Techland are keeping their baby alive a while longer (especially after delaying Dying Light 2), and it appears they didn't forget it turned 5 last month with a huge update and celebration.
Since Dying Light has been out five years they're kicking off a big celebration. It's having a Free Weekend on Steam for the first time! A really good opportunity to see what the fuss is all about and I sure do fuss about it a lot. It really is a great game! One of my absolute favourites.
Additionally, a massive patch just went up bringing in a big change to the game. There's now a new 'Story Mode' option, for people who wish to experience it but struggle with the survival aspects of it. Some of the game can be a real challenge so it will be interesting to see if this helps anyone who previously bounced off of it. This new option makes Zombies less powerful, makes you stronger, reduces fall damage, day is longer and night is shorter and so on—it's basically a really easy mode compared with the rest.
On top of that the patch adds in new weapons, more blueprints to find, new types of 'live event', new outfits and the usual bug fixes.
Techland are making a bigger splash than that though, they're going all out for an entire month of events in Dying Light. Each week until March 19, a new global event from the past well come online. The first of these in-game events is live now with Jeff and Super-Crane you can see a little trailer for below:
Direct Link
Techland gave Linux a huge game, as imperfect as it is, when plenty of others chose to ignore us entirely and it holds a special place in my heart for it. It definitely helps that smashing Zombies in Dying Light is just so supremely satisfying.
If you decide you like it the good news is it's also discounted. Check out Dying Light on Steam, the free weekend runs until February 23 at 6PM UTC.
I remember talking back and forth with the technical support to fix the crashes when the game was first released while all my friends were playing on the Windows platform it was a little bit frustrating but was well worth the wait.
I also remember watching a video at the time from a conference where the two devs in charge of the Linux port were talking about all the steps to achieve it in only 2 months, it was really interesting.
Nice. I'm one of those weirdos who liked Dead Island (although it's probably telling that it's the only zombie game I ever did like) and thought Dying Light didn't sound as good. But hey, I'll give it a go over the weekend..."Like" because I'm the same type of weirdo that thoroughly enjoyed Dead Island. I finished it first on PS3 and when it showed up for Linux I played it once again.
As for Dying Light, if you enjoyed DI, you'll love DL.
And indeed, Dying Light with its launch problems and low performance etc, still deserves as special place with us, along with the other old OpenGL ports that we seem to love to hate these days.
Those "piss poor" ports from VP, Aspyr, Feral and the like, were available for us back then when the alternative options were limited, and when they mattered the most.
So yeah, I have a special consideration for those ports, regardless of their former or current issues.
I didn't enjoy Dead Island much, but people have said Dying Light is way better so I'm hoping I'll agree with that opinion after playing it this weekend.
Last edited by Wompo on 21 February 2020 at 3:44 pm UTC
I finished it first on PS3 and when it showed up for Linux I played it once again.XBox360 for me. I think I got it for free in their “Games With Gold” thing (as I said, not really a zombie fan, so it's not something I would have gone out looking for). And yeah, when it came out for Linux it only seemed fair to actually pay for it. :)
As for Dying Light, if you enjoyed DI, you'll love DL.I can't say I hate what I've seen so far (about two hours in), although I can already see why people who disliked DI prefer it. And, for me at least, that's not necessarily a good thing. But yeah, it's not bad.
Those "piss poor" ports from VP, Aspyr, Feral and the like, were available for us back then when the alternative options were limited, and when they mattered the most.There are still a few ported games that don't work in Proton. So we still have a lot to be grateful for.
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