![]() See, while maxing out the driving skill tree is significantly speedier than levelling agility or combat in the original game's, The Following still suffers from the same masochistic fun-gating. The core abilities unlocked through driver levelling enable you to build ever-better car parts, so as they fail you're able to replace them with upgrades and - at some point - to actually enjoy driving the car. This is why the skill tree is so crucial, and the reason for razzing around a field juicing zombies with my fender. ![]() They can be repaired, mostly with screws, which are suddenly more valuable than gold or even Medkits, until they eventually need to be replaced. The buggy needs constant refuelling, and is built from five upgradeable parts - traction, brakes, suspension, turbo and engine - which gradually wear out with damage or any driving that could be considered fun. Crane's ride is subject to the same anxious impermanence that defines all of Dying Light's gear, which breaks, eventually beyond repair, once it has sliced and stoved its allotted set of zombie bodies. As ever, humans are really the deadliest things during the zombie apocalypse. His quest paths then echo those of the main game - earn trust by doing tasks from the menial to the traumatically violent, find out what's going on, and incidentally become a monstrous, multi-bladed killing force. With the city low on medicine, Crane investigates, finding a population of wary survivors in thrall to a rustic sun-worshipping sect led by the masked Mother. What are we doing here? There's a legitimate question as to whether we should pay attention to anything Dying Light has to say about story, this being the game which contains the immortal line "I'm no leader, I'm a goddam parkour instructor!" But The Following is less operatic - the reason for hero Kyle Crane's flight from the city is word of a cult whose members are immune to the zombie virus. As the original game presented you with an urban playground and the (eventual) means to move about it enjoyably, so The Following contains fields and a sparse road network designed to be passed through by tooled-up off-road buggy. ![]() This countryside is specifically tooled to The Following's headline feature: it has a car. This new map is slightly larger than the combined area of Dying Light's original city, although as its defining feature is open space and green countryside it also feels less full. For now, let's think of it as 'a bit more Dying Light' - new missions, in an all-new map. Slightly confusingly, it's distinct from the Dying Light: Enhanced Edition - which is both a game of the year release featuring The Following and a series of updates being applied to the original game - although it also includes those enhancements. ![]() After a year of DLC and updates, The Following is described by Techland as the game's first expansion - not just more, but, you know, a lot more. The Following has both learned from Dying Light's slow start and, as evidenced by the fact I spent a full hour spinning violent donuts around zombie-packed wheat fields harvesting XP for the new driving skill tree, also not learned. Morning! Halfway to having bendable knees already. Because the game dished out XP for every act of mediocre acrobatics - double at night - it gave rise to a compulsive kind of midnight grind, hopping back and forth over a waist-high fence until sunrise. The game hid many of its best qualities behind a skill-tree system that made its headline parkour a shin-grazing drag for hours - until, essentially, you unlocked the skill of 'not being rubbish at parkour'. The original Dying Light was so much fun. Dying Light's outdoorsy expansion flees the city but delivers the same mix of dogged charm and compulsion.
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