After many years, we return to the Techland world of fading light, in which still man is wolf to man, and zombies are still zombies. Not a voracious zombie or some other mutant Transformer climbs to the top of the food chain again, but a guy who can jump around architecture and sometimes kick someone in the face, which is parkour fu. Let's put on a hood of low air resistance, put on a breathing mask in the zone of chemical weapons use ... or better a mask that allows you to hide in the crowd of dead people, and let's pick up a tool of zombie torment, which I affectionately call a story ... because it's a bit of a gun and a bit of a crosier. The time has come. Dying Light 2: Stay Human for Windows PCs. I also took a quick look at the PlayStation 5 version. In addition, the game was released on PS4, Xbox One, and Series X | S, and in the undefined future, the Nintendo Switch version is to be played in the cloud. In a nutshell - Dying Light 2 is the larger Dying Light 1. The same, slightly extended, parkour model. The same, clearly extensive, fight. Much larger maps, much more side quests and activities, tons of loot to collect, and so on. From the gameplay side, no revolution happened here and that's good because the gameplay was solid in the previous installment. Much more has changed in the plot.
Let's start with the basic issue. Knowledge of the plot of the first part is not necessary here, because the sequel is about the events from the original, he only accidentally mentions someone else being the protagonist, and the story itself begins a decade and a half later. As we learn from the intro, the zombification virus from Harran was defeated thanks to the quickly invented and applied vaccine populations ... Several years later, humanity defends itself against the zombie plague living in ever smaller communities, and only one larger city remains on the world map - Villedor. Well, an eye somewhere in France. One thing is certain - the story of Dying Light 2 is incomparably better than the ones, but ... this is not a big achievement, because the original story was cruelly weak. There, only some side quests gave some advice, but the main plot and voices of the characters were a drama - especially in the Polish language version. The two have an idea for themselves, are a bit more serious, and are most successful in creating relationships between characters and factions. In the city, Aiden encounters slightly anarchist survivors living in the so-called Bazaar and militarized lawmen. One of the Guardian officers has been murdered, the inhabitants of the Bazaar are suspicious, tensions between the factions are growing, and Aiden, on the one hand, is tasked with finding the murderer, and on the other hand, is asked to help fight the oppression of the soldiers. In addition, there are dynamic relationships with the characters that most often accompany Aiden - Hakon with the face of parkour's father - David Belle, and the treacherous Lawan, played by actress Rosario Dawson. Both roles are quite good. Unfortunately, the main storyline also contains a lot of nonsense, some side missions are decent, and others aim at crude humor, but the whole thing is often defended by vague plots and choices. These choices are not frequent at all, but when they appear, they most often concern fundamental things - who will we trust, whose plan we will implement, whose truth we will accept and what fate we will choose for some characters. The consequences of decisions are not always easy to predict and I - targeting a rather positive ending - did not hit them at all. However, it is possible that neither ending is entirely positive. It would suit the tone of the game. If Dying Light 2 didn't have these choices, the story would have seemed rather shallow, and I even felt involved in the story, and that improved its reception. Unfortunately, I have no idea how important these choices are, because the game does not allow you to make manual saves - it automatically saves the game state to one slot, so there is no simple way to check what the other trousers in the plot look like. It took me over 40 hours to complete the main plot. If I wanted to check other choices, I would have to start the game from scratch and play at least 10 hours to get to the first consequences of other decisions. Besides, I have already worn these pants and could do with washing them. But I don't know if it matters how much the choices change the story. Rather, the important thing is that they give the impression of participating in the creation of the story, and most players will get through the story once. The developers, unfortunately, advertised the game that it takes up to 500 hours to complete, and I assume they include going through the story multiple times to check all the story's permutations. It's just a pity that there is no New Game + here at this point, so subsequent attempts mean starting the game from scratch with a lame and frail character who was already parkour coke at the end of the previous adventure. There is another problem with the factions. As the game progresses, we activate various water towers, and power plants and by occupying such a place, we can hand over the district to one of the two factions. Who we pass it to does not have any impact on the story - we can safely hand over successive districts to the survivors, and then support the Law Enforcers with fictional decisions. Assigning districts changes their appearance - survivors place various ramps, jumps, and zip lines to facilitate parkour, and guards place traps and other offensive installations. But it is the separation of districts and the plot that do not interact. It reminds me a bit of the Assassin's Creed Odyssey battles, which allowed different regions to be handed over to different sides in the conflict, but it made no difference to the story. How is it played? At its core, Dying Light 2 is a larger version of the original. To sum up for the strangers: overall this is an open-world game in which a very good first-person parkour system plays a key role in getting around - full of jumps, bouncing off low objects, running on walls, swinging on ropes, overturning when falling from high heights and so on. A derivative of parkour is a nice exploration of multi-level locations filled with loot and collectibles to be found, and the gameplay is completed by a pretty good model of melee combat, which allows you to dismantle and crush zombies that respond well to blows and hostile people.
