ShylockSimmonz's Review of Dying Light

Poor Combat and a Technical Mess

User Rating: 6 | Dying Light LNX

By shylocksimmonz | Review Date: August 3, 2020

I really enjoyed the Dead Island games so I figured Dying Light would be a sure fit but I was so far from being right. The combat isn’t bad but it feels like it is more tedious than Dead Island and it also feels like it is abnormally hard. In Dead Island I died plenty of times but I always felt like I had a chance at success but in Dying Light if I am facing more than 2-3 enemies then I just run as I usually end up dying. The tougher enemies are just a chore as well. I pretty much had to engage at a distance with every range weapon I could muster and about 5-7 minutes later I may have won. Once again I just decided to run when I could. Getting access to guns made things easier but I saved those for human enemies. Blade weapons felt far more useless than in Dead Island as they were far less likely to sever limbs. The kick function seems to be weaker than in Dead Island as well with much less of a chance to knock enemies onto the ground. They are now able to be kicked onto spikes though and kicking them into objects made of wood will damage the object and be fun to watch. The parkour aspect of the game is interesting and opens a lot of new options but I felt like the game was clumsy more often than not. It felt like more luck then skill when I would be climbing up a tower and would connect with the pipe I was trying to jump to and grab onto. The lock pick mechanic was well done, it felt very similar to Oblivion but that is a compliment. Graphically the game was a mixed bag. The clothes; faces; water; sun; fire; and rain were all top notch. The hair; beards; clouds; and zombie gore were all sub par. The story seemed interesting enough but my dislike for the game play kept me from seeing it through. One annoying event was every time the game would load the main character would scream “holy sh*t !”. This would happen even if I would load into a safe zone. It was funny the first few times but after 18 hours of several loads it lost it’s charm fast. The game would also bring up a menu to buy DLC every time I would get to the main menu which was tacky and during game play it kept spamming me with messages to join community events which broke any immersion the game had at that point. The night parts to the game made it almost into a stealth game at that point and I dislike stealth. The volatiles aren’t fun to fight, especially with hordes of normal zombies around. More and more missions were taking place at night which was sapping what little enjoyment I was getting. The humour in the game was good in characters such as Tolga and Fatin and the side quests were mostly enjoyable. There were a good variety of weapons and the crafting process was simple and effective. I thought there was a good use of environmental weapons such as fuel that you could spark with firecrackers.

I played Dying Light on Linux. It has had a myriad of issues since day one of the Linux version being released. Mainly the game hasn’t always launched properly when using Mesa drivers. Over the years I have tried the game on several distros and hardware configs but always with issues including this most recent play through. Every time what I have had to do to solve the launch issues has been different. I have had to do everything from set launch options to use a different version of OpenGL; replacing newer libraries with older versions to this most recent time of having to set the game to use the native Steam run time but there has always been something. The game crashed on me twice during to game play. There are several small glitches such as watches going through arms; being able to climb THROUGH a balcony; hands going THROUGH shelf when grabbing items; as well as taking damage from enemies hitting me through a wall. Load times took 30 seconds every time I initially loaded the game which is pretty long even for AAA games given my hardware. There is no manual save options, just auto save after certain events. My Logitech F310 game pad worked without issue except for the game not allowing me to customize controls for it. I ended up using my keyboard/mouse for that reason among the more precise movement. There are 7 graphics options to go with Vsync; and toggles for ambient occlusion and AA. There is an FOV slider as well but it doesn’t give any numbers so you have to fiddle with it to get the FOV you want. Alt-Tab worked just fine. You can’t change the difficulty option once you’ve started the game. You can skip most cut scenes but not pause them. The game ran pretty smoothly this time, my frame rate was usually 90-100 with a few drops and peaks. The game was not playable with a 60+ FPS on my lower hardware such as the RX 580; or RX 480 even though the recommended GPU on Linux is an R9 290.

Input Used: Keyboard/Mouse

Disk Space Used: 32.82GB

VRAM Usage: 2149-3027 MB

CPU Usage: 23-59 %

RAM Usage: 5.4-6.7 GB

Graphics Options Used: Everything on High. AO; AA and Chromatic Aberration on. Motion blur and film grain off.

Frame Rate: 72-144 FPS

I really wanted to like Dying Light but ran out of reasons to pretend I was still having fun. One could argue my issues with the game play are subjective but from a technical standpoint the game is a mess and has been for a while. I have sunk a total of 19 hours into the game and feel that is enough time to know I won’t enjoy it any further. The game retails for $49.99 CAD and while there is a lot of content for that price the quality of that content leaves too much to be desired.

My Score: 6/10

My System: