Dying Light 2: Stay Human

Dying Light was a hell of an experience. It was like Far Cry meets 28 Weeks Later. Like many, I was pumped when the sequel crawled out of development hell only to fade into obscurity. Seriously, it’s one of those games I knew so many people waited for but no one really talked about. Is Dying Light 2 a missed masterpiece or better left forgotten?

We play as Aiden, a pilgrim on a quest in plague ravaged Villedor for his lost sister. Aiden, as well as hs sister and a bunch of other children were part of a cruel series of experiments at the hand of Waltz. Villedor holds the answers Aiden seeks, as well bloodthirsty bandits, peace keepers run amok, people trying to survive and of course hordes of zombies. If all this wasn’t enough, Aiden is changing…can he find his sister and a cure before joing the legion of the undead?

So I’m not going to mice words, Dying Light 2 isn’t a bad game. It’s fun in bursts and I appreciate some of what they were trying to do in terms of scope and feeling like you were in a wider cityscape. Unfortunately I gotta drop into the same category of meh games as Dark Souls 2 Scholars of the First Sin , Resident Evil 3 (2020) and Aliens: Fireteam Elite.

First, I tuned out of the story pretty quick. I never really got invested in the factions involved, the choices never packed a punch, and the missions felt pretty repetitive-especially the side missions. I felt like they took the wrong lessons from Fallout 4. Exploration can be fun but the enemies start to become a pain in the ass instead of scary or menacing. There is more than a fair amount of bullshit deaths, especially when it came to the game’s paraglider. Sometimes it would draw super fast, sometimes it would delay and I’d splat on the concrete. Gameplay overall is fine but there was small subtractions from the first I sorely missed- a mini map, being able to customize and repair my own weapons, easily accessible fast travel, and a faster, more fulfilling progression system. In this game, progression feels more like a slog and I never really felt like a badass as I did in the first. Safe zones are also now a chore.

While I have a lot of complaints and I genuinely believe its inferior to the first, it’s not a bad game. It ran fine, it looked really nice throughout, and the voice acting was solid. I had plenty of fun murdering zombies and bandits and using parkour…but it wasn’t much more than that. I never got the fear or intrigue of the first game. Its a ok game overall. Alright. Nothing too special. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

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Author: torstenvblog

Writer of the strange and everything; lover of horror, literature, comics, and the alien is my spirit animal

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