Some people may feel that zombies are an over-used gaming trope these days, but some of us still lurve us some undead-bashing goodness every now and then.
Dying Light is an upcoming game that blends zombies, open-world and parkour with a day/night cycle that drastically alters the way zombies behave, and the little I’ve seen of it so far has it looking pretty sweet.
But any actual gameplay details have been few and far between, so when I spotted this video from gaming megasite IGN taken on the E3 floor of the game in action, I just had to share.
In Dying Light, players will scavenge supplies during the day while the zombies are relatively tame, set traps to trip them up at night and presumably rescue the dumbasses who inevitably end up needing help through their own stupidity, as seems to happen in every zombie game ever.
Parkour (also called “freerunning”), in case you don’t know yet, is the art of running atop urban rooftops and landscapes and leaping acrobatically over everything, and it’s probably more fun to “do” behind your computer screen because of the far lesser risk of breaking limbs and ending up in hospital. It’s how you get around in Dying Light, and appears to be a nice change from Dead Island’s “You can go anywhere, so long as that’s where we let you” approach to the levels in their zombie-game concept.
Things I loved about the video: a baseball bat with nails in it plays a central role in the zombie-bludgeoning that you’ll see, the parkour looks pretty fluid and the game appears to have a bunch of tactical options that moving any way you like over the apparently-unrestricted landscape seems to offer.
A quick heads-up: this is pretty violent stuff (a trend I’m noticing more and more of late), so if that’s not your cup of tea maybe go watch Gummi Bears on YouTube instead.
Dying Light is being made by Polish outfit Techland, the guys behind Dead Island and the Call of Juarez series of cowboy FPSes, games that weren’t exactly terrible, but which also didn’t set the world alight. Dying Light appears to be their third bite at the zombie apocalypse apple (after Dead Island and its expansion, Riptide); I just hope they’ve learned a thing or two about what people want from zombie games, which this video seems to indicate they have.
Dying Light is out in February 2015 for PC, Xbox 360/One, PlayStation 3 and 4.
[Source – IGN, Image – Techland]
