Instead, you’re trying to gather up the courage to make a break for it. When you’re standing on top of someone’s barn, you’re not smugly plotting your rooftop route. Buildings in The Following are so spaced out that even the grappling hook is useless.
If you’re on your own, a moment’s inattention could spell the end. If you’re playing co-op, you do, in theory, have the luxury of other survivors watching out for you. Maybe you dodged that zombie right in front of you, but you’ve missed out on the one that’s shambling towards you from the left, reaching towards you with its cracked, bloodless fingers. The sneakiest thing about The Following’s lack of cover is that it forces you to be acutely aware of your surroundings. Most were too far away to spot me, but I knew that, once I vaulted that fence, I’d have to wend my way through them. So, instead of surveying the living dead from the comfort of an abandoned video shop’s rickety roof, I was gawping at them from behind a chest-high fence. Rather, the danger was that, without Dying Light’s urban fixtures, there’s nowhere to hide. However, zombie density isn’t necessarily any higher. The map of The Following is bigger than that of the Dying Light main game, so there are more corpses shambling around. When I finally made my way down to ground level, my fears were confirmed. But it was the near-total lack of man-made structures that made my stomach drop. Playing The Following, I emerged from the sewers (don’t ask) atop a vast cliff that, normally, would have given me vertigo. Your parkour skills are next to useless now, and The Following takes great pleasure in making sure you know it.
Dying Light’s NPC dialogue and loading tips reiterate the importance of sticking to the rooftops, but The Following brings your cocky, building-vaulting self down to Earth with a bump. Night is a different story, but during the day, the floor is lava and you’ve got a jetpack.īut the moment you hit the wide-open countryside of Dying Light: The Following, all that changes. Even if you’ve scrambled on top of a bus, a well-placed kick will send them flying, then just rinse and repeat till they’re dead. Sure, Dying Light’s running “virals” can climb, unlike the regular zombies, but it’s just a matter of booting them off the side of whatever building you’re on. Unless the story demands it, he never loses his grip, and a couple of hours after picking up the joypad, you’re effortlessly leaping from rooftop to rooftop, thumbing your nose at the undead. However, protagonist Kyle Crane can effortlessly vault walls and leap gaps that the most athletic feline would turn their nose up at, and all this with his cheeks filled with crafting ingredients.
My fence-climbing skills are on a par with those of Vincent D’Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket – I’d be zombie chow in no time at all. But the truth is far more unsettling and undermines a huge portion of what the main game has taught you.Īs unwelcoming as Harran’s street-roaming corpses are, your protagonist’s parkour skills lend him, and you, a certain degree of safety. Load it up and The Following warns you it’s intended for level 12 characters and above, implying you’ll be facing foes that can effortlessly divorce your head from your shoulders. Pore over the blurb for Techland expansion Dying Light: The Following and it’s easy to think you’re getting more of the same – more parkour, more zombies, and more ridiculous weaponry.