Dying Light has really gotten short shrift here, I'm surprised. Just played through the base game and had a great time. It's by no means revolutionary, borrowing a lot of overplayed concepts from its contemporaries -- open world, zombies, climbing, crafting, leveled loot, talent tree grinding -- but puts them together in a coherent package with engaging gameplay that's all executed rather well. While I have a lot of balance complaints, the core loop is quite fun and addictive. I am apparently incapable of expressing my thoughts in a succinct manner, so you get a TL;DR essay.
What's so great about the gameplay, you ask? Primarily the parkour movement and first person melee combat, and how they're tied into the other systems and level design. The movement is essentially the mantling mechanic you see in a lot of other games cranked up to 11. You can grab onto nearly any ledge that you're pointed at, as well as hang onto ledges, posts, and other handholds and jump off in any direction. You can vault over short obstacles and enemies and slide under gaps from a sprint, and taking a running jump off of ramps seems to grant some vertical momentum. You can break any fall by landing on certain objects like trash piles or roof of a car, or by performing a forward roll. Eventually you gain the ability to run up walls and spring off them. A few of these (vaulting over enemies, sliding from a sprint, forward roll, running up walls) are skills that you must acquire from a talent tree, which I'll talk about later. Moving around doesn't require much player skill -- it's usually just a matter of pointing at a ledge and pressing the jump button where you'll magnetize to nearby ledges and get large windows to queue inputs -- but you do have to put a little bit of thought into how you'll get around, especially when trying to move quickly. There's a lot of work put into making it feel fluid with simulated camera movements and blended first-person animations, and I quickly got a feel for what was traversable and started to see the whole world as a massive playground. It doesn't have the depth of Mirror's Edge as it lacks a few mechanics like wallrunning and pole swinging and doesn't require the player to manage momentum thanks to generous lateral air control, but it strikes a nice balance between more thoughtful platforming and total freedom of traversal with minimal player input. Where the movement really gets points is how it's connected into other aspects of gameplay. While Mirror's Edge was just a linear path with some occasional choices about how to get around, Dying Light is an open world game that integrates movement into everything you do. Early on, you'll only have access to low quality weapons and gear and won't have many options in combat, so jumping between rooftops is vital to survival. Oftentimes, the path to an objective is blocked off by barriers and locked doors, and a little bit of ingenuity is needed to find a way up and over a fence or through an open window from another rooftop awning. The player isn't alone in their ability to clamber up walls and jump across gaps, however -- while the basic Biter zombies shamble stupidly at street level, the rabid Viral runner type and their more threatening nighttime cousins in the Volatiles are just as capable at traversal and will chase the player relentlessly across city blocks. They actually match the player's running speed on the ground, so escaping is a matter of finding a more efficient vertical route than the AI pathfinding can acquire, which is one of the ways the game rewards mastery of its movement.
Fighting back is also a key part of gameplay. The player can arm themselves with a number of melee weapons including one-handed cudgels, blades, knives and two-handed clubs, axes, and swords. Most of these weapons are pretty satisfying to use, with visceral feedback from the weighty camera movement, precise animations, and squelching sound effects as your hits stagger and whirl enemies around with the possibility of bloody dismemberment and shattered bones. Unfortunately, the moveset variety is pretty limited, as weapon types are mostly differentiated by statistics and effects, and knives are hampered by their abysmal range and lack of stagger while heavier clubs are too slow to be particularly effective in most fights, so you'll likely just use a handful of samey medium-sized blunt and bladed sticks for the entire game. The player will also get access to throwing knives, explosives, a bow, and a few firearms, though these are less prominent. Arguably more important than the player's weapons are the kick attack and inherent combat abilities that are unlocked from the talent trees. Ranking up Agility grants access to a dodge, a dropkick, a slide kick, a grapple throw, and a running tackle, while ranking up Power allows the player to throw their weapon, stun enemies with kicks and blunt strikes, unleash charged attacks for extra stamina that deal extra damage with light weapons or spin in a sweeping circle with heavy weapons, perform drop attacks and ground slams from above, execute takedowns on stunned enemies and neck snap enemies from behind, and curb stomp enemies that have been knocked to the ground. Many of these moves can be combined together; dropkick, slidekick, grapple, or tackle an enemy to the ground and stomp in their head for a quick kill. Alternatively, stun them with a kick or blunt trauma and set them up for a quick takedown, or launch off of one with a vault for the height to perform a drop attack on another. You can also use physics to your advantage by knocking enemies off of ledges to their death, or make use of environmental hazards to dispatch enemies. You could kick or grapple enemies into the conspicuous spike walls taken straight out of Dark Messiah, or light oil puddles on fire and electrocute pools of water to invite enemies to step into. These environmental kills and context-sensitive CQC moves may sound overpowered, and some of them are, but combat never becomes a braindead affair (even with everything unlocked) as enemies will make no bones about attacking while the player is in the middle of a combat animation. Even if you can throw an enemy to the ground and stomp their head in, it's not a wise move if there's another zombie ready to swipe at you while you're locked in the action. Attack animations can't be canceled either, so striking with your weapon prevents you from using most moves (notably excepting the dodge, which is a great tool for weaving in attacks). Running and swinging your weapon both use up independent stamina meters, so managing space in crowded fights is crucial.
