Recent reviews by Master of Disaster

This game is an uninspired, inferior child of DL2 and DL1: The Following that brings nothing new to the table and really tries hard to bait you with nostalgia into spending more money on a “standalone” game, but in reality it's just a shallow copy of the previously mentioned DLC for DL1, with a returning main character and a glorified “new” mechanic — Beast Mode (as if I hadn’t already seen constant left-mouse-button smashing while playing as Aiden or playing Be the Zombie in DL1 already).

The main story basically revolves around boring running from one unoriginal boss-fight to another unoriginal boss-fight, with a couple of errands in between (developers even “borrowed” delivery quests from the first Dead Island games. It’s time to deliver juice boxes and fuel canisters with your car once again!). And I really “liked” how you have to run across the huge map to a main quest dialog, just to run for another main quest dialog on the opposite side of the map back to back, without fast travel or a normal way to traverse the map (cars are horrendous and break quickly).

And how the story is supposed to be believable if you use your “10 years in the lab made you a puny weakling”, but in reality Kyle looks muscular, can climb without a sweat, runs endlessly, and still crushes enemies like nothing happened (despite being in a wheelchair and crawling like a worm at the beginning of the game)? That miraculous zombie juice must perform wonders, I guess.

Skill system is abysmal—you still have to learn skills from previous games over and over again (as if I hadn’t already done that in DL2!), but here's the catch: there's no sense of progression. In DL1 you start as a “newbie” in parkour, but then learn the ropes and become faster and more agile (I really liked how Kyle is sloppy and sluggish at the beginning and then becomes a parkour master towards the end of the first game). Why not give Crane a small recovery period after being tortured for 13 years? It would be much cooler to see him weak and slow at first, and then steadily grow stronger over time—not just in the prologue section.

Or let’s take the second game, where Aiden has to search for inhibitors that allow him to access and explore new points of interest, climb higher, and fight longer. In “The Beast” we got a bare-bones leveling system with pretty much nothing new to it. Most of the skills are kinda useless anyways… except maybe button-smashing berserk ultimate and glorious dropkick.

Worldbuilding and NPCs are also comically poorly made. We have a super-duper-evil-for-the-sake-of-evil-I-want-more-power villain with his mega secret lab that performs various experiments when the world has long been gone. But how did Baron and his minions manage to survive that long if their test subjects constantly escape, rip apart Baron’s people and run around committing massacres? Just by pumping some gas, I guess.

Survivors are no better. A bunch of forgettable NPCs that exist for the sake of giving you another fetch quest, and that's it. Survivors from the previous games had fortified settlements, traversal infrastructure, communities, gardens, ways to collect water, etc. These poor guys from Town Hall just sit there, smelling fumes from a generator, eating dusty rice with expired cookies, and shooting themselves from time to time because they can't find UV mushrooms to inhale. Pathetic. How come they are even alive with all-mighty Baron around? Telepathic half-zombie exiles from the cave are living a more believable life in a zombie apocalypse than common survivors.

From a gameplay perspective, this “standalone” game feels more like a free, really solid Steam Workshop custom story from a team of dedicated, skillful modders, heavily inspired by The Following DLC made on the Dying Light 2 engine, rather than an official game that has its own identity and place in the series (I constantly couldn't shake the feeling that I've played this game before because of how similar and copy-pasted it is, not even to previous installments like The Following but even to the Dead Island series).

So, if you haven't played previous games from this company over and over again and just want to run around mindlessly through empty fields and woods (wow, you don't even have your personal good old upgradable buggy like in The Following), sometimes parkouring, beating potato sacks that are called zombies, and looting some sweet garbage (you need an insane amounts to craft something)—buy this game with a huge discount. As for me, I'm going back to Harran and pretend that sequels never happened. Especially not overextended ones that should have been just a DLC with fast travel mechanic implemented and cost half of its current price.

Good luck, Nightrunners.

P.S. I have nothing against people who like this game. It's solely your choice to make how you want to spend your time and money. I kinda feel that this game can be fun at times, and I can see why people are so excited about it; there are some good sides of The Beast too (great voice acting and charisma of the main protagonist, good music, beautiful landscapes, dynamic combat). Unfortunately, Dying Light 1 set the bar too high for me (except maybe in terms of a story, because all games in this series have bland, predictable stories with lots of cliches). My point is that I wanted this franchise to evolve and prosper, not to lazily parasite on nostalgia, but I kinda lost hope after the mediocre, directionless second game, and this DLC assured me that there’s no more reason for me to support this studio anymore. But who cares anyways? Money is money, profits are profits. Have a great rest of your day.

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