From time to time you can also shoot someone with a bow - preferably a moment after we blew up from his head. The game also allows you to sneak and murder bandits and zombies quietly, but it is rather a minor element of the game. Of course, we have the main plot here, a lot of side quests with microfibers and various additional activities - such as stealing various treasures from zombies lies at night, time parkour challenges, or mutant minibosses to overcome. Dying Light 2 is very similar in structure to Far Cry games - now we will even encounter random events appearing on the map - but the exploration here is more interesting, and the core of the game is different. However, not everything is identical to the first Dying Light. For example, there is quite a controversial stamina bar here, which means that Aiden cannot endlessly swing a weapon or climb a wall. A lot of effort has gone into making the gameplay change throughout the game, and this stamina bar is one of the means to do so. At first, Aiden flies through obstacles slowly and beats quite boring, but collecting special inhibitors over time increases endurance and health level, completing tasks unlocks new skills from combat trees and parkour, and also receives new gadgets. In the following hours of playing, he will start to drive enemies from two soles in the face, learn to kick stunned opponents from the backs to kick others, he will not only be able to block attacks, but also throw aggressors to the sides to take the strength of their blows. We fight much more with living enemies than with zombies, so it should be noted that these battles are more complex thanks to a wider range of moves, and the opponents are sometimes better armored and have the support of archers. Over time, Aiden also becomes a better runner-jumper. He will be able to stick to the wall longer, run sideways on it, perform slides, jumps, jump farther or higher from low obstacles and zombie's heads. In this situation of clear character development, the current lack of New Game + is problematic, because returning to Aiden the bream, whose feet are weak and legs short, to see a different version of the story, hurts a bit. And starting the game again takes our toys. Disruptors and virals attacked the kindergarten. A paraglider, grappling hook, rubber duck, and a plastic fire engine was stolen. You bastards! At some point, from a location with relatively low buildings, we reach the skyscrapers and then Aiden receives a paraglider that can float on air streams. For a moment I was afraid that it would spoil my parking, but it turned out that these multi-story locations would be impossible to navigate without it.
The grappling hook also appears surprisingly late in the game, but it doesn't pull you to the target like in number one - it works more like lines in Spider-men, as it allows you to grab almost any object or wall and swing. All of this can be combined at the end of the game and although it requires a bit of practice - running through the city full of jumping, climbing, rocking, and flying gives a lot of satisfaction. Dying Light 2 has by far one of the best open-world walking models out there. Only Mirror's Edge can compete with his parkour, but Faith's adventure games were rather focused on fairly precise routes, and the Dying Light model is a bit less precise, more "sticky" and works better in an open environment. The character sticks to objects and surfaces more easily than in the first part, so here jumping on narrow beams is not so difficult anymore. Sometimes it makes Aiden behave like a fly flying through a jungle made of glue and grabbing at random objects, but this is not a big problem. Just as character development is very cool, statistical RPG elements are as thin as the butt of a zombie called the GRE anomaly here. This zombie looks like this. Well, rather not twerking. In the course of her adventures, Aiden collects a lot of clothes to wear clothes and the armored iron he waves around. These clothes and weapons have some statistics and properties - and they increase something, and it accelerates it. In addition, we collect tons of all scrap, rags, and electro-waste, from which you can create upgrades for weapons. Well, such a shovel or other fan-staff has sockets like weapons in Diablo, but instead of gems, we can attach a shock battery, a fire-spitting nozzle, or a poison spouting tube. The problem is that these stats don't matter much. Sure, they do, but there isn't any depth to it. From time to time, I exchanged a weapon for a higher rank one and stuffed it with upgrades I had parts to create. Sometimes I forgot to do it for a few hours and waved a randomly picked weapon that would change itself into another as the previous scrap metal crumbled to pieces. And to tell you the truth, I didn't feel much different. Of course, you are massacred with one or two-handed weapons, slashing or blunt weapons - they have different attack speeds and the attacker behaves differently, but the statistics themselves play a secondary role here because in combat, agility, maneuvering, using skills, and controlling the battlefield are more important. . I thought that maybe stats would start to make more sense when I switched the difficulty level to a higher one, the game did not get much more difficult - rather boring, because at the beginning I had to hit an ordinary zombie with a stick as long as I was lashing it with a carpet beater. You're all dusty, man. Embrace. (sounds of impact) There will be fans of tough zombies for sure, under which you need to maximize the effectiveness of the weapon, but in my opinion, all the pumping of stats serves to make the harp weapon as effective as it is on the normal.
Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but I think Dying Light 2 could give up the loot mechanics at all, and nothing would be lost. This is a better action game than an RPG title. The stat gun is an atavism from the more hack'n'slash era of Dead Island. The more that the economy is also stable here, like the rate of a random cryptocurrency - the longer I played, the longer I played, Aiden had heavier pockets full of money, which I did not have much to spend on. It was enough to sell treasures taken from wardrobes, chests, and burrows, as well as weaker weapons, to soon display Aiden with not very useful gold. But perhaps the most controversial changes concern the night, which - compared to the original - is less dangerous. In the first Dying Light, the so-called Przemieniece, i.e. strongly mutated, furiously fast, and strong zombies that turn the hero into a luncheon in a few seconds when he pushes his legs too slowly. Meanwhile, here are the cops from GTA. The night is still unpleasant, because these howlers attract fast, aggressive enemies to our necks, and some locations can only be safely entered after dark, but the feeling of danger is much lower than in the previous Dying Light. Some players will be relieved to see this, but I was a bit disappointed. The threat of night is to be balanced by the fact that the hero cannot stay in the dark for too long, because then the virus present in the blood can kill him, so you have to take certain items, go back to the sun or in front of ultraviolet lamps. But this declining resistance to the zombification virus in the dark is also any problem at the beginning of the game. I have to complain that the gameplay itself has some problems that are common in many open worlds - repetition problems to be exact. The hospitals searched at night are identical to each other, the optional clashes with GRE anomalies scattered across the map mean you have to fight the same miniboss multiple times - only sometimes it has a bit more health points, and other times less. And after Dying Light 2 I hope that in the next 5 years I will not see Skyrim lockpicking with lockpicks in any game. I've probably opened several hundred doors and crates here. For that, I can praise the parkour challenges, whose routes are very well laid out. And it's nice that Dying Light 2 doesn't have The final boss is played with Quick Time Event like in one. This isn't to say that the final boss isn't fun, as it's It's one of those rather tiring ones, but it's still better than QTE. Of course, Dying Light 2 can be played together in online co-op mode, just like the original. Up to four players Run around the world, knock zombies out with sharp tools and perform tasks. Everyone keeps the experience and items, but the story progress is saved only on the account of the game host.
This is why decisions in dialogues are ultimately made by the host because it is his version of the story, but the other players can vote on individual statements, and symbols appear next to their symbols will appear next to the issues they've chosen, indicating who voted for what. For most of the pre-release review, the period co-op didn't work, so I waited and tested it a bit with random people on release day. And the co-op works roughly as well as it did in the first installment. It's a lot of fun, and it's a lot of fun to fight bandits and zombies with hard objects. and zombies with hard objects give a lot of fun, but it does get a little tricky at times. For example, here you can see how I defeat the story mini-boss with another player and the guy has run out of the health bar, my companion considered the fight as finished and started to dress the wounds, but my opponent was still merrily frolicking around the room looking for a bump. Only after a whole series of useless blows did the type suddenly fell off his leg and fell dead. So, to sum up - the co-op is fun, but expect a bit of technical chaos. I don't like to talk about the length of games, because it has little to their quality, but Techland has called themselves with a rather unsuccessful marketing ploy, which they later had to explain, because hardly anyone who wants a game for 500 hours, and that's what the developers promised. And what does it look like in the context of the fact that I completed Dying Light 2 in just over 40 hours? Where are the other 460? Well. I certainly could have squeezed a little more out of this game. Admittedly I've taken and given all the districts to the factions, I've cleared the hospitals of useful inhibitors. most of the windmills, but I could still surely unlock to the end of the skill tree and do even more side quests. I'm betting that if I was stubborn enough, it would take me 100 hours to complete it could take me. Where are the other 400? Well, I assume this is where we enter the territory of going through the story multiple times to see all the permutations of the consequences of the choices and the laborious search of the huge map to collect all of the finds. And all of this preferably on hardcore, so that each zombie has to be hit several to hit each zombie with a stick a few more times before they remember they're dead. I'm perfectly capable of believing in those 500 hours. I'm sure there will be fans who will play for that long. But rest assured - if you are normal, you don't like to spend 5 years in one game then after 40 hours you can easily consider Dying Light 2 finished, because you saw most of what was worth seeing. The rest is obsessive neurosis. Well, I don't rate it. And what does the audiovisual and technical side of the game look like? The setting is... specific. Techland has its style of making games about zombies, which means pretty nice cities, ugly vegetation, nasty grass, and rather ugly faces with some rather random facial expressions.
