This game is incredible for some portions. I was lucky enough to get a preview build from Techland, and finally a final copy earlier this morning. I have been playing the game in Offline mode for roughly 13 hours now - almost close to the ending in Normal Difficulty.

A lot of people will tell me "This is just Dead Island but with Parkour.." Which would be true, but the game's characters, the storyline, the various side-quests and unique random interactions make this game far more magical than Dead Island could ever hope to be.

The only issues I have so far is the day/night cycle and the characters lip syncing and their mannerisms. The Day/Night cycle is AWFUL. I'm sorry Techland, but it is! You would think it is tied to a real-time day/night cycle...but it's not! It is cleverly marketed as a "Dynamic Day/Night Cycle," which is SOMEWHAT true. It is dynamic in the sense that the zombies get super aggressive at night compared to during the day, but the entire DAY/NIGHT cycle is tied to quests. It does not become night until the quest says so. Don't expect to stand around and it to turn night-time. Doesn't happen! It will be day-time forever as long as the quest dictates it will be. Severely disappointing and false advertising in my opinion.

In terms of character lips, I completely hate how "last-gen" the lip sync is to the animation of the dialogue. We should not have characters that seem like they have been generically dubbed over as they say "Something wrong?" and it could be "How is everything?" The audio just poorly matches the lips...very annoying. Secondly, I find the mannerisms unrealistic. When you are running from an intense night-time mode or having just been invaded by the hunter (which several devs did in my game as I believe I'm one of the few playing it along with some notable YTers, etc.) and you get to a safe zone - the characters proceed as if NOTHING happened. Like you didn't just come gunning from hell. They walk around casually...and tend to say the same thing across all safe zones. Poor.

All in all, the game is worth the buy, especially if you have the Oculus Rift DK2. I played it on the Oculus Rift DK2, and there were definitely dizzying moments to the game. I had to stop playing after 25 minutes. Perhaps its just me, but the character wobbling up and down as he runs may need to be adjusted to prevent people from vomiting in VR.

How much would I personally pay for Dying Light? $39.99. Not $59.99. I think a -$20 ding is appropriate for the two annoying issues that are definitely immersion breaking.

60 FPS
No Crashing
Very pretty graphics.
Not clunky
Guns actually work like guns (looking at you Dead Island)
Zombies are satisfying to kill.

Impressions with pictures here, review will be amended when I finish the game: http://gamewalkers.com/games/dying-light/articles/dying-light-impressions/

Words:

It was a bit hard to be hopeful about Dying Light. You see, I didn’t like Techland’s last zombie effort, Dead Island, all that much. I found it tedious and repetitive. The crafting system was cool but combat was quite a drag. I actually disliked it to the point that, when I originally saw early Dying Light footage, and it looked a bit like “Dead Island with grappling hooks and parkour,” I dismissed it, thinking that it would retain the overwhelmingly tedious combat that was present in Dead Island, only making getting around easier.

After about four hours of play, I can honestly say that I could not have been more wrong. Dying Light, while still presenting combat that takes effort, has removed the tedium by quite a bit. Sure, you won’t be killing zombies in one hit with a pipe but you certainly aren’t going to be watching yourself chip away at a zombie’s health bar while his friends attempt to overtake you the way that Dead Island and its semi-sequel did. It’s challenging, it’s fluid, and it really feels like you’re fighting something that has a fair chance of killing you if you aren’t careful.

This is helped quite a bit by the fact that the game provides mobility that I didn’t expect in combat, in addition to outside of it. In Dying Light, you can sidestep and backstep, as well as sliding at zombies, possibly tripping them, kicking zombies can send them flying if done right, or maybe just knock them down, you can bound over zombies that you’re fighting...the entirety of combat has been built around the idea that you’re a guy that would possibly want to get around fast. It’s not always about killing the zombies but, perhaps, just making sure that you have enough time to escape their grasp.

