A successful sequel is difficult to achieve, you need to build upon what came before while moving forward, it is an insane challenge with any form of media but with games, there is always more at stake. I know the title of this review could come across in a negative light but trust me when I say, this game is fun, in fact some of the most fun I have had in a while, but it’s just so flawed in a variety of ways that it failed to live up to what a sequel could achieve.
Dying Light 2 can be described best as an improvement in many respects over its predecessor but it still has its own problems. In almost 10 years technology in gaming has evolved and Techland have used this next generation of hardware to push beyond what Dying Light tried to do in 2015 to even greater heights but sadly they missed the mark on what could make this game a standout in the zombie genre. An engaging story and interesting protagonist are still missing here, after the first game struggled with a bloated, cliché narrative and boring characters, I expected a new entry to fix this. Thankfully the game sets a standard of addicting game play that balances out the cons with equally as many pros, which keeps you so distracted with its brilliant parkour and exciting combat, the story fades into the background.
As the hours slipped by, I was wondering what the subtitle Stay Human meant as played more and more however It wasn't until I was engulfed by darkness on my first night run mission that I truly saw what a shift this game had taken. In the day, your biggest enemy is simply humanity and the problematic nature of living in a world that has ended. Those tough human decisions of morality, right and wrong, but come nightfall? Everything shifts into an adrenaline fuelled nightmare and fight for survival. Being infected yourself, Aiden must be quick on his feet and manage a short window of time for exploration, chases, and combat or risk turning into one of the walking dead yourself. At first this was incredibly frustrating to get accustomed too but as the game progressed, I actually started to love the mechanic, it added insane levels of tension to missions.
While the original did have a reason to avoid the night entirely with volatiles roaming the landscapes, the average nature of zombies wasn't such a problem whatever time of day it was. In Dying Light 2, those infected previously always in the streets are now hibernating indoors during sunup before the night comes and they sprawl, crawl and spill into the streets. That is where the challenging nature of the sequel begins. I often found myself overthinking navigating between two structures, because when the pavement is littered with creatures wanting to eat your flesh it was almost like a childish game of the floor is lava.
Intervals between free and open gameplay and the forced narrative sections is what really clashed for me and took me out of the experience. The games story could be considered average at best, with a forgettable main character known as Aiden whose drive is merely to find his lost sister Mia, after some weird and barbaric testing when they were children by Dr Waltz, our antagonist.
The supporting cast did keep me invested more so than Aiden because most had their own realistic drives and personalities but overall, by-large NPCs were just there spewing meaningless dialogue to get you to the next plot point. This game is one of those titles where the game play itself outshines the narrative experience. When you find yourself yawning during an emotional cut-scene that was directed towards the player to shed a tear, something is off.
Because of such average dialogue and mundane mission structure I couldn't care less about the next task half the time, I was too busy getting distracted battling hordes of the undead with a street sign, baseball bat and grenades. The core of this game is compulsive fun, visceral in nature and has hardy impactful combat. This is mixed with exciting traversal, free running and flight that makes you feel inhumanly agile. However, when you splice this with aspects of tedious plot devices you have seen 100 times in zombie media it really does break that immersion and slow that momentum to its core.
When it comes to the main mechanic of Dying Light 2, day and night is a contrast you'll experience often. Exploring buildings while the sun is up a near suicide run, much like the movie ‘I Am Legend’, these zombies will sleep during the day and avoid the sunlight before coming out in the evening. They are there to cause you problems, to mess up your missions, XP streaks and just generally scare the hell out of you. With a plethora of special infected in the mix such as howlers who alert all infected who are nearby, bolters who will strike and run away like Sonic on crack, volatiles who often will kill you before you even see them and Greys who are the weirdest of the bunch. Everything is ramped up in this sequel to test you to an almost frustrating limit, but it does pay off in the end. Dashing down a dark, overgrown and cluttered street being chased by hordes of the undead while exhilarating music plays is an unmatched experience. Frantically climbing a drainpipe and turning onto a roof to see more zombies crawl from airducts really astounded me. Despite these amazing moments of responsive and fluid parkour movement, there was just nothing else on offer, the game feels very one dimensional which was a real shame.
Weapons are more varied, but break and can't be replaced, this forces you to constantly be changing tactics and not rely on that simple godlike axe you love. Clothing offers buffs that can help make an almost Assassins Creed like build system. Skill points are earnt in their own respective ways of combat and free running, really fleshing out your experience and all this occurs naturally with a good progression to boot. One issue I ran into with the combat was the parrying system, if I could get it to work it felt awkward and after asking other friends playing the game, they also felt it was almost broken as it barely would activate. On the note of disappointment, it would not be fair not to mention that come the day of release, most players experienced major issues technically. Personally, I did not experience crashes, game breaking bugs or visual glitches, others have done. Even with a day one patch and multiple delays it seems Techland still had issues on their hands and were aware. Given that its co-op mode had an entirely different embargo date due to the known issues with networking, this in turn set off alarm bells for the community.
In their defence, things are being fixed rapidly with post launch patches, they care about the fans which is more than can be said for a lot of developers in 2022. Nevertheless, when it came to the different modes of visuals/performance offered on the next gen consoles, I was shocked to see drops to almost 15fps in the 4K mode on the PS5 with the day 1 patch applied, I am not a fan of 4K over a smooth frame rate but for those who are, it’s so egregious it hurt my eyes and I had to favour the 60fps 1080p setting. So be warned.
Regardless of all that, it’s not all doom and gloom, as I've mentioned the game is insanely fun and addictive to play because of what it is at heart. This is a zombie focused game with a story just to tie purpose to your actions. Very much like dead rising, one of my most favourite franchises, you can forgive cheesy dialogue, forgettable faces and a bland protagonist because it’s just so mindlessly fun to play. Anyone could easily sink 100 hours into this game, it’s enjoyable but it needed more to hook me in on personal level. The main story can be wrapped up in 25 hours or so, the rest of it can be time spent exploring GRE labs full of sleeping beauties for upgrades, engaging in parkour challenges, fixing faction windmills for new safe houses, exploring abandoned stores, activating metro stations, fighting special infected for cool loot and much more. I would be lying if some of it did not feel like filler, the windmills felt very Ubisoft in design, but this is just how open worlds can be.
After 40+ hours I can tell you with the utmost confidence that Dying Light 2 is a visually impressive game, with tangible details, gorgeous vistas and its simply beautiful in the light and dark. Offering you an incredibly addictive, fun and rewarding game play loop that is just held back by a flawed, cliché and forgettable story. A bland protagonist who I could not become emotionally attached to or invested in and annoying bugs that can spoil the fun. Techland have honestly improved on every game play aspect they could but fell short on making an engaging story to hold the game up as a solid backbone. In short, my final verdict for dying light 2 is a 6/10, it felt more like a Dying Light 1.5 by the time the credits rolled for me, so I hope their 5-year support plan they have promised adds a stronger narrative experience than what we had on launch. After all my time with the main and side characters, I felt there was more life in the dead, than the living. To conclude if you want an amazing game to mess around with friends or just experience solo in a sandbox environment but don't care about a gripping narrative, can entertain the silly bugs, ignore the weird AI and just have fun slashing zombies with a fire axe. Trust me, You'll be more than happy to spend hours upon hours killing infected and jumping from rooftop to rooftop like a post-apocalyptic Spider-Man!
(Full video review here)
- Written And Edited By John.P
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