At first, I was not interested in knowing what Dying Light was about. But as soon as I had seen the E3 gameplay demo, I was hooked. I was amazed at how the game turned out. I assumed it was going to be a horror type of game. It kind of is but that is not what Dying Light is intended to be.

In Dying Light you play as Kyle Crane, a GRE agent whose task is to recover valuable data from the city of Harran that could cure a virus that has spread throughout the city. The virus turns people from the city of Harran into zombie-like creatures or into special mutations. To be honest with you, I did not pay too much attention to the storyline. It was straight forward to me because I knew that you needed to come a long way through meeting people and enemies that know where to find and stop the enemy boss, who has the information you want.

What I did pay attention to and really enjoyed from playing Dying Light is how fun or annoying side quests can be. The city of Harran is a huge place to explore; you can be running up or down buildings and come across a civilian being attacked by a horde of zombies and help him out. In return, they give you a pretty decent amount of money you can use to buy new weapons or supplies. You also meet civilians who are running a business and need your help in their projects, which range from small tasks like collecting crayons for children to running in a dark freeway tunnel packed with zombies and planting a bomb at night, which can be kind of heart racing and scary.

It was difficult getting used to the controls when I first started playing Dying Light. I would be falling off buildings or double tapping the left bumper and panic, thinking I was about to fall off a tall building, causing me to die and restart from the last checkpoint. In order to jump you press the right bumper (RB) instead of pressing X. Most gamers would assume and be accustomed to pressing X since it’s a primary button to do everything.

The fun part of Dying Light is how creative you can be when it comes to killing hordes of zombies in your path. From wooden sticks to pipes to even medieval swords, you use various methods to fight your way out as more and more zombies close in on you. Thanks to the ability to use parkour, you can easily jump your way out of the zombies, which comes in hand all the time, especially at night.

But you need to gain experience first, in order to become the survivor of the fittest. There are three different skill trees in Dying Light that will help you further your characters’ progress, unlocking new power, agility, and survivor skills. You can even unlock a grapple hook that makes it fast and easy to get on rooftops and make quick getaways from zombies when your weapons are severely damaged or you are getting low on health.

Dying Light is not a pretty game when it comes to the blood and gore strewn all over the place from the zombies. But the game is beautiful when it comes to graphics and how amazing the city looks. If you’re looking for a jump scare and heart-pumping action then you should definitely pick up this game.

8/10