And escaping will be an absolute joy, at that. Once you’ve kicked them down, or killed them if you actually had the chance, you can leap and bound over almost anything you can see. If you can see and reach a ledge, you can climb it. It is pretty much that simple. To say I was astounded at the sheer amount of scenery that I could scale wouldn’t cover it. The game rivals Assassin’s Creed’s openness while providing less automation, giving the player the utmost control over their actions. Even dropping down from one ledge to another, a simple action made extremely complicated in many games, is made extremely simple in Dying Light.

Amongst all these great mechanics, you will be spending a lot of time scavenging, though. It is a post-apocalyptic game through and through. Resources for crafting medkits, amongst other items, will be crucial to survival. Simply bounding over enemies won’t always cut it. Eventually, you will slip and fall, or you will need something from a vendor, and, if you haven’t been scavenging, you might be screwed. Sometimes, you may even have to pick locks. The game uses a lockpicking system similar to the Elder Scrolls series, only a bit more forgiving. I was honestly a bit surprised that a system like that was used and not one based more on luck.

This is alright, though. Getting around is easy and scavenging is made easy by “Survivor Sense,” which is essentially a short-range radar for lootable items. If that weren’t enough, if you play in co-op, the game provides “Competitions,” such as collecting the most loot in a specific amount of time or doing the most damage to a larger zombie within a specified amount of time, that you can sidetrack to keep yourselves busy during a long bout of scavenging. Scavenging may be necessary but the game does everything in its power to break up the monotony of running from house to house, collecting things.

Speaking of co-op, it actually works rather well. For the first time in ages, there was no discernable lag during a co-op game, with one of the people being on the opposite end of the country from the others. I don’t know if they use some sort of lag smoothing techniques or something similar but they did rather well hiding even the slightest hint of lag. Every player’s movement is incredibly smooth throughout. It also doesn't hurt that they included in-game VoIP that worked without any extra setup.

It’s also well-designed in terms of gameplay. In addition to the Competitions mentioned previously, players can also sacrifice medkits to heal each other, as well as reviving downed allies. Players can rest easy about their loot, as well. Each player can loot each loot source independently. Zombies, lockboxes, cupboards, you name it; each player gets a separate set of loot from each. This is exceptionally welcome as the resources for critical items, medkits even more so than weapon repair materials, are scarce enough to begin with. Imagine four players fighting over a single player’s medkit resources. That doesn’t sound all that enticing.
I wish that, at this point, I could talk a bit about the story but, put simply, four hours into the game, I still have no idea what is going on. All I know is that you’re undercover, attempting to get back some stolen file, and some of the local residents are less than reputable. The cast seems rather well-balanced personality-wise and I have yet to meet a character that felt boring or out of place, other than those that don’t talk at all, but the fact of the matter is that, four hours later, I still don’t have any idea what is going on in the city of Harran. It gives me a bit of hope, though, that the game will be lengthy and the story rife with commendable plot twists.

Now, I’ve said quite a number of words about my thoughts on Dying Light after four hours of play but the most important of them come down to this. If you had told me that the first game of the new year to suck me in for a four hour first play session would be a zombie game, I probably would have laughed at the notion. From the outset, Dying Light exceeds all expectations and creates an experience that is genuinely fun and well-designed. It remains to be seen what will happen once my character has been upgraded a bit more but I am more than hopeful that it will only become more entertaining from here.

Absolutely stunning. Been waiting for a game like this for some time.

Pros:
- Parkour climbing and freerunning is technical and fun and very well polished.
- Great visuals. Smooth gameplay on max settings on my system.
- Interesting story line (so far)
- Great physics engine and zombie corpses pile up.
- Great blood splatter effects!
- RPG level up system
- Big crafting system

Cons:
(None discovered yet :D)

So far dying light has been an great game. So I will just quickly sum up what I feel on the game so far.

Graphics 9/10 - Although the game is hard to run at max settings even at medium settings the game is beautiful. The only thing I don't like is the film grain Truly a "2015" Experiance.

Combat 8/10 - The combat makes you feel like you are really trying to bash somethings brains out. The stamina system helps with this factor a lot because of the struggle it takes to kil something without your stamina.

Movement 9/10 - The parkour in this game really gives you the rush of doing parkour, running from the strong as hell night zombies is really an experiance. Parkour is what lets you live in this game, without it you would be dead.

