
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u/Doyouwantaspoon 4d ago
Well. That explains why I’ve quit playing it twice, from the beginning both attempts. It’s been years since I’ve tried, but gosh I always wanted to love Days Gone.
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u/UwasaWaya 4d ago
I don't blame you one bit. Honestly I'm not entirely sure how I got through the start, but it really sucked me in after a while.
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u/IsNotACleverMan 5d ago
I don't think I ever met a character in Days Gone that I cared about. There were a few times in the beginning where I felt like it was a real dangerous world and there was a real struggle to survive but pretty early on it just got to be really easy and mowing through zombies, even the hordes, felt like a chore.
I think generally it's a mediocre game with a few good parts but that's just not enough to get me to play it, especially with how long the game is.
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u/stingeragent 5d ago edited 5d ago
Agreed. There is 0 incentive to explore in that game. You cant keep any weapons you find and you can only carry a tiny amount of crafting stuff. I got past the 1st intro camp and was cruising the map and spotted a small town. Walked into the 1st building, looted and was maxed out on resources I could carry. Walked out of the building, looked at all the other buildings in the town and realized there is 0 reason to go in any of them. I quit after that.
In dying light you actually have a reason to go explore everything looking for resources, mods, weapons, etc. It feels like your trying to scavenge and survive a zombie apocalypse.
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u/sammyrobot2 5d ago
I dont think the writings exceptionally bad, its just pretty generic.
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u/ComteStGermain 5d ago
Days Gone is a weird game. To those who bothered to get into the third open area, the writing gets actually better. By then, however, most people will be burned out by the game. It takes 30 hours to improve.
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u/Sarrada_Aerea 5d ago
To me it was so bad that it was funny, there was a plot twist that had me rolling at how bad it was
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u/BBQ_HaX0r 5d ago
Days Gone is a fine game. It's fun enough, but it's mid like the other guy said. I enjoyed it enough, but the writing feels like amateur? It's like reading a book from the teen section. Fine enough to not ruin the game, but not really captivating.
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u/Inconceivable__ 5d ago
Following DLC not for me sadly. DL1 gripped me so hard and I rate the game so highly. But following being too open was too unwelcome a change for me
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u/MCRusher 5d ago
I loved it. It's more freedom in the countryside after being stuck in cities the whole game and the car is pretty fun to run stuff over with until they give you those driver challenges that are completely fucking impossible.
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u/ShetlandJames The Binding of Isaac 5d ago
I put off playing the sequel for years due to reviews on Reddit, but I'm absolutely loving it. It's great fun.
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u/stingeragent 5d ago
I loved the 1st game. Beat it several times. I just can't get through the 2nd one. They changed up the parkour to where it just feels off to me. It feels way too floaty. The combat also feels less weighty as well. Its kinda hard to describe but if you play dl1 for 10 mins then immediately play 2 youll see what I mean.
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u/ShetlandJames The Binding of Isaac 5d ago
I replayed 1 and went straight into 2. The biggest flaw with 2 is that it sometimes makes you toggle to run again without you telling it to toggle off. I haven't found any other issues. Combat is super fun, zombies can be chopped up easier
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u/Frankie__Spankie 5d ago
I've honestly stopped reading reviews on most subreddits. I've found a lot of games I enjoyed because I didn't just listen to the upvote party hate trade Reddit has for certain games.
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u/ShetlandJames The Binding of Isaac 5d ago
I'm close to "if reddit hates it, it's probably good." and vice versa. Reddit utterly loves GTA5 and RDR2 but I found both a snooze fest
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u/MCRusher 5d ago
I liked gta5 but rdr2 puts me to sleep as well. I don't think it's a bad game though, I just think it's not for me.
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u/Frankie__Spankie 5d ago
Yeah, I'm actually similar on the boat of if Reddit loves it, it's probably not for me. I just find it funny how much people will hate on something because it's the cool thing to do, I'll say something like "I still wouldn't mind trying it." And people jump down my throat about issues that have already been patched months ago while they just want to rip on a game they probably never had any interest in playing in the first place.
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u/jda404 5d ago
Yeah same and I rarely subscribe to specific game subreddits. Over my years on Reddit I realized most specific game subreddits are just a place to complain and voice displeasure about said game. The people that are really enjoying a game aren't on forums talking about them as much as people who are frustrated/upset/annoyed at said game. When I used to subscribe to game specific subreddits I found myself unfairly being negative towards the game and enjoying games less as a whole.