The overall impression isn't bad, but there's also a certain ugliness to it that, on the whole suits a zombie game. There are times when the game looks great, and other times some scenes feel like something out of a low-budget production. One moment a sultan, and the next a sultan, but ...but from the Bałuty district. I'm allowed to joke like that because I'm from Łódź. Dying Light 2 can be uneven in this respect. But I won't say a bad word about the music, which doesn't stand out It doesn't stand out too much from the background, but it creates a nice atmosphere. I played the game on a PC and with DLSS turned on it was possible to playable in 4K at 60 frames per second on my GeForce 2080Ti pulled down by an i7 of the ancient sixth generation. It was not uncommon for the game to scale resolution, but it still looked pretty good. I also fired up the thing on the PlayStation 5 and here we have a choice of mode performance, resolution, and quality. Only the resolution mode displays an image worthy of a 4K television - although it's not native 4K - the other modes run in fairly poor Full HD. Performance mode compensates for this past-gen resolution with 60 frames per second, and quality mode simulates lighting and shadows with ray tracing, but it was only noticeable to me with that grass over the water. If you're not part of the grass over water fan club then you have the choice between a reasonably sharp image at 30 frames or a pretty And, unfortunately, the latter option seemed to be best, as Dying Light 2's parkour gameplay benefits greatly from higher frame rates. It's just a shame that so quickly this generation of consoles has come to mean choosing from among rotten compromises. Ultimately, I don't regret playing it on a PC. Oh, and I haven't tested it myself, but according to Digital Foundry, the versions for older generation consoles hold up quite well 30 frames per second - semi generational PS4 Pro and Xbox One X in Full HD, and the base PS4 and Xbox One somewhere below 900p. They look nice while doing so, even if blurry, so we're certainly not dealing with drama on the On a Cyberpunk 2077 scale, the game seems playable on past-gen. It looks a bit like the developers treated new generation consoles rather conservatively, not using their full capabilities - we are particularly surprised by the lack of dynamic resolutions - and meanwhile Dying Light 2 seems to squeeze everything out of the old generation. However, I'd like to add that Digital Foundry tested mostly the early hours of the game, and while I played on PC - I saw the biggest drops in fluidity in the final stages, full of crowds of zombies, dust, and similar performance killers. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out that the game in the old-gen versions can get seriously throttled in those moments that Digital Foundry didn't test. Okay, but is it broken in any other way? A little bit, unfortunately. it is. I happened to get locked between the railings behind some house so that I couldn't get out until I died. Another time some guy who needed help materialized in midair so that I couldn't reach him. Crates kept appearing in the walls, ragdolls went dumb, and the occasional grass grew in the air. I would say that Dying Light 2 has bugs on a level similar to sandbox Ubigier games like Far Cry, which is something that breaks, sometimes even quite impressively, but it doesn't seem that this is a level of problem anywhere near comparable to Cyberpunk 2077's premiere.
Techland's postponement was a good thing, though. However, we'll find out how it is when the mass tests known as "players buy the game known as "players buy the game after the premiere and play it", because only then will the true extent of the problems come to the surface. Initial reports suggest that there's a bit of patching ahead for Techland, so... the drama may not be there, but it's not all good either.