The enemy variety is pretty low, but thanks to all of the mechanical depth on offer, fights can play out in a ton of different ways depending on the group composition and the local environment. Biters mindlessly walk at the player and try to swipe at them or grab and bite them, which requires mashing a key to escape. Some are a bit sturdier than others and have an added toxic effect or come covered in flames, while others are wearing hazmat suits and come with an explosive tank that can eviscerate crowds but make a lot of noise. Virals are the runner type that will chase the player across long distances and attack in packs, and are attracted to loud noises. Virals will attempt to dodge the player's melee swings, so it's best to catch them while they're climbing or as they're rushing forward. Toads are mutated zombies that spit toxic blobs that damage over time, Goons are walking tanks that swing around heavy clubs, Bombers will suicide bomb with a huge blast radius and can be tough to spot in a crowd, and Demolishers will toss huge boulders and berserk rush while soaking up a lot of damage. There are also other human thugs armed with melee weapons, throwing knives, and rifles. In CQC, they'll attempt to dodge and parry strikes and are sometimes immune to your martial arts moves, so the best approach is usually to let them attack first and get in a hit or two while they're recovering. While the enemy AI is a bit dense when it comes to ranged attacks, they're generally very good at pathfinding and can quickly swarm the player. Enemy behavior is always predictable, which allows the player to strategize about how to deal with them and often leads to emergent behavior. The player can distract zombies by throwing firecrackers, which can be useful to attract a crowd for a molotov cocktail or trick biters to walk into a burning oil puddle. Setting off explosive barrels can deal a lot of damage, but will make a loud noise and send virals on the hunt for the player, which suddenly increases the danger and complexity of a given encounter. Human thugs with firearms will do the same, which can be used to the player's advantage as Virals overwhelm them and the player takes advantage of the confusion. Biters can dynamically transform into running scouts when you make too much of a commotion and signal Volatiles to pursue you during the night.
These strategies all tie into the open world activities and level design. While main and side quests usually consist of little more than an objective marker that points to a mcguffin to collect or a switch to press, enemies and obstacles will stand in the player's way. Perhaps you have to turn several valves across town to get gas flowing again, and each one is guarded by a pocket of enemies who stop you from doing so inside a makeshift arena. Once you turn all the valves, you're given the additional task to turn the pressure relief valves as the sound of flammable gas attract Virals to your position, while also giving you the opportunity to burn them as they chase you. Most of the content is pretty simple stuff like that, but leads to engaging scenarios that test your movement and combat skills. Additionally, you can clear outposts to unlock safe zones and shops, rescue survivors from zombies and thugs, collect supply aidrops before thugs arrive, and define your own tasks related to the crafting and progression systems. Consumable items are required to heal damage past a certain point, so crafting medkits can be essential. This in turn means searching first aid cabinets in homes for gauze and alcohol so you don't run out at a critical moment. Or you can get more risky and throw a firecracker near an ambulance to lockpick it for medical supplies. Lockpicking is copied straight from Bethesda's Fallout games but actually occurs in real time, so you have to be careful of nearby enemies. There is also a day/night cycle, with some quests and activities locked to each, with nights introducing the dangerous Volatiles who patrol the world and give chase on sight, but crawl back into caves during the day. Since you lose Survivor points during the day but can only gain it at night (more on this in a bit), I eventually stopped sleeping entirely and played through every single night, which led to a lot of tense hide and seek moments and near-death pursuits with roaming Volatiles. The result is that there's always something to do, and it rarely feels like busywork. While quests could be a bit more engaging than "find the thing and grab/press it", I always had long-term goals to work towards and intermediate plans to explore and loot, fight enemies, and deal with dynamic events, which remained fun thanks to the mechanical depth and challenge on offer as well as the constant drip-feed of progression rewards. There's plenty of gameplay variety beyond the core loop as well; there are optional challenges around pure movement and combat, optional dungeons with their own objectives, some main quests with their own areas featuring gimmicks like explosive charges that you have to set within a time limit or an arena fight where your weapons are taken away and you have to scavenge, and later on there are even some wannabe F.E.A.R.-style shootouts in open office spaces and building complexes. None of it is groundbreaking, but most of it is a lot of fun and stays pretty fresh. You also get a nice change of scenery when you get to trade the shanties and highways of the slums for the more densely vertically layered Old Town, which offers a lot of rooftop traversal that has you in and out of interior spaces and has you navigating around courtyards and the canal that runs through the west side. It also features tougher encounters in certain zones and and thugs guarding pre-placed supply drops on the streets which is a nice increase in challenge, though it wasn't able to match my acquired toolset.
