Dying Light
Yes, it's a struggle to survive in Dying Light's early hours. Combat is initially clumsy, with the diverse and deadly zombies able to soak up a disturbing amount of punishment before they die for good. Jumping – which is unintuitively mapped to shoulder buttons on consoles – can take a while to get used to. Getting mobbed is usually a death sentence. So is attracting the attention of the much more dangerous things that come out when daytime dynamically gives way to night, at which point the focus shifts to tense stealth — or, if you’re discovered, an adrenaline-pumping sprint for the nearest safe point.
Before long, though, you'll build up a skill set that turns your rotting foes into objects of fun, letting you vault across their shoulders, quickly slice them apart with dramatic slow-motion kills, or trick them into gathering around explosives before blasting them all into the sky. Even nighttime becomes an opportunity to raise skills faster thanks to increased XP gain, rather than a period of sheer terror. It all feels great, too; once you adjust to the controls, Dying Light's first-person parkour becomes natural and fluid, and weaving high-speed paths through its decaying slums and picturesque old-world buildings is so much fun that I almost don't hate the lack of a fast-travel option.
Combat, meanwhile, gets increasingly satisfying, although it never quite loses its awkwardness. Even when expertly shredding zombies with elementally charged tools of death I built myself, strikes are still heavy and clumsy. And while the guns you'll find later can pop heads from a distance, their low rate of fire and zombie-attracting noise makes them more of an occasional quick fix than a game-changing weapon.
To Dying Light's credit, though, your adversaries are surprisingly capable; while the rank-and-file Biters are dumb and fun to manipulate, more powerful enemies – like the quick, agile Virals – are formidable close-quarters opponents, ducking your strikes and sidestepping out of your reach while looking for an opening to attack. Hostile bandits are even deadlier, able to dodge and block at close quarters, throw knives from a distance, and use guns and group tactics to kill you if you get overconfident.