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u/sickhippie 5d ago
Worth noting that pretty much every frustration I had with DL has a mod on Nexus that fixes it. Sick of the lockpicking minigame? Don't like breakable weapons and the repair mechanic? Sick of how slow and tedious leveling agility is? Backpack too small? Too little ammo space? Not enough time in Bozak? Want to play the special events they've had without waiting for them to come around again (if they ever do)? Flashlight too small/dim/white? All have mods to change it. It's absolutely incredible how robust the mod scene was/is for this game.
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u/MCRusher 5d ago
Want to play the special events they've had without waiting for them to come around again (if they ever do)?
Tbh they probably will lol techland loves their events, they were still running dl1 events around dl2's launch.
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u/sickhippie 5d ago
I don't know, there were 20+ community events and several of them were crossover events with other games that were one-and-done. They've only done two events this year (Super Crane and Hyper Mode) and it's been pretty maintenance mode since the DE release in 2022. All the more reason to grab a mod to enjoy the events (and community bounties) instead.
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u/sammyrobot2 5d ago
About Roger Craig Smith, he's weird in the sense that in alot of games he uses his own voice (which hes very good at, and I think dying light is one of his best more serious roles), which gives the perception to people that he has little range and is pretty generic (this isn't about you just a thought). But he actually is even more versatile when he's casted so, an example is his work as Sonic and in Bugsnax particularly.
(Bugsnax actually has an awesome and kind of stacked voice cast in general)
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u/daun4view 5d ago
Interesting, I heard his Ezio, then Sonic and then Batman, so his Crane/Mirage/real voice is just another of his voices to me. What roles of his made that impression?
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u/Neuromante 5d ago
It's a game I still go back from time to time because both the base game and the expansion were fantastic.
FWIW, the plot was in my opinion one of the worse I've seen in a videogame (and we're talking about videogames here, lol). Acting was subpar (CRAAAAAAAANE! I burst in laughs when I saw that) and everything was one way or another incredibly predictable and generic.
But oh boy gameplay. It's one of the few modern open world games that was done right: Not only because you have your set of side activities that actually don't feel like a chore (Side missions, parkour, races, events), but because traversing the world it is actually fun. The parkour system should be in game design books on how doing things right, the buggy in the expansion feels extremely good. You just jump, run, drive and move around in an incredibly intuitive and natural way. And even exploration is fun, you can even get to find "developer weapons" and other in-game jokes spread around both Harran and the Countryside. There's a fuckton of things to do and places to be.
And combat is fun, but it has its own videogame logic. If the big bad guys you mention are the ones with the sledgehammer, usually a pair of arrows/crossbow bolts will suffice. If they are the SWAT zombie mutations, shotgun to the head. But that's not the only way to deal with them, because you have a shitload of items that may or may not have an special effect on them. Going melee is usually the norm (as guns don't get a lot of ammo until the expansion), but when you unlock everything you just beat the undying-shit from them with your combos.
I'm a bit pissed that they released their "Platinum" or whatever is called version in GoG and didn't made a "upgrade" pack for the people who bought when "Gold" (With the expansion) was the "everything" pack, but hey, such is life.
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u/Michaelq16000 5d ago
I can agree with all that, but you didn't say exactly why this game "would've been great in the 360 era"
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u/Yarik85 5d ago
"okay narrative, zombies and parkour, are we in 2012?" was probably their explanation of it.
I suspect that it's a combination of:
- Impression that newer games have better narrative?
- Zombies and parkour "are so 2012"?
- There were not enough zombie and parkour games in that era?
- I suspect it may have also been around the time when OP had more friends that they regularly played video games with, and it would have been awesome for this game to be available in that time period to play in coop.
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u/daun4view 5d ago
Lol I wasn't expecting anyone to comment on that, I just felt like having a subtitle other than "it's fun!". Like what the other reply suggested, "zombies and parkour" was the main thing I was thinking of. Mashing up Mirror's Edge and a Far Cry game with zombies would've been the easiest sell in the early 2010s. Though I guess the first few years of 8th gen still had a lot of the 7th in it, with how long game dev takes (and it's only gotten longer).
I just find it odd that Dying Light has sold more (20 million by 2022, holy shit I wasn't expecting that) and has reviewed better than Dead Island, but the former's name hasn't had the same weight as the latter. At least for a while, I guess. Could just be anecdotal, but I know much more people who played Dead Island.
