Have you ever wanted to parker through a zombie horde?
Behind closed doors, Warner Bros. Interactive was showing off their latest zombie apocalypse game, and (somehow) I got in to give it the good old-fashioned try. Also, they let me use a gun, baseball bat, machete, and a sledgehammer against a slew of decomposing bastards. I was a happy Kevin for a while.
Not a lot about the story in Dying Light was revealed to me, apart from the fact that the main protagonists are attempting to survive in an urban environment by collecting military drops, but the gameplay was more than enough for a first look. Set in a fictional city and country modeled after Istanbul, DL is all about securing parts and items for missions while parkouring through the landscape combination of makeshift buildings and modern-ish factories.
Of course, the weapons help you chop through the mass of baddies, but that's more secondary… the guns don't get much ammo, and your stamina can run out in the middle of a fight when you need it most. So, your best plan? Run. RUN LIKE THE GODDAMN WIND! And that's during the day.
At night, the whole situation becomes all the more brutal. During the day, the zombies are more docile, less likely to come after you simply because you're standing there. But at night, some of them transform in the moonlight and grow faster, stronger, and keener on munching your sweet, sweet gray matter. The main character has a pulse that can be sent out to interrupt a transformation into one of the more aggro zombies, but there is a cooldown period to follow, so it seems good enough to get your running start with but little more. That's when the game changes from a hunt-and-gather style of gameplay and into more of a survival-horror battleground.
Graphically it looks great, and when most everything can be climbed and explored, the whole thing looks to be shaping up quite nicely. This spiritual successor to Dead Island is scheduled for release sometime in 2014 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
