Dying Light Enhanced Edition Review

It was a silent smash in its release early 2015 and was a breath of fresh air to the genre of survival horror. Techland have now released the Enhanced Edition which has all the previous DLC with the new addition of The Following. In Dying Light you play as Kyle Crane who works for the GRE who has been sent to Harran to uncover some documents for his employers which is now in the hands of a warlord who is ruling Harran with an iron fist.

Dying light is a parkour, zombie filled, monster running 3rd person survival horror game from Warner Bros and Techland.

Harran is a small island that looks like a favela in brazil and is filled with Zombies big and small but one of the game’s most challenging and rewarding moments is night runs. They are when the zombies are stronger and also the Bolters and Volatiles come out and give chase…and i mean literally give chase, they’re responsible for most of my heart stopping moments in this review.

Visually the game is stunning and captures everything the Slums has to offer it looks exactly like what it is meant to a post apocalyptic slum. The weapons have an american feel to them but show so much detail, now when i say an american feel they call a Cricket Bat just a bat to me that is silly. The area is filled with Machetes and baseball bats among other usable weapons which the higher the level the better they are. Guns are on offer but control of them is slightly strange as normal 3rd person games with guns uses the LT to aim down the sights but on Dying Light LT is use your throwing weapon. All melee weapons have repair slots and can be upgraded and modified with fire, toxic, electronic and even Bolter Tissue which is devastating.

Crafting is a big element in Dying light with everything you use needing to be made from scratch like lockpicks and medkits and even grenades from tin cans, they really captured the element of survival and using what you can to survive. To craft stronger and more useful items you will need to source the blueprints these can be found by completing quests and helping survivors or just exploring the slums. The level of items you can find is unimaginable, there is so much to do in Dying light you can get lost in it so quickly.

The parkour resembles Mirrors edge slightly and works so well, the leader of the survivors is a parkour instructor and has helped the runners learn their environments to be used to their advantage, the control of the parkour element is really easy as well RB is used to climb on ledges and when you obtain your grappling hook no roof is safe from your footsteps, for me this element in the game is what separates it from the rest and makes it really fun and enjoyable to play.

There are three difficulty levels Normal, Hard and Nightmare, each lending more challenging zombies and also greater exp gained to level up your character, the skill trees are Survivor which is filled from completing quests and also recovering aid drops from the GRE and handing them in to your quartermaster, Agility is leveled up from free running around, the more you do the more exp you gain and Power which is where your attacks get greater and weapons become stronger. Recently in the updates they have added Legendary which is unlocked after you max out one of the three skill trees, each skill tree has 25 points to be used and all cost one point which helps. The legendary tree though requires 250 points to max out ten skills to increase, weapon durability, health regen etc. They didn’t really think this out though as the requirement to get to 250 is around 72 million exp which is crazy as once you have completed the game to do so you will have to complete the game again but when you get to the end it doesn’t even give you an achievement which is nuts!!.

Again on the updates there is the Bozak Horde which is a similar version of Saw where you have to survive this crazy guy’s task over the intercom, it utilises all what you have learned and after each task completed you get new weapons….oh but you start without any weapons or medkits. This makes matters more challenging. When you complete this horde you’re rewarded with a Bow which is useful and is slightly powerful but it’s not as good to use as is the bows in the Far Cry games.

The biggest expansion of the Enhanced edition is The Following which is a completely new map on the outskirts of Harran where the faceless people are they worship The Mother and the people are immune to the virus that has struck Harran so Kyle Crane head there to see if he can bring that immunity to the slums to help the people there, it is a really challenging map which is the same size as the full Dying light original game but has less for you to climb on and introduces vehicles in the place of a Buggy which can be modified to help defeat the zombies. It is a new breath introduced into the game but does need some getting used to. You need to source fuel to make you buggy go and also spare parts to repair it all which can be taken from abandoned cars and vans. The map is big and very open for you to drive around in but the game does get complacent at time, with the quests to have to help one person to help another and then another which is an issue for me but it is still enjoyable and fresh to do something new.

There is also a new skill tree to max out for Driving, you can equip new parts to strengthen your buggy to make it a force to be reckoned with in the countryside filled with more monsters than the original game’s story, also bigger and badder monsters lie in wait for you. The Driving aspect isn’t new if you’ve played games like Far Cry as the driving simulation is fairly similar but the customisation of your vehicle’s really makes it stand out more.

Dying Light –

The Following –