Dying Light, the latest in a long line of zombie-themed games, has raised its head at this year’s E3. Set during a zombie apocalypse, the game, as with a lot of zombie games out there, sees you trying to survive.
The demo that we played involved trying to reach an airdrop, which contains medicine. This led to being able to experience two core elements of the game – free running and combat.
The game is played from a first-person perspective, which made the free-running segments feel very tense and certainly highlights how fast-paced being chased by zombies ought to feel. Their pursuit is relentless. Your character’s athleticism extends to other actions as well, such as climbing various structures and jumping from one of them to another. Using these skills, we eventually reached an abandoned building and found a little girl hiding in a closet. While the protagonist wants to help her, he needs to stay focused on getting to the airdrop… and fighting off zombies. It should be noted that the zombies are called the Infected in Dying Light and they are half-human, half-zombie. Something interesting is that the time-of-day also changes in real time, with night time being more dangerous, as this is when the Infected wake up and actively chase you.
The protagonist pulls out an axe weapon, which can be used to decapitate the Infected. It’s here that we got a small taste of the game’s weapon crafting system and were able to put together an electrified machete. Aside from standard attacks, you can also perform a powerful spinning attack with melee weapons, to strike multiple enemies at once. If you want to play it smart, you can also perform stealth takedowns to avoid confrontations when necessary. There are also some very dangerous Infected about, which are too dangerous to take on in combat- running is the only option here. These Infected can be detected with the special Pulse system, which scans the area and alerts you.
Dying Light is coming to Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3 and PC in 2014.
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