Dying Light, a next-gen Dead Island... - The Bear and Badger

FranticPea

Me and Webbanon finished this last night. That ending. Ugh. It's one of the worst.

I actually liked the very last cutscene

Spoiler:

Webbo was a bit behind me (we played through the whole thing co-op....then it split us into SP for the last bit which was a bit jarring). He sounded like he was one death away from taking an axe to his Xbox.

Enjoyed the game, great stuff. But the ending left a very bitter taste.

Webbins

That final sequence and ending is right up there as some of the worst shite I've ever had the misfortune to endure. Anyone with half a brain and has played Mirror's Edge knows you just don't do pixel perfect platforming in 1st person, it doesn't work. That sewer sequence actually got harder the more you tried to pass it, as the bile rose and the red mist descended. Fucking woeful.

Gremill

Oh dear.

Anyway, I'm still loving this. I'm at the point where I really only have night missions left to choose from, so I'm going to have to man up and try and get into them. I've got the choice of:
Collect the flesh sample from a bolter
Turn on the electricity at night to fry some volatiles
Collect some plants in the park at night, or
Collect some mushrooms from a cave whilst the volatiles are out shopping

I think I'll try the last one, it's quite close to a safe house.

My problem is that as I've never really ventured out at night, I'm not sure of the behaviour conditions that attract volatiles. That, and I'm feart.

DongleUnlimited

Gremill wrote:

Turn on the electricity at night to fry some volatiles

One of my faves that - such a great game.

g.man

The first two are the easier options Grem.

As for the ending, I'm impressed you stuck it out lads. It really is an atrocity. How they got it so wrong when everything else was so right is beyond me.

g.man

DongleUnlimited wrote:

Gremill wrote:

Turn on the electricity at night to fry some volatiles

One of my faves that - such a great game.

Aye, loved that. Went there as the sun was going down then holed up till it was dark. Just awesome.

FranticPea

g.man wrote:

The first two are the easier options Grem.

As for the ending, I'm impressed you stuck it out lads. It really is an atrocity. How they got it so wrong when everything else was so right is beyond me.

Spoiler:

g.man

Spoiler:

Webbins

It looks like they ran out of steam towards the end and were trying to wrap up the story. For such an emergent game, a shoe horned narrative just doesn't work. Far better it would have been to just be a straight up survival game, in the vein of The Long Dark.

bad_hair_day

I only play this to let off some steam or for an adrenaline buzz so thanks for the warning chaps.

Webbins

Gremill wrote:

Oh dear.

Anyway, I'm still loving this. I'm at the point where I really only have night missions left to choose from, so I'm going to have to man up and try and get into them. I've got the choice of:
Collect the flesh sample from a bolter
Turn on the electricity at night to fry some volatiles
Collect some plants in the park at night, or
Collect some mushrooms from a cave whilst the volatiles are out shopping

I think I'll try the last one, it's quite close to a safe house.

My problem is that as I've never really ventured out at night, I'm not sure of the behaviour conditions that attract volatiles. That, and I'm feart.

Sorry if our experience was a bit spoilerish but use it as a heads up. If you want to finish the story it's a fair warning to make sure your loved ones/pets/breakables are out of sight when you do. Otherwise, make the most of what's left before you attempt it, mop up the side missions, see the sights, etc., leave the story till the very end.

g.man

You're absolutely right, and that's basically how I played it. I really only did the missions when I happened to be in the neighbourhood and blundered into them, other than that I played it as a survival, exploration game, which playing solo was the way to get the best out of it. It didn't need a story, it didn't need cutscenes, all it needed to do really was give you a nudge occasionally.
It would be nice to see a sequel developing in that direction, but I doubt publishers have the balls for that yet.

FranticPea

Aye. I'm looking forward to going back in with no story to worry about and mopping up side missions and fecking about.

g.man

Yeah, I probably had the most fun doing just that once the story was over.

Gremill

I doubt I'll finish the story tbh, I have a tendency to put games down that I'm not enjoying anymore - so your warning is welcome.

I'm playing it as everything but the story mode as a rule - enjoying just belting around helping survivors is great fun.