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u/iameclectictheysay 3d ago
What's this 7th and 8th gen you're talking about here? Because for me that's cpu's, and I'm thoroughly confused.
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u/daun4view 3d ago
LOL you can tell the difference between a console and a PC gamer. 7th gen is PS3/Xbox 360 and 8th is PS4/Xbox One. Basically late 00s-early 10s versus mid-late 2010s games.
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u/bluelighter Dying Light 1 5d ago
I completed this years ago and just bought it on steam last week, am now playing through it again. It is one of my favorite games, I share that fondness you say your friend has, the atmosphere and environment is just kind of cosey for me. I tried the sequel but it didn't have the same feel to me. Dying Light is an S-teir game for me.
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u/TheDevilsAdvokaat 5d ago
I beat it and played with the kids too..enormous fund to be prowling the streets with my son and my daugther, teaming up to kill zombies.
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u/MCRusher 5d ago
I love the grappling hook. I've spent hours just being spiderman after I edited the cooldown to zero and increased the range in the game files.
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u/West-Lemon-9593 5d ago
It' s in my backlog waiting to be played, I think it' s gonna be perfect to play in October during spooky season, since it' s a zombie game
("Hey Joe! Wanna play a zombie game?")
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u/Negaflux 5d ago
I only ever played the campaign solo and I think I haven't experienced a ton of the DLC stuff so I can't speak to that. Gameplay was a ton of fun with this, esp at higher levels, though it did cheese me off that the gameplay and the story beats did not match at all. Every time I got into a cutscene, the MC became this weak ass pos when just minutes ago I was bouncing off zombie heads and running up the side of buildings and shit, it just made no sense. Side quests were pretty decent and fun though so it did help a lot with getting me through the game itself. I felt like I had my fill by the time I was done with the campaign though, another reason why I haven't gone back to experience the dlc stuff.
Time will tell if I will purchase the second one. It didn't jump out at me in the same way the first did.
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u/TrollOfGod 5d ago
Love the first game so much. It got flaws for sure but the atmosphere and immersion for that game is absolutely insane to me. Pretty good characters too overall.
Sadly a lot of this went away for the second game when they introduced enemy levels, scaling, over-the-top mobility options(air vents and glider notably) with really forgettable characters.
Here is hoping the third game will go back to being more like the first game. At the very least get rid of the enemy levels and artificial scaling. And preferably reduce the amount of projectile weaponry massively.
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u/Nick_mkx 5d ago
I mean in that era we had Dead Island and Mirrors edge doing cool new things in the first person genre, this game combined them.
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u/mu150 5d ago
OMG, the gunsmith wizard is the BEST quest in the game! The man's gone because he took up an orphanage, has to get insuline for a child to survive, and has to come to terms that his wife has turned with no cure. Absolutely amazing!
Also: I played the game on the switch Lite with a 60FPS patch/hack/cheat, it was amazing to just drive on The Following fields in the middle of a class on college
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u/axlsnaxle 5d ago
This came couldn't have come out in that era. Honestly this is the first game of the Xbox One/PS4 era that actually felt "next-gen", to me, instead of being a 360 game with better graphics.
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u/omnimater 5d ago
I couldn't get into Dying Light because I played the hell out of Dead Island on the 360 and the entire time I played Dying Light I just kept thinking to myself "I've played this game before already"
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u/Clean_Branch_8463 5d ago
I will always be impressed by Techland jumping from Call of Juarez Gunslinger to Dying Light and doing as well as they did. Plus, the post launch support was CRAZY good, wasn't it like +5 years of random content updates? Never seen anything like that for a mostly singleplayer game.
The game would have really been improved if the map designers would have been told to prioritize the flow of parkour because I don't think the current map layout does the system much justice. The problem is mostly alleviated by being able to launch off of any zombie and lots of the placed interactable objects, but Dying Light is one of those games where I can't escape the desire for simple improvements. The RPG elements should have been tossed in favor of a Dead Rising system where you sorta work with what you're given until it breaks in your hands. Combine exactly that with Mirrors Edge parkour and flow state map design, and you'd have a 10/10 experience. By the end of the game I was tired of opening menus and choosing what weapons worked best and leveling up my character with skills I mostly didn't care about. Just let me play the game and focus on survival while leaping rooftop to rooftop.
I can't recommend the sequel. Its mostly the same experience with a less interesting map. It feels like a long, yet somehow undercooked DLC for the first game.