AI 7/10- The AI in this game is outstanding. I love how the sound is a big factor to the zombies and they will chace you for a nice amount of time, but i do wish they would go back to hunting you as soon as a distraction wore off.

Multiplayer 9/10 - It works, thats all I have to say.

Final Verdict 8/10

Should you buy this game? Yes. Its a good game if your PC can handle it.

NOTE: The day and night cycle isnt that good. It's kind of dissapointing hopefully the fix it in the future.

So here is what I have to say after a night with much less sleep than I should have got.

Dying Light is going to get compaired to Techland's previous title Dead Island a lot. And it is fair that it is, because a lot of thing, big and small, feel so similar to it. However, don't let that part put you off. Really. Don't.

In Dead Island, much of the combat felt like a bunch of little one on ones, with no real interaction with "the mob". In this, there seems to be so much more fluid combat to the game, send one zombie flying into about 6 others, and get the one that is still standing while the others on the floor figure out what the heck happened.

While it feels like I don't have the reach I would think I do, the free running feels great. It may be quite easy to fall off a pipe you run on, at least at first. After a bit, you will have the motions down a bit more like second nature.

In summary, what I am saying is this is five times better than what Dead Island was.

Just... know it is a little intensive on the graphics if you want to crank it all up, espeially with mid range gaming rigs.

FIRST:
The frame rates do dip at times, but keep your drivers updated and close other apps and you'll be fine.
Most of the negative reviews are from people with bad luck/configurations, or picky people that hate games because of film grain or because the prologue is too long.

My rig is:
GTX 650 Ti BOOST 2GB,
8GB DDR5 RAM,
4670K 3.4 GHz
Not overpowered by any means but I manage almost everything on high.

Choppy review as follows:
I'm happy to say that it seems to be one of the few games of the past few years that has lived up to the hype (so far)
Mirrors Edge, plus the good parts of Dead Island, and a bit of Dishonored feel to it
I mean I've only got 2 hours so far, so we'll see if it holds up. I haven't even fired a gun yet.
I seem to be avoiding z's more often than fighting the huge mobs of them that litter the town.
It's the way zombie survival should be.

Now once I craft the shock-machete it may be a different story..
You can still do cool overpowered things like craft throwing stars on the go so it's not too bland

I personally suggest using a controller for more fluid movement compared to WASD (although jump is mapped to L1/RB which is a little odd but you get used to it.)

I'll update the review as I play more, hopefully the game doesn't get repetitive.

Can't recommend this game for people on AMD systems.

Running an FX-8350, 8gb Ram, Sapphire R9 290 (4bg VRam). Can't get the game to maintain higher than 25 FPS even with every setting turned off/low. Through the tutorial the FPS was fine, but as soon as I went into the open world, it just fell apart. Just looking through some of the posts on reddit/other reviews, it seems to be mostly working fine with NVidia cards.

Video contains a few minutes footage of the FPS tanking during relatively quiet gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69fsTLJw4oQ

It plays like Dead Island during the day. In fact it's so exactly like Dead Island it's almost indistinguishable, with the exception of the parkour. At night everything goes to hell and the difficulty gets ramped up. You can unlock safe zones to sleep in, there's lockpicking, all in all it comes off as sort of a Assassins Creed (parkouring around) meets Bioshock (the macho-jerk character and storyline) meets Dead Island (gather/quest/craft/kill zombies), while your character does dumb plot-related stuff that you probably won't agree with but can't really control.

There's a skill system with many branches to unlock, and your at-first clumsy character will soon be flipping over zombies like a pro.

My only gripe, aside from the storyline being on rails (which I don't personally care about because I'm more interested in gameplay, which is solid), is that you can kick a zombie 1000 times and your foot will never wear out, break, whatever. Hit a zombie with a metal pipe 10 times and it's broken, and if you don't quickly repair it, it'll soon break. Your foot, meanwhile, outlasts pipes, knives, table legs, shovels, you name it. If you're going to put weapon durability in a game (which I don't like; do you have any idea how freaking hard it is to break a metal baseball bat? Especially with bones?) then you need to extend it to everything, and fists should sprain, tendons pop, all that, and your foot would break long before a metal pipe. Because of this, until you upgrade your skills the endless kicking and punching can make your character come off like some kind of inexhuastable, but physically very weak, Bruce Lee.

