Dying Light 2 Stay Human Review –  An Apocalyptic Renaissance

Decades after the end of the apocalypse the undead roam the earth, growing stronger and more powerful with every passing day. Humanity is responding. Technological breakthroughs emerge from the strongholds spread across The City. The tide is turning in favor of the living. An electronic wristband keeps people from turning after a zombie bite, and even the most aggressive monster variants don’t stand a chance against the latest weapon innovations. These walls aren’t the only danger. Darkness lies within, and humanity’s most significant threat for survival is itself. The end result could come from greed, lust or betrayal and even arcane political maneuverings.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human blends the terrors of the dead with the strife of life to create one of the most entertaining RPGs I’ve ever played. This game is an amazing combination of story telling, storytelling, player choice and open-world design. It also allows for character customization and cooperative play. It’s everything a sequel should be, growing the core formula in significant ways to make high-flying, zombie-slaying sizzle again.

Dying Light 2 is a great game that creates relationships and makes you wonder about the motives of those you meet. With stunning visuals and lots of dialogue, these moments come to life.

After spending 50+ hours on this game, I found myself thinking about it often. Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content and not knowing whether I made a mistake or not, I often thought back to the time I had spent playing The Elder Scrolls V. Skyrim. Dying Light 2 comes from this same experience, which blends a world rich in discovery and offers many choices. It’s an experience you can lose yourself in, and almost all of the content you unearth is significant to evolving both the story and your character.

Aiden Caldwell is our guide to this wasteland. He’s a survivor who has been haunted from his past and re-enters the society at an ominous moment. Aiden, a likeable character, is defined mostly by his choices. As an apocalyptic judge, Aiden rules the city, deciding who lives and dies as well as which groups gain power and wealth. His decisions are often weighty and provide closure for some of the characters that he comes across along the journey. Sometimes I had to stop and think about all the implications of making a choice. Techland often makes it easier to make these decisions by placing a timer at the top of your priority list in an effort to maximize their impact. It works.

It is vertically and variably shaped, with fun and interesting traversal routes and hidden secrets.

A mission with Aiden is a great experience for the player. The objectives are well-written and move quickly, almost forcing Aiden to leap across rooftops. Dying Light 2’s parkour system is a work of art set within a beautiful, sprawling city that doubles as an architectural playground. Clear pathways are littered across the environments, allowing Aiden to keep momentum and reach almost any location by just running, jumping, and using some of the game’s awesome gadgets. I won’t go into what they are as discovering them is part of the fun, but they all enhance the locomotion and are a blast to use. Overall, it is one the best and most well designed traversal systems available in FPS gaming. This game feels much better, it is easier to read jump intent and it reaches new heights thanks to The City’s incredible verticality.

Even choice is intertwined to make it easier for you to navigate. New interactive elements as well other tools are available depending on how wealth is distributed. Sometimes Aiden’s own personal gain can outweigh the need of the citizens, as I discovered. Although these choices may not make you happy, they make it easier to traverse and fight and can pay off over the long-term.

Aiden’s missions offer plenty of variety, and sew puzzles and combat into most objectives. It was impressive to see how diverse, well-written and dynamically constructed the missions. While the critical path provides the main set-piece moments and side content, the narrative is essential to this game’s overall storyline. It is sometimes quite long. Nothing in this game feels tacked on – it’s all worth investigating. And it’s all made better through cooperative play, as you and three of your friends can team up or divide and conquer to claim territories, clear out dangerous dark hallows, and find valuable loot (like inhibitor boxes that raise your stamina and health). It’s worth taking the chance to go out in the dark when zombies can be more aggressive.

While combat upgrades enable the delivery of punishment, they do not allow for a lot of weapon variety.

The combat area is often overlooked in favor of the great content. It’s a huge part of the experience, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun to eviscerate Biters, but the melee isn’t as advanced as the other parts of the game, and it doesn’t evolve much, either. However, creating blades that can cough fire or electrocute zombies is rewarding. That dropkick is also worth using. As the difficulty and hit points increase, so is boss battles.

One fight against a titan pushed my group of four players to unload everything they had – Molotov cocktails, arrows, and carefully timed sword combos – before it finally dropped. It was well worth it. Mastering parry timing against human foes – who are as abundant as zombies – is tricky but not something you have to rely on as more combat moves unlock.

Dying Light 2 offers an exciting journey to discover and gain power. You can find these dynamics in almost all you do. The world can be transformed by focusing more on characters. Some of Aiden’s choices are difficult, especially those surrounding a character named Lawan – who is given a hell of a pulse by Rosario Dawson. I can’t say enough great things where his and her stories go. Techland announced that at least five more years worth of DLC are on their way. This game was a joy to play and one I will be revisiting often. That’s a wonderful promise to hear when starting a new game that has turned out this well.