THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

In this super-expansive downloadable content for the excellent Zombie game Dying Light, Kyle Krane - the hero of the story, controlled by the player - is sent to a farmland community on the outskirts of Harran which reportedly has a cure for the Zombie virus. You soon find that the so-called "cure" maybe nothing more than religious mumbo jumbo, concocted by a group of mask-wearing cultists called "Children of the Sun". However, they will not give up their secrets until you have earned the respect of the entire community - completing hazardous quests, gathering supplies, killing Zombies, defending citizens from roaming bandits and so on. To aid you travel the vast distances, a buggy is supplied that you can freely customise, adding weapons, UV lights and speed boosters. Once enough has been done, once you have earned a seat at the table, you will learn the truth and, hopefully, save all those left alive in Harran.

MY VERDICT:

Having now completed the whole of The Following, I'm still unsure of how much I liked it. On the one hand, it is a whole lot more Dying Light action to sink my teeth into, which, considering how sublime the original was, is easily enough to make it a worthwhile purchase in my book. There is a whole new map to explore and kill Zombies in (over 2 times larger than the original game's), there is a brand new storyline, brand new weapons, new characters, new gameplay options provided by the buggy (including racing missions), new buggy related skills to unlock and all-new quests to complete, earning you the required experience to unlock the new skills. The new story starts slowly, takes a dip into irrelevance towards the middle of the content - when you are just helping villagers complete random tasks to earn respect - but finally ramps up into something as spectacular as it is unexpected. My favourite part of this mammoth downloadable content is the new environment; it's enormously big yet lovingly detailed and far more open compared to the tight streets of Harran's cities. I also love the whole farmland aesthetic with the wheat fields and dirt roads - a relatively tranquil setting that combines so well with docile and lifeless Zombies. However, there is a singular bad point, blotting an otherwise brilliant Zombie slayer. The focus of this game expansion is, according to the devs, firmly placed on the buggy, being able to customise it to best suit your needs. I just didn't find it that special, using it simply as a means to get to places on the large map quicker, largely avoiding the unnecessary upgrades. I would have preferred some extra skills for Kyle to learn instead, so as to become a more powerful killer for the larger enemies that appear more frequently in this larger world - it felt a bit wasted to dump hard-earned experience points into the buggy that I would use merely as a means of quicker relocation.