Dying Light 2: Stay Human review: polished sequel lacks bite

Yawn of the dead

Characters have a party in Dying Light 2

No, Dying Light ii doesn't accept 500 hours to complete. Phone call it closer to 30 and change, although my map still swarms with chores and requests to deal with post-entrada. Enough of words take been written almost Techland's backfiring boast of a 3 week runtime, and so no need to relitigate that here. Going in, the only fourth dimension value I was interested in was how long - if e'er - the game takes to sink its teeth into you.

You see, the original Dying Lite was slow to the boil, the fun of its survival loop not fully emerging until y'all'd escaped the initial narrative funnelling and levelled up your arms to the point that parkour could get more expressive and the zombie-braining more than excessive. One time you lot had a foothold in Harran, you lot could bask the game for what it was: an open up world gamble nigh coming to terms with an unabating zombie threat. No easy fixes. No streets cleaned out or regions conquered; but the endless undead and a constant throb of danger to whatever chore you set yourself that twenty-four hour period. It felt pleasingly freeform and organic at a fourth dimension when Ubisoft'south mania for stymying map icons was spreading like, well, a zombie plague.

Dying Lite 2 is quicker to go moving. A prologue set outside the metropolis - a linear mountain region reminiscent of the kickoff game's The Following expansion - establishes new hero Aiden as a more competent survivor, well versed in clambering and evasion before he sets human foot in the streets of Villedor. First-person parkour feels lighter from the off, letting you lot cross larger gaps and throw Aiden around with some confidence. And where depression-level gainsay in the original was mostly most stamina management as you breathlessly donked lead pipes off zombie skulls, the sequel mixes in parries, carve up-second dodges (complete with Bayonetta witch time, with the right upgrade) and the ability to vault over winded foes into a flying kick. These are showy flourishes of a ability fantasy, rather than the panicked scrabble of the first game.

The player encounters two zombies crouched on the floor in a dark room in Dying Light 2 — **Biological clock**
As the 'Stay Human being' bit suggests, Aiden is fighting the infection, represented by a timer that kicks in when he leaves sunlight. At dark information technology becomes more of a resource challenge, forcing sprints between safety houses bathed in UV calorie-free, and carrying immunity boosters into more labyrinthine interiors. The latter requirement instils early on stealth sections with tension, only as you level up your amnesty and begin to harvest tens of boosters, the mechanic loses its potency.

On ane hand it readies yous for a quest that is immediately gripping and able to throw daunting ready pieces at you. Your arrival in Villedor, where proof of wellness hinges on a wrist-mounted biomarker that you lot don't currently possess, drops you into a thrilling dash through the night and a den of hospital-dwelling infected that feels every bit loftier stakes and disorientating as Dying Low-cal 1 at its all-time. But I definitely miss the awareness of a fighter slowly emerging from a jumble of awkward limbs that gave the original its power curve, and the commencement human activity feels 1 notation as a result. For all the big talk of how outsiders aren't ready for metropolis life, Aiden takes it in his roof-hopping stride. The church spire no local dare climb? Up at that place in seconds. That air current turbine base that has anybody spooked? Goose egg a few drop kicks can't fix. It has weirdly low stakes for what the devs have talked upwards equally a brutal 'modern night ages'.

This is compounded by Dying Light 2'due south major misstep: the decision to split zombie behaviour over the twenty-four hours and night wheel. UV rays are (re)death to the infected, and so but the almost dessicated leftovers venture out into the sunlit streets, in plough rendering the dark interiors equally impassable zombie nests. Come up nighttime, this flips, flooding the streets with ferocious variants (the mix getting spicier as the story progresses) and granting an opportunity to sneak into now-emptied buildings to pillage wares.

Equally a concept, I get it: the original game always struggled to depict explorers out at night equally the streets were patrolled by 'volatiles' - seven foot brutes who burned bright orangish similar Morph on 'roids and were so effin' tough that most people only slept the night away in a rubber house rather than take a chance getting ganked by the Tango Man. This time, in that location are tangible nighttime rewards in revisiting the interiors you clocked during the mean solar day, and gentler punishments for getting caught. If a howling alarm zombie spots yous information technology triggers a chase of regular biters that just scales up to volatiles if y'all fail to lose your pursuers, and which ends when you reach a UV condom spot, of which there are enough. As a effect, nights feel safer, and there'southward less of the end/start that defined the first game'due south twenty-four hours cycle.

The player holds a knife, ready to shank a zombie in front of them in Dying Light 2

But! In doing and so, it robs the zombie apocalypse of any urgency, imbuing the horde with a fatal predictability. In daytime the threat is naturally depression, to the signal where you can run through the streets - or even straight through the zombies with an unlockable motility where you dash with your hands across your confront, like your mum escaping a wasp in a pub garden. Come dark, you lot simply avoid the horde by sticking to the rooftops or ducking indoors where the few remaining zombies are now asleep. Interiors are barebones stealth sections, with all besides obvious routes to sneak past sleepers and an all likewise effective cervix snap should one block the path. The finish result is that you spend a lot of the game being shepherded towards the to the lowest degree interesting place at any given time. Empty streets or empty buildings: which is to be?