10/10 Almost perfect ! Everything you loved about Dead Island 1 and just add parkour to it with an amazing twist in the night.

so far no crashes or bugs, if you want to play co-op you need to finish the prologue first. played co-op with my friend with no issues so far. gonna write a proper review when i finish the game, just wanted to give a heads up on the performance and stuff.

+ 60Fps.
+ no crashes or bugs so far.
+ story seems much better than dead island.
+ multi-player works perfectly fine.
+ great graphics.
+ crafting is awesome.
+ zombies are tougher with better AI than in dead island.
+ killing zombies is really satisfying.

Review contoversy aside the game is great as of a few hours in. Haven't noticed any bugs and runs pretty well on medium/high on an i7 +gtx760.

If you like Mirror's Edge and hitting things you'll like it, I really enjoy the fact that fighting more than a handful of zombies is a challenge too and makes you focus on getting around. The tension has been pretty good too with the ambient noises keeping you on edge when out of safe zones. Haven't seen the night properly but the short section I have played got the adrenaline pumping for me.

Also if your keyboard does illumination the game hooks into it and it really adds to the game.

Would recommend.

No idea what all the fuss is about in terms of bad frames/stuttering. I am running this on my laptop on Medium (which mind you looks good!) with AA on and I get about 30-45 fps in the city. Sure it drops when around many zombies or turning fast, but its a laptop.

There are other titles that are far less optimized than this (Looking at DayZ and H1Z1, the latter I can't even play on lowest).

Specs:
i7-4700MQ 3.6GHz boost
GTX 770m
7200 RPM HDD
16GB DDR3 RAM

Running at 1080p.

Now in terms of gameplay, I've only had a chance to get about 2 hours worth. But let me tell you, these have been the best 2 hours I've spent in a while. The story is engaging, the evironments are beautiful, and the characters are interesting (not all, but at least yours is, albeit he is going for the "cliche ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" personality).

My only gripe is with how fragile weapons are. Pipes (metal ones) become damaged and do no damage within 5-6 hits. This definitely breaks immersion for me. Even upgraded weapons degrade fast from just a few hits to regular zombies.

Nights are definitely scary. The first one (although scripted) was exciting. Running back to the Tower as you are getting chased definitely got a bit of adrenaline going. It is nice to see that your character also gets what seems is an adrenaline boost when it is night. Definitely realistic considering you are going to be chased by fast zombies.

All in all, I recommend this game. Very immersive and beautiful. Worth the Ultimate purchase!

FIRST LOOK: Really great game, crafting, parkour, and bashing in zombie brains. So far its really fun and the coop is something to look forward to (as in I haven't done it yet). Fans of the first dead island will feel like this is to be an epic game! It is less clunky and overall better. You get to craft your fun crazy zombie killer weapons but you don't need to find the annoying crafting benches at odd locations, you can dismantle items for spare parts so you no longer have to find nails when you can clearly see this board with nails in it does in fat have nails. Overall so far I recommend it! After I get more hours than just the prologue (tutorial) I'll add more in depth information. The only negative thing so far is some minor FPS issues, I've seen others having it much more drasticly than me but its not a real bother for me.

Lately I've been really worried about preordering/investing in games, they never seem to live up to expectations.

That being said, this game is very nearly perfect so far. (minor bugs are the only "so far") Runs great, lots of fun bashing a zombie in the head with my foot or whatever mundane object I can find. Explosions are satisfying, night time is terrifying.

Holy crap. This game is amazing!

Unlike Dead Island, you aren't OP, and probably shouldn't take on hordes of the dead alone. The parkour is very similar to Mirror's Edge, and is surprisingly very smooth. The atmosphere is fantastic, with random ambient sounds everywhere, always keeping you on edge. Not to mention the game itself has beautiful graphics.

