Dying Light (Game Review)

The zombies are back, or rather, they never really left 'cause of the whole 'undead' thing. Anyway, you know a really good way of dealing with zombies? Apparently parkour is excellent for escaping the undead hoards. If you currently aren't in the middle of a zombie apocalypse nor have the agility to learn parkour, then Dying Light is for you!

He just wants a hug, but give him one and his heart will pop!

As an agent for a government agency called the GRE (I never actually learnt what that stood for) you play Kyle Crane, a somewhat competent agent who is sent into the zombie infested city of Harran to recover a stolen file which contains something sensitive about the virus and/or cure which is being held by a vicious dictator. Minutes after being deployed, Kyle fucks up royally and is saved by the local survivors and scavengers. The entire premise is rather long-winded and most of what happens is simply a staging point for the actual story which a much more interesting man-o vs man-o war of personalities. When I say more interesting, I mean slightly less stereo-typical than its starting ideas.

For once, it's nice to play a character that has clear morals and intentions, who isn’t a two dimensional canvas for you to project yourself on. Kyle has real and well expressed emotions and reacts to situations like a 'normal' person. He scoffs at stupid fetch side quests, mocks idiots and has compassion for those who are suffering. It's been quite a while since I've seen such a well-developed character as the player character. The rest of the cast is nowhere near as developed, almost as if Kyle Crane got all his personality by sucking it out of everyone else like some hipster vampire. Everyone is replaceable and stock standard, even the main villain. The story and characters were predictable and the ending was rather lacklustre, though gratifying. I was climbing the ladder to meet the villain in a final showdown and I openly said "I feel a quick-time event waiting at the top of this ladder". I was right, which was disappointing.

But who cares about the story when there's a city full of zombies to chop into pieces? The game, made by the Dead Island developers, features their signature combat style of 'aim and swing'. You can take to the undead with a variety of clubs, hatchets, axes and swords, all can be upgraded with a variety of 'blueprints' that add extra effects to weapons. These are made by collecting crafting pieces in the environment and can increase a weapon's durability, handling or power while others add fire or electricity damage. While it is extremely satisfying to make a poisoned weapon make those annoying human enemies vomit their guts up, it's not all that realistic and did make it feel more of an arcade game. Over time, you learn a range of new skills that makes dispatching zombies easier, but that is where I found a problem with the difficulty curve. The game is brutal hard early game as you lack the abilities to deal with enemies fast before they overwhelm you, but once you get those skills then the game gets far easier. The introduction of other zombie types shakes things up, but not in any new or interesting ways. Perhaps the most unique feature is the day/night cycle and the nasties that come out at night. Initially, these zombies are fast and dangerous, but they lose all their thrill once you gain parkour skills. It feels wrong that a game simply gets easier as you play through. There are firearms, but they don't play a major feature until nearly all human enemies start to use them. Dying Light is a bad shooter. I don't even want to talk about how bad guns are.

The feature point of Dying Light is the parkour system. First-person free-running hasn't really been tried since Mirror's Edge and Dying Light certainly makes big steps in the right direction. It's still horrible trying to navigate a climbing section in a first-person camera, but it is satisfying enough to make it a lot of fun. Again, levelling up skills makes using the parkour even easier. It really feels like you become a hero among the mere mortals as you become so overpowered that it becomes borderline boring to play. Oh, and then you get the Batman grapple gun. Yeah. I feel that a lot of the skills are interesting to use once or twice, but you'll always revert to your simple ones. Being able to make shields, boosters and throwing weapons never felt necessary, and in fact, I never used them. I think it got to the point where they were adding skills to pad the oversized skills tree.

In the end, I found Dying Light a lot of fun to play. Not for the story, but because running around being the equivalent of Batman in a zombie game is bloody awesome. I didn't feel a sense of completion when the story ended, I just wanted to kill more zombies, which I did for a few days and then finally got bored with no missions to do. I honestly feel like I could single-handedly just kill every zombie in Hassan and end the whole disaster. I tried to do that too, but then night time came and I fucked up all the mutant zombies. I looked over the square full of body parts and thought about what I was doing. "Screw this, just nuke it" I said, and quit.

Note from Editor: I couldn't review the multiplayer content at the time of writing, but Dying Light also supports a coop system and an online player vs zombie player mode.

(Reviewed on PS4)

Remember Me (Game Review)

I’m just blowing your mind… in the most unpleasant way possible.

It’s a dystopian future set in Neo-Paris and memories have become a commodity. For a small price, you can enjoy the blissful recollection of someone else’s life. The memory economy has brought great wealth to some, but has left many in financial or mental ruin with its addictive effects. To some, memories are a means to an end; to allow the bending, substituting or complete erasing of a personality.

You play as Nilin, a memory hunter with the unique ability of not only being able to take people’s memories, but rewrite them. Your memories have been erased, leaving nothing but loose threads. Through the guidance of some morally uncertain characters, you’ll learn what is really happening behind the scenes of Neo-Paris’ façade.

There’s a lot to like in Remember Me. Despite being very linear, the game is heavily story driven and the writing is certainly above average. The story twists and turns and does throw a few curveballs, but many are predictable. Without spoilers, it does have a fairly satisfying end and may tug on a few heart strings. I actually found parts of the story very morally questionable, but the linearity meant you had to follow through, which left me frustrated with the story at times. The dystopian future is pulled off very well with some amazing level design with very few complaints. They even tried a bit of a puzzle element, which was completely out of place but a cute effort.

The rest of the game is where it starts to fall apart. The concept is interesting and pretty unique, with the idea of memory remixing very well designed and fun to use. These sequences allow you to review someone’s memory and tweak things to change the outcome. It might be something as simple as taking the safety off on a gun or moving an object. Sadly it was poorly utilised and was only featured a handful of times. At its core, it is a third person fighting/parkour game with shooting tacked on. The combat mechanics were average at best despite the pressens adding an interesting touch. Pressens are basically super-moves that you can utilise at the cost of focus which you build up by attacking enemies. You can design combos (to a point) to have moves that may deal extra damage, heal you or reduce the cooldown on your pressens. While the combos are specific combinations of punches and kicks, you can choose what each part of a combo will do. A kind of ‘memory gun’ is introduced early game which acts as both a weapon and a tool for later levels. Unfortunately, shooting is sloppy thanks to a rigid targeting system and doesn’t add much to the game.

Head-splosions!

I played this on PC, which suffered from a bad console port. The camera is sluggish and sometimes unresponsive and some mechanics were badly interpreted for a mouse/keyboard player. Despite this though, I got used to it and didn't end up grumbling too much in-game from control-related failures.

There's a lot to like to this one, but although I would recommend it, it still leaves much to be desired. It was fun to play and overall enjoyable, only brought down by its technical flaws and some poor design choices. I do recommend this game. It's not a 'must play', but it certainly is a 'should play'.

And 'remember you soon' is a tacky way to say goodbye, just saying.