Played the construction site mission the other day, where you have to get the dynamite. Enjoyed siting on the flyover in cover pinging arrows at the goons and then watching them firing their assault rifles at me only to get themselves swarmed by virals. Mopping them up afterwards was easy stuff.

g.man

Yup, that's the way to do it.

Syph79

I think what they were trying to do was say to the player, "you should have honed your skills over the course of this game and your inventory, now go out and use them both". But the instafail nature of the parkour at the end, coupled with more hoards of the same Z's and a QTE was a miss-step.

djchump

Plus, iirc a couple of hours before I'd been disguised in zombie juice and snapping those mofos necks, so being mobbed with no prep time was fully bullshit.

Webbins

Ha, Frantic and I prepped for what we thought was going to be the last push. Medikits, bombs, arrows, pointy sticks, you name it; what we should have been doing is shooting up the Valium.

g.man

Hahaha, indeed. It's the ultimate sucker punch.

[Deleted User]

Having finished Dark Souls 3 and seeing as it was my birthday, I asked for a copy of this from my gf (as well as LBP3 and an extra controller for us to play that together). I've wanted this for a while purely because of g.man's enthusiasm.

It arrived this morning and I managed to put a few hours in. Graham was right. I'm liking this.

To be fair, I'm not actually playing the story much. I'm just jumping from building to building, exploring, doing side-quests and, mainly, establishing safe houses.

Oh yeah, and running at night. Fuck that shit - my character is squishy. Good call, g.

g.man

Aye, it's absolutely mint and you're playing it right. Ignore the story as much as possible and unlock the safe houses around the map. Soak up the atmosphere. Do missions if they're in your vicinity. Make your own fun. Explore.
If you have the GotY edition with the dlc, don't bother with it because it's poor in comparison to the main game.

Gremill

It's the only truly next gen game I own. Side quests, exploring and levelling up are the way to go. Sack off the story whenever possible, once you've got some skills try venturing out at night for pure, arse clenching adrenaline terror.

What a game.

[Deleted User]

Good Lord this game is uneven.

Techland have no shown with both this and dead island that they can create lovely fun playgrounds with genuinely enjoyable systems and, you know, colour!

They've also shown that they should be kept as far away from planning a campaign as possible.

The story missions (which I decided to do for a bit) are the worst kind of arse. I just finished The Pit (which was after the equally bad bomb placement mission) where I was in a pit, obviously, fighting Zeds without my collection of weapons. Instead it was basic pipes and planks.

Then a single machete and a boss. The balance is way off and that section would best be described as not fun at all - and I think they realise that, because death basically carries no penalty. Which is good, in a way, as it stops you getting too pissed off with the game, but it's also a get out of jail free card for poor mission design.

Then I had to run through a hail of gunfire (not fun) and then get ambushed in the sewers (not fun) and have to fight my way through with guns (also not fun).

The story itself is perfectly serviceable, but those campaign missions...absolute bollocks.

At which point I was ready to write this off as a fun "bad" game. Nice world, and fun to jump around in, but not much else.

Then the game gave me a grappling hook!!!!!!!!!

[Deleted User]

For comparison, I honestly think Dead Islands single player was better. But actually playing it was nowhere near as fun as this.

Kow

That pit mission is the worst of the worst. Absolutely hair pulling nonsense shite. Almost made me give up and is definitely part of the reason I haven't bothered with it for months.

Gremill

The 'plot' is weapons grade bollocks - but I've never played a game with anywhere near the level of 'place' (and how you traverse it) that this has.

[Deleted User]

Kow wrote:

That pit mission is the worst of the worst. Absolutely hair pulling nonsense shite. Almost made me give up and is definitely part of the reason I haven't bothered with it for months.

Aye, truly guff.

Gremill wrote:

The 'plot' is weapons grade bollocks - but I've never played a game with anywhere near the level of 'place' (and how you traverse it) that this has.

Yeah...when I said the plot is fine, or serviceable (or whatever) what I meant is that it doesn't get in the way. Cutscenes are not that long, it gives you an excuse to go somewhere and jump on stuff. The characters...they're not totally annoying. So, the plot was ok for me, in the same way Steven Seagal movie plots are also "fine".

DongleUnlimited

It's such a shame that the Following is so dull

g.man

Aye, they just went in the wrong direction with that. Cars were a bad idea.

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