Dying Light: The Following – Enhanced Edition Review

Despite my love of zombie games and movies, I never got round to playing the open-world survival horror game Dying Light from developers Techland when it first launched last year. Thankfully though, Warner Bros has brought the game back from the dead with the release of Dying Light: The Following – Enhanced Edition. This edition includes the new standalone expansion Dying Light: The Following as well as the original game, post-release downloadable content

In Dying Light, the story follows Kyle Crane, an operative from an organisation assisting survivors in the zombie plagued Turkish city of Harran called Global Relief Effort (GRE). A secret document has been stolen from the GRE and the culprit is hiding in Harran, if this sensitive document is released it could possibly jeopardize the lives of many. Your mission is to go undercover, find the perpetrator and recover the document. The story is unoriginal and predictable at the best of times however I still managed to be engaged right through to the end.

The story in the standalone expansion The Following manages to be much more interesting and unique than the main game although albeit a bit too brief. Crane receives word that a group outside the city has found a way to become immune to the virus. With many lives on the line, you set out to go investigate. You soon learn that the group of people are in fact a cultists group worshipping someone called the Mother. With the cultists being uncooperative towards strangers you must gain their trust and find out what is really going on.

Despite several characters getting a lot of screen time in the main story, I didn’t really warm up to any of them. I’m unsure if you are meant to like the main character Crane or not but I sure didn’t. When you are talking to residents of Harran, he genuinely acts like a normal protagonist, willing to put his own life on the line to help people out. He is however keeping secret his affiliation and blind loyalty to the GRE.

At one point early on in Dying Light he burns a whole lot of essential medicine, potentially sacrificing the lives of many innocent people, just to progress his mission. I’m unsure if you are supposed to push past and forget this event but for me is was at the forefront of my mind for the rest of the game, permanently tainting my view of Crane.
Where the main story underwhelms, Dying Light nearly nails its side missions. These have you dealing with a range of interesting characters on quests that feel relevant and well developed, tying naturally into events unfolding across the world. They also run decently long, often built around a string of objectives rather than a simple fetch-and-return errand.
The game plays out across three large open world areas: two in the city of Harran and one in the surrounding countryside. Getting around these massive spaces is easy thanks to smooth movement mechanics, chief among them the parkour system that lets you leap between rooftops and climb almost anything in sight. Since the game is first-person, though, not seeing your own feet while parkouring through the city occasionally trips things up.

Midway through the game you get a grappling hook, which adds a welcome burst of speed and fun. You can grab onto a surprisingly large chunk of the environment and yank yourself toward it. There are limits though: only two uses before it needs to recharge. And being able to physically hook onto something doesn’t guarantee you’ll survive the landing. More than once I hooked onto a spot, pulled myself in, and found nothing for my hands to grip, so down I went.
In The Following, players get an upgradable vehicle for crossing the expansive countryside. It’s convenient, almost essential given how large the open world is, but I missed crossing rooftops with nothing but a grappling hook and superhuman parkour skills. The vehicle also became a chore, since you constantly have to loot other cars for parts and fuel, then repair it whenever something breaks. Getting spotted by the superfast zombies and dragged into a chase felt more annoying than exciting.

The game leans into a serious survival horror tone for its take on the zombie apocalypse. Early on you rely on scavenged supplies, makeshift melee weapons, and good judgement about when to fight and when to run. Individual zombies go down easily enough, but take on a group and you’ll quickly join their ranks. That balance keeps zombie encounters tense, sometimes genuinely scary.
As the game progresses you unlock increasingly powerful weapons including guns, and the zombies start to feel a lot less intimidating. Scavenging matters less too, since your pile of cash keeps growing. Somewhere along the way the survival horror tone I loved at the start starts to fade. The developers throw in several tougher special zombies to compensate, but that mostly just means fights take longer rather than feeling more dangerous.

A major focus of the game is on multiplayer, both drop in/drop out co-op and player versus player. As more of a single player gamer I much preferred undertaking the game solo and thus largely ignored the co-op aspect. I did however enjoy the player versus player aspect which is reminiscent of Evolve. Here one player invades another player’s game in a mode called “Be the Zombie” and takes the form of a special zombie called the Night Hunter.

The Night Hunter’s objective is to kill the human players a certain number of times before the humans kill their all their nests.

Playing on the human’s side, especially when done solo, isn’t that enjoyable. I ended up disabling the ability for other people to invade my world altogether. Playing as the Night Hunter is however very entertaining thanks to several awesome attacking abilities as well as the smooth Spiderman-esque movement. I did encounter difficulty in finding a game to play as the Night Hunter though as players frequently kick you out or hide out in an area where you can’t attack them, hoping you will quit first.

The visuals and music are two areas which the game is lacking in. Visually, the environments were somewhat bland and unimpressive. The background music, although fitting in with the mood of the game, is quite annoying which detracts from the game.

Dying Light: The Following – Enhanced Edition has several flaws in its story, difficulty drop towards the end of the game and subpar visuals and music. Despite all this, I was able to overlook it because of the otherwise excellent gameplay and expansive zombie filled open world to explore. Overall it manages to be the biggest and most polished zombie game I’ve played to date. This Enhanced Edition offers a great chance for newcomers to the series to give the game a go if you missed it when it first launch last year.