To even things up, you are equipped with a UV torch, which stops zombies in their tracks for a while, and you can trigger traps that flood areas with UV light, but your best bet, invariably, is to run like the wind when you’ve been spotted.
Then there are the Night Hunters, basically super zombies, who provide the game’s boss-battle element. The RAC can’t really help Photograph: Warner BrosĪt night, though, things ramp up and out come the Volatiles, enormously mobile highly intelligent beasts with devastating attacks and the ability to track you. Getting trapped on the roof of a car at night time is a bit of a survival no-no. There are even zombies in hazmat suits which explode satisfyingly if you target their oxygen tanks, while the Screamers temporarily stun you with piercing shrieks and are near-invisible. With the sun shining, you only have to contend with fairly low-grade zombies – although you do encounter giant, lumbering tanks which take (and deal) a lot of damage, as well as zombies that spit bile, and others that explode in a shower of intestines (and can be employed effectively as bombs if you’re clever).
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The night is full of terrorsĪnother crucial game mechanic is the disparity between day and night. However, the bloody and unpredictable encounters between zombies and human factions provides both ever-morphing gameplay and a Lord of the Flies-style examination of how a zombie outbreak would influence social mores. Forced, as the storyline progresses, to carry out missions for Rais, and increasingly suspicious of the GRE’s motives, Crane undergoes plenty of soul-searching moments, although Dying Light isn’t a game crammed with moral choices which influence the storyline. An endearingly odd smattering of locals have managed to carve out an existence in various enclaves, although they are routinely bullied and extorted by local warlord Rais and his gang of thugs, who have a monopoly on Harran’s stock of guns. A crafting engine lets you make things like Molotov cocktails and zombie-attracting firecrackers, bringing abundant environmental traps into play.Īs you perform missions and explore, you discover other human factions. You’re told early on that firing a gun is dangerous, as the noise attracts hordes of monsters, so initially, you’re restricted to melee weapons, which can be upgraded for durability and zombie-splattering power. Here, you’re taught parkour skills, allowing you to climb buildings and flow across rooftops, Assassin’s Creed-style, which of course proves vital – the one thing Harran’s zombies haven’t learned to do is climb. Things get off to a challenging start when you’re immediately bitten by a zombie, but then a bunch of bedraggled survivors rescue you and take you back to their safe house. Your mission is to recover sensitive data about the disease, stolen by a local GRE man who has gone rogue. You’re parachuted into the fictional town of Harran, the centre of the outbreak now sealed off from the outside world. You play Kyle Crane, a military operative working for an organisation called the Global Relief Effort (or GRE) which, despite the name, seems to have some faintly sinister agenda – even though it is still sending in supplies of Antizin, which slows the development of the virus. You still don’t want to deal with too many at once though Photograph: Warner Bros For developer Techland, the game is effectively a remake of its 2011 title Dead Island – and for the most part it succeeds in realising the potential of that flawed release.ĭuring the day, the zombies are sluggish and relatively weak. Essentially, designed as a sort of zombified Far Cry, it marries open-world exploration with a decent storyline, involving a zombifying viral outbreak in a Middle-Eastern city locked down by quarantine, the survivors left to fend for themselves. That is not a criticism that could be levelled at Dying Light. So far, however, most zombie video games have generally lagged behind this prevailing curve by sticking steadfastly to blood-splattered B-movie horror.
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In recent years, films and TV programmes like 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead have taken the undead apocalypse and used it to explore themes of contagion, paranoia and mass panic – things we see regurgitated every second of the day on 24 hour news channels. Zombie fiction is also about finding ourselves isolated in a world that is both physically recognisable and utterly alien. The zombie myth has provided plenty of schlock-horror thrills over the past five decades, but there’s always been more to it than jump shocks and gore.
Warner Bros PC/PS4/Xbox One £45 Pegi rating: 18