It's no secret that the zombie sub-genre is pretty oversaturated and if I started listing all the zombie games that have come out in the past decade we'd be here all day. The sub-genre has some very good standout titles such as Left 4 Dead and The Last of Us that are considered to be classics by many but nothing else has ever really reached that same status. So what does Dying Light have to offer in a market that is oversaturated with zombie games year in and year out and can it compete with the likes of the two games I mentioned? A bit more than most I'd say, but it's still kind of a mixed bag. Easily the best part of Dying Light is its atmosphere and gameplay. It's the most well-polished open-world zombie game I've played to date. To elaborate on that a bit more the parkour is the best I've experienced since Mirrors Edge (which it seems heavily inspired by.) The combat is great as well with you having a good roster of weapons to at your disposal to split zombies down the middle with or hack off their limbs with and having all these fun abilities such as the hilarious dropkick to use is like a cherry on top, but unfortunately, I have to mention that you don't acquire these weapons and abilities for a while because there's a huge difficulty spike from the very start of the game that settles down around a quarter way through the game. You start off incredibly underpowered and for around the first nine or so hours of the game, and you're better of just avoiding engaging zombies entirely unless you absolutely have to as your early weapons break insanely fast which is a shame. Despite that messing around in the open world by yourself or with friends especially is a blast. But as much as it pains me to say it Dying Light has some major flaws. The most notable being the story. It's absolute trash. All of the characters both major and minor are uninteresting cliche robots with zero redeeming qualities. The dialogue is cliche, the plot is cliche, the characters are all cliche. It's like they didn't even try (they probably didn't.) And the lack of interesting quests and side content. They're all just generic dime a dozen errand boy missions that get boring and repetitive really fast. So if you're a big fan of the zombie sub-genre and you really take advantage of co-op and the multiplayer modes like myself then Dying Light will most likely be a three-star game for you like it is for me. It's a mixed bag but pretty good overall, but If not It'll definitely just be another mediocre zombie game you might forget in a week.