The game has separate XP for the three talent trees (Survivor, Agility, and Power). You gain Agility points just by jumping around and performing martial arts moves, while you get Power for using combat skills and killing enemies. Survivor points are a bit more interesting, gained from completing quests, surviving through nights, helping survivors in the world, and retrieving airdrops. However, you actually lose Survivor points on death during the day (the amount is quite high on Hard mode). The Agility and Power trees offer a few impactful statistical perks in addition to the game-changing abilities listed before. The Survivor tree's perks are inconsistent in their significance, but Survivor rank itself is highly important as it determines the quality of items found in the world and in shops. While the character building elements are poor when viewed from an RPG perspective with playstyle choice in mind, it's satisfying to gain in power over time and encourages the player to engage with the core gameplay systems. I'm usually very harsh on increase-by-use progression systems in RPGs as they can lead to degenerate incentives and poor balance, but it works in an action game like Dying Light where the grind is actually the point. However, I think you should level a bit slower in all three trees, as I had nearly filled out each of them in the first of two hubs by doing side activities. Additionally, Agility levels a bit too quickly relative to the others, as you virtually have to fight enemies constantly, preferably with minimal martial arts moves, to level up Power at the same rate as you get for Agility just by climbing around and completing tasks. You can scavenge containers for crafting parts, which is important early on for medkits, molotovs, and throwing stars but unfortunately becomes a non-issue as you can easily hoard more resources than you ever need. The resource economy is Dying Light's weakest aspect, with crafting parts being too abundant and shops being relatively useless as they never sell the most critical resources that you need early on (gauze and string) and stock weapons that are barely better than what you can find lying around for free in the world, which also diminishes the importance of applying elemental modifications and discoverable single-use upgrades to your weapons. I'd make most crafting costs higher and triple the number of metal parts you need to repair your weapons, while also decreasing the chance to get high-powered weapons in chests to incentivize buying them in shops. I'd also remove gauze from the blueprints for weapon modifications and throwing weapons, as it's simply too important early on for crafting medkits to be compellingly spent on disposable gear. The relative balance of many of the player's tools is also highly questionable -- knives are pretty abysmal when they should be the premier DPS and thrown weapons, grenades are nearly useless despite being locked behind Survivor perks, booster items have too low duration considering the valuable inventory space they take up, and the camouflage ability is completely broken once the player unlocks the upgrade to kill enemies while disguised and can neck snap enemies while they're unaware. The latter could be mitigated by the addition of an internal cooldown that stops the player from reapplying camouflage until it's completely worn off, so a zombie has to be isolated from a group first instead of allowing for endless takedown camouflage cheese. It'd also be easy to argue that the grappling hook unlocked later breaks the game, but it's simply too fun for me to argue against it.
I have very little to say about the story. The writing and acting are fine, the story beats are paced reasonably, the setting is pretty logical, and there are even a few decent side characters -- the highlight for me was the gun merchant who takes on the role of a wizard warding off the evil demons outside to keep a group of kids calm -- but it's pretty forgettable overall, and not a strong focus of the game. You're playing the game to have fun dropkicking zombies off of cliffs, not for some emotional narrative to tug at your heartstrings. Thankfully Deep Silver wasn't the publisher this time around so they couldn't manipulatively brand this game as a sob story about losing your daughter to flesh-eating undead like they did with Dead Island. Yeesh.
I recommend anyone starting the game stick to Normal difficulty for a while to get used to the mechanics, user interface, and the visual language of the environment. Hard mode introduces a lot of great changes, such as real-time menus, medkits healing over time, survivor sense no longer highlighting interactable items except for weapons, slightly increased weapon degradation, longer nights, scarcer supplies, thugs reaching supply drops faster, limited flashlight battery, greatly increased Survivor XP loss on death, and increased enemy health and damage. These definitely make the game hardcore and make some systems much more coherent (crafting progress bar actually makes sense in real time). However, Hard mode is also extremely frustrating early on if you don't know what you're doing. I switched to Hard a little too early and found myself dying frequently and losing a ton of Survivor XP, which made me more angry than I'd like to admit. Thankfully, I can make a clear recommendation -- switch to Hard mode only once you reach Survivor rank 9. This is a harsh breakpoint when the game starts giving you decent weapons and access to helpful gear like the bow. With these in hand, you'll be able to take on enemies without relying chiefly on martial arts moves and straight combat becomes viable, which means deaths don't feel as cheap and you can level your trees more evenly. I wouldn't even think about switching up to Nightmare mode until you're done with your skill trees and gaining Legend rank, which allows you to invest into additional stats. As a technical point, the game stuttered like crazy and had weird mouse lag until I went into my Nvidia settings and enabled "Low Latency Mode" (previously called Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames = 1), so be aware of that too.