The list of zombie games is as numerous as the shambling hoards that populate them. Techland’s 2015 open-world/FPS/parkour take on the genre had a lot to sink your teeth into. While Dying Light as a franchise is mostly in the news because of its sequel, Dying Light: Stay Human, the original has been given some TLC from the Polish development team. The big improvements are draw distance, resolution, and frame rate for the next-gen consoles. While this may be what you’d expect given the new hardware’s boost mode, developer-driven performance increases will always shake out better than anything at the system level of the PS5. It’s a welcome addition and certainly a great way to get some more buzz for Techland’s big sequel.
The hook of the original game wasn’t just the traversal system but the day-night cycle. While the streets were dangerous during the day, they are absolutely lethal after dark. This gave such a sense of weight while playing the game to get to your objective or safe room before nightfall. If you’re caught out after dark, you could run into far more powerful and dangerous enemies. When the siren rings from the home-base tower, you know to get your ass indoors or suffer the consequences. This was such a fun mechanic that had me scouring my map and considering the time of day as I planned my excursions and despite its sequel releasing recently, it’s an element the team has moved away from, and I miss it in Dying Light 2.
Despite that, this is still an excellent action game with great melee combat. You’ll upgrade items and your move-set as you progress with experience points. Eventually, you’ll wield a flaming hatchet, spring off of a high-rise with the poise of an Olympic athlete and sink your weapon into the soft skulls of the undead. Before you can though, you’ll have to gradually level up both your combat and parkour skills by doing missions or just by playing through the game. Everything you do gives you points. The story is still a bit bland, but it’s enough to motivate you through to the end. I will note that the main voice actor, Roger Smith, does an excellent job of voicing what you’re thinking at the moment.
The headlining feature of this “next-gen” patch is the video modes. My main gripe is that you cannot switch between these modes on the fly, which means that if you want to test the differences, you’ll have to reload a save, quit out to the main menu, and repeat until you are happy with the results. The new PS5 update has three video modes: Performance, Balanced, and High Resolution. While the PS4 Pro also received some shine, it can now run the game at an “improved” 30 FPS. I cannot speak to the PS4 version as I was reviewing the patch on the PS5.
I originally sunk about 60 hours into the Xbox One version back in 2015 and found the performance lacking. While in high-insight it was the weaker port of the game, I spent many hours squinting at the screen enjoying my time but dying more than once due to poor frames and blurry visuals. But gone are the day of feeling like I’m squinting through Vaseline-covered glasses. (As an aside, I enjoyed every blurry moment of it.)
Let’s start with performance mode. You’ll get 60 FPS in Full HD resolution. If you don’t have a 4k television this is an easy choice. The extra frames shine through the most when you’re sprinting across the rooftops, running for your life. I never hit any frame dips and if I weren’t a “pixel pansy” I may have spent more time with it.
This leads us to the Balanced mode at 1440P “targeting” 60 FPS and the High-Resolution mode at 4k but bumps you down to 30 FPS. While it is certainly up to your preference, I’d recommend using the balanced mode. Despite wanting to use every pixel I own, I can’t argue with using 60 FPS in any first-person game. It feels like a generational step backwards to run a game at a locked 30 FPS in today’s age, especially on something almost 7 years old. I would also highly advise turning off Film Grain and Chromatic Aberration Effects. Both are applied quite heavily and I suspect they were originally intended to take attention away from how bad the original draw distance was in the previous versions of the game. Luckily this version comes with a 25% draw distance increase which was desperately needed.
After having spent some time in the sequel I can say that I enjoyed the city more in the original Dying Light. It feels more grounded and believable. Not that the sequel is bad by any means, I just think I felt much more compelled to find all of this city has to offer.
Dying Light was a gem when it was first released, and it has aged pretty well. While originally launching in January 2015, the game was overlooked despite positive reviews. If you’re not ready to dive into the sequel quite yet, or if it’s sitting in your backlog, now might be the time to fire it up. If that’s you, I’ll say, “Good night and good luck” and stay the hell indoors at night.
