Dying Light: The Following Review

This was played on the Playstation 4 copy of the game.

Dying Light left a great vibe on this website when it came out. It expanded on what was good about Dead Island, then added parkour, and a fun experience to explore a decently sized set of locations. Dying Light: The Following is several months after the original game takes off from. You play as Kyle Crane with a batch of new things to use. Such as a souped up vehicle of doom(Buggy). A Crossbow that would make that one guy from the walking dead smile, and some more stuff to find.

The setting takes place in a area beyond the original city gates of the historic Turkish city of Harran. If you have played the game originally last year (and you should!). It was a pretty damn good retry of what their concept was for Dead Island. It felt fun, a good story(some points kinda there and here), and was filled with secrets, depth and plenty to do. I personally clocked in over 115+ hours from exploring with friends, and farming materials for various blueprints within the game. If you want to read our review for the original game, click here. This game follows up with the antics of the original games protagonist. You are brought into a land where The Mother’s cult runs around chanting, keeping the town folk safe from infected like some sort of tribal sunbros on steroids. Well not so much steroids, but just like sunbros basically. The main story is not as long as you would expect if you just simply run through it. Which I would suggest just doing every side quest besides just going through the main plot to stretch out the game further. I have seen people review this game and base it only off trying to hurry and complete it with the main story. Which then led them to stating the content lacked any thing without touching a single side mission because it was “beneath” them or something. Like who the hell does that kinda crap haha! The whole expansion lasts roughly twelve hours if you sit down and explore everything and level up your buggy which I will get into in a moment. The story for The Following is pretty well told. The characters show personally as last time in the core game, and you feel like your actually doing most of the quests for a reason rather then just doing them for reputation or leveling up Kyle. By default I disabled the invasion bit to the game as I wanted to focus on doing quests and exploring rather then dodge some player who is hyped up on Red Bull and angst. That element to the game plays a return within this game, as my friends who do play the DLC were trying to invade me, and got annoyed I blocked them off. Serves em’ right~.

Gameplay is more of the same as mentioned before. If you really liked Dying Light, but wanted more the game gives you just that. With large fields to ride around in your buggy. Which the buggy itself is pretty darn cool. It levels up as you ride around at night, or simply run over a ton of infected. The more you level it the more you can do to it, such as add parts to it, and show off your paint jobs which you find throughout the experience. You can also find collectibles, like bobbleheads or whatever for the dashboard for cosmetic flair. Little details that make wanting to progress the tank on four wheels are here for sure. Like the many quests to do time racing for new parts for your car or cosmetics. The Buggy itself steals the show. The car handles so responsively! At first I was muttering to my self “watch this thing handle like a tank on ice”. Then BAM my mouth shut right up after fifteen minutes running through zombies in pure shock. The only downside I had was you could not toggle between third person mode for the buggy while driving around. This would be specially helpful whenever driving around on large mountain passes or racing. Some people prefer that first person angle, and I can understand why, but I like the option for myself to be able to see the car, the ground, and my surroundings. Other downsides which are not a major thing(because I expect this with the type of game due to the engine itself can not be published without a flaw here and there due to all sorts of things happening at once.) you figure out a work around is some of the quest glitches within the game. For example in Going Postal your adventure leads you to a mail truck you need to open a set of doors, you open the door then another set of sealed doors are there. So two trucks got pasted by the games code or whatever into that spot. So I had to loop around to a wheel and tap X to see the quest item, then be able to pick it up. This sort of stuff is amusing at times, other times prevents you sadly from doing too much more until a fix genuinely happens. So overall the game gives you purpose to the many happenings in the game.

Like the original game, there are a few Easter eggs here and there which I will not mention what they are. I got all gitty once I found a few along the way. Also plenty of the developer recipes make a return. After completing certain quests you can track them down at special spots. Getting some pretty rad weapons like a paper air plane. Over time I hope the devs just do DLCs with special tasks that grant all sorts of random things like this more often. Sure it could get stale, but it also could lead to challenging tasks for great rewards.

In Closing:

A year later, Techland comes out with a great reason to install and play some more Dying Light once again. The story is pretty short for this expansion sure, but if you step back and bundle in all of the side quests, challenges, and loot to find for your buddy the buggy you will be kept very busy for the $19.99 price tag. The co-op is a blast going through the many Hives within the game that respond like a parkour dungeon of sorts where you must locate hive enemy spawners and snuff them out. I could sit here all day talking about the addiction complex I have with the timed races in the game but screw it you find that out for yourself ya’ freeloader~.

Recommended –

If you loved the original Dead Island series but were unsure of Dying Light itself. Enjoyed Dying Light but wanted much more to do. The Buggy handling is smooth and handles like a charm. Love a good co-op experience with friends and explore large planes.