So far, for me it's perfect, and I have not found any problems, aside from a random little sound hicupp. Fantastic game.

LOVE this game. Way more fun than Dead Island. This game has a fantastic mix of running, leaping, and flying kicks to ninja your way into kicking some zombie ♥♥♥. Framerate is smooth, and the setting looks really nice! Controls took a bit of getting used to, but once I did I was running, climbing and leaping over and through zombies with ease. So much fun.

A Genuine Zombie game! Just buy it! Never played anything like this before!

Well I really wish I didn't preorder it..

2 GTX 980's here and I can't even get 20 fps on max settings.. I just want one game this year that I don't have to wait for a patch to play. At the beginning of the game I was playing 60 fps + on 3 monitors maxed out, but as soon as I got outside, BAM instant frame drop.

To anyone deciding to purchase this game, i'd wait.

Here are my initial impressions of the newly released game - Dying Light.

Although a "fetch this" type of game in the early stages it is clear that there are 2 main elements that are done really well. The first being the sense of tension that come with being alone in the dark during a zombie apocalypse the second being so fearless that you can run jump and parkour your way around it all. Of course that fearlessness subsides at night fall....

Once you get used to the way Crane handles you really do feel the sense of both horizontal and vertical freedom similar to that of an Assassins Creed game, but in a more active sense - so unlike the "remote controlled guy" its feels like you re actually a well conditioned parkour practitioner. Its a very liberating feeling versus that of games where you often say - I could totally make it over that wall, or I could survive that fall without dying. Cranes movement is a bright spot in the game that makes you want to just jump from place to test your limits!

It also appears that the skill trees will complement your play style and the leveling up system rewards the player for doing what they enjoy the most. So keep hopping from rooftop to rooftop and you'll find that your agility will increase at a steady and rapid rate! The risk/reward of the night vs day play also adds another wrinkle to the leveling system - actions done at night earn you bonus "XP" applied to whatever skill path your action falls under.

The melee weapons also provide a good thud and if you are use to melee type games like 7DTD, Condemned, and even Skyrim there should be much problem getting used to the initial sampling of melee weapons at hand. Sorry but I have not got a gun yet so I can't comment on the gunplay (atm)

It will not be a spoiler to state that the main protagonist is sent to this living hell with ulterior motives, but I find myself liking his character as he appears genuinely concerned with those around him.

As you can tell, right now my initial impressions are very positive and I look forward to immersing my self deeper into its fiction and its visceral first person view. Definitely in the vein of open world shooters such as FC4, and especially Dead Island series, but with the ability to jump and scratch your way out of danger. It's not really funny like Dead Rising, nor is it overly serious like the Evil Within. Basically if you like run-and gun FPSs and enjoy the zombie genre I really feel this game will be right up your alley.

I'm playing this game via K&M on an R9 295x2 at 1920x1200. to get the best frame rate turn down the draw distance and keep motion blur on.. You can also try to reduce your shadows and eliminate the AA. Dying Light will look best with Vsync on, but it is also very playable with it turned off, just expect to see screen tearing. I am currently running stock clocks on the GPU and stock on an i7 3770k. I run 16GB of RAM and use a P8Z77-I DELUXE mainboard. Its all stuffed in a Cooler Master elite 130 Small Form Factor PC case with a custom mounted EVGA 1300W! G2 power supply. I would say the game is very playable and achieves about a 50+ FPS average. AMD users will want to keep a close eye on future updates and user recommendations via youtube and AMD forums as there may be ways to get better frame rates by adjusting the application settings under Catalyst Control Center. The game also includes some Nvidia features - HBAO+ (supposedly "free" zero-cost ambient occlusion) and Nvidia Depth of Field, but my guess is that in order to get 60FPS at MAX settings you'll need the most powerful HW your money can buy.

Looking forward to trying the co-op and the invade another players game features soon.

Is it worth 60$ - well if you know where to go you can easily get this game right now for under 48$US, and for it being a new release with MP functionality I'd totally say it is absolutely worth that entry fee.

-Ang