Recent reviews by xarviz03

I will try to keep it short with this review, since the game has been praised almost unanimously, by nearly everyone who played it. So then it should not be a controversial statement, if I call it a masterpiece of game story telling.
Starting off in Timber Hearth, talking to everybody and getting to know the basic rules of playing the game. Tutorials in this starting area are great, and successfully mask themselves as reasonable things one could expect from a location in which they are located. Best of all - they can all be skipped entirely, if one only chooses to go straight to where you are supposed to, and not indulge any people with conversations. While by no means is it a revolutionary feature, nor has it been done for the first time ever, it sets the tone for the game masterfully, letting all the players know that one of the main attributes they hold in this world - is their freedom to do, or not do, anything they want.
The gameplay is not particularly revolutionary either, except for the wonderful sense of liberty, that few games have the guts to grant their players. The interactive part of the game is mainly focused on exploration. Few puzzles exist, that don't prove too difficult even to people who don't normally have half a brain to solve such things (I'm speaking from experience here). However, overall, most of what you do is jump, use your jetpack to boost yourself, and walk around exploring... Oh, and also reading... There is a LOT of reading.
As a person whose attention span is barely enough to go through more than two pages of a book in one sitting, the game's texts never bothered me in the slightest. Because of their placement, contents, and form (of being divided into smaller, shorter messages that aren't difficult to comprehend) the game always made me giddy when I found any reading material, leaving me excited to find out more about its story. The way the story can be understood starting from its mid-point, or from the end, really intensifies the feeling of freedom. Having no order, of uncovering the plot, be imposed on you was so refreshing I can hardly put it into words. It was very unexpected, for me, and I found it was much more of a benefit to the experience, than I initially thought it to be.
Outer Wilds is the perfect example for the argument that games can tell stories just as great as books, if not greater, attributing this potential superiority to its interactive nature. I think everybody who likes good science fiction novels, and enjoys innovative games should at least give this one a try. It was an experience I will think about for many years to come.

Yeah, pretty good.

This is definitely the best zombie game I have ever played. The humour and seriousness are perfectly balanced, resulting in a world that manages to be really entertaining, while also feeling believable and real. The graphics are of incredible quality, and the controls are tight and responsive (which applies to playing it either on a controller or a keyboard). It is also optimised quite well, I found that the game run much much smoother on PC than on Playstation, and generally looked much better too. The plot can be boring at times, but it introduces characters that you can genuinely care for, and while staying quite fantastical and unbelievable, it never feels completely out of touch with reality.
What's better than the plot, however, are side missions and encounters that range from mild annoyances, to missions so good they have me thinking back to playing them for the first time, now, years after finishing the game. There are a few highlights, but climbing to the highest part of the bridge on the North of the Slums, and entering a building in the city to help out a group of trapped civilians looking for food, those two will always be the highlights of the Dying Light experience for me.
The gameplay is very addicting, combat encounters start off being pretty satisfying, but they become pure dopamine when the game progresses, you can use bladed weapons to flawlessly cut down hoards of zombies, or choose more cumbersome ones to absolutely crush your foes into a pulp. Guns provide very gratifying feedback when scoring headshots, and the knockback from firearms and crossbows always puts a smile on my face. The game's combat is easily its biggest selling point, as far as I'm concerned, and it can easily become a very fulfilling power fantasy for anyone who would be into such things.
However, another element of the gameplay that also plays a big role in the game being as good as it is - is parkour. Landing skillful jumps, climbing into high places to get a better look at the area, and traversing the slums or the city, give you a great feeling of flow, that can definitely be another selling point for the game. Parkour gets especially wonderful after unlocking the grappling hook, around the middle of the game, the traversal options become much simpler, but also much faster, and that results in the feeling of flow only becoming smoother, once you learn to use this incredibly handy tool.
Not to mention that the mixture of those above-mentioned elements gets even more enjoyable once you put those two together, shooting enemies while jumping from roof to roof, performing drop kick, or throwing enemies from buildings, it's a level of rewarding no other game can offer in quite the same way.
Overall, the game is wonderful, it can be a tiny bit buggy, but that's about as much criticism I am willing to give it, because for everything else I think it makes up for a hundred fold. It is one of my favourite gaming experiences I have ever had, and remembering the feeling it gave me, and its atmosphere, really makes me want to play it again. I guess, I'll probably wait for Dying Light 2 to come out tho.