There's an unlockable motility where you dash straight through the zombies with your hands beyond your face, like your mum escaping a wasp in a pub garden.

Non to keep banging the Dying Low-cal i pulsate, but there the creatures were e'er upwards in your face, a depression level threat that could escalate into a high level threat because you accidentally made too much racket and drew a crowd or missed yourself getting surrounded - y'know, the classic zombie motion picture tropes you've always wanted to experience. Dying Light 2 is so easy to cheese past comparison I found information technology powerfully unthreatening, and with that comes a diminishment of everything: the excitement of a new ability, a new weapon, a new anything. Hey, information technology's smashing that juicing upwardly the electrical station has inspired the ground forces faction to install spiked pendulums across the city, but I was doing just fine without them, thank you.

This isn't to say that Dying Light ii is a massive bosom - ironically, I think the full general ease of day-to-day life will probably resonate with enough of people who just desire to clear a Far Cry-style map without meeting anything scary. Certainly, the sequel is neater in this sense, with more icons to tick off than the first game. There are mini bosses to hunt, special upgrade containers to sniff out, windmills that act like Far Cry radio towers and bodily radio towers that are Far Cry radio towers. In Dying Light i you climbed up to high places because it made sense every bit the all-time way to survey the city and plan your fourth dimension. Here it's decreed.

The player hang-glides through an urban cityscape dotted with trees in Dying Light 2

I wish you could punch downwards the pointers and hand property. You can turn off enemy wellness bars, which adds a frisson of unknowability. Merely it could offer more. Have, for example, how the map says whether you have the right stamina level to climb a tower. Why? Allow me attempt and screw up for myself. Permit me struggle to scale it - or ameliorate yet, find an alternating solution the designer didn't predict - and claim the eventual victory more organically. And why flag every resource-rich interior on the map, when in the original game I was quite capable of sniffing out doors for myself. Allow us put ane and one together and work out that a pharmacy might be worth scoping out at night, rather than dotting it on the map - and worse, with an icon that can never be removed because the locations eventually restock. Yes; it's a map icon game where you can't clear the map icons! What fresh hell is this?

The player stands behind two other humans, controlled by other players, as they enter a building in Dying Light 2's co-op mode — **Social gathering**
In a move worthy of our toad of a PM, Techland see a zombie epidemic equally an opportunity to paaaar-tay. Well, equally much paaaar-taying as can be done by two to four people in the streets of Villedor. In co-op you gather in the host's earth and are complimentary to take whatever spoils of state of war back to your game, as well as voting on dialogue choices while the host makes upwardly their heed. The fundamental entreatment is seeing how alternating choices have impacted another world without endlessly replaying the campaign for yourself. And so: please make yourself at abode and forgive my moral bankruptcy.

I realise I'm veering into reviewing what I want it to be, rather than what Dying Light 2 is. And to be fair, around its low pressure centre lurk some entertaining distractions. Drop boot bandits off 30-storey buildings tickles the same 'physics thug' part of the brain left untouched since Dark Messiah. Modding a katana so it belches flames adds insult to injury. And the conclusion to hold back the new paraglider and returning grappling hook until the 2d deed is exactly the kind of delayed gratification I loved the beginning time round. Arriving just as you're feeling comfortable with parkour, the glider basically rules out dealing with the streets e'er again: terrible news for the already weedy zombie threat, but a fantastic mode to take in the skyscrapers of Villedor's financial district.

Up there Dying Calorie-free two becomes what I wanted Mirror's Border Catalyst to be. An endless succession of heart-in-rima oris stunts as the grappling hook swings y'all over the abyss and straight into a roly-poly earlier you're back into a sprint with no loss of speed. When Aiden gets going, he really gets going, even at a thousand feet. Special nod to composer Olivier Deriviere's propulsive score which accompanies your vertiginous climbs - it drives you forward with daredevil momentum and a great audio upshot that sounds like the soundtrack is holding its jiff whenever yous exercise something scary.

Though even this pocket of delirium is eventually nuked, with a baffling story conclusion that floods the prettiest view of the metropolis with a dense fog. I think it's meant to demonstrate the game'southward commitment to world-altering choice and consequence, merely defacing the all-time-looking area of Villedor seems like vandalism. More successful is a tardily game choice that potentially adds an entire region to the map - I know that guides wizard Olly didn't see it in his playthrough, and the autosaving means y'all tin can't save scum to a happier upshot. It also makes it hard to test far reaching consequences without a total replay, though talking with other reviewers it sounds like choices are honoured throughout, fifty-fifty if the Aiden's bland story is largely immutable. He's heading in i direction whether you like it or non, so the real treasure is the NPCs that got bludgeoned along the way.

I'm glad it wasn't 500 hours long. As a freelancer that would work out at almost 30p an hr, just, more than pertinent to y'all, there's just non plenty character to Dying Lite 2 to hold your attention beyond a fleet-footed 30. Techland'southward taken something quite distinct and sanded down the edges. Some will find information technology agreeably polish, I'g sure, but y'all can simply sand so much off of chaos before it becomes ordinary. Come up the existent zombie apocalypse we should all be so lucky to face a world this trudgingly well behaved.