Dying Light 2 Stay Human Review: Those pesky zombies are at it again

(Image Courtesy: Techland)

Zombies are a cornerstone of modern entertainment. From George Romero's Night of the Living Dead to books, games, and everything in between, they have managed to spread their festering corpses over a wide spectrum of media.

You could argue that the concept is stale at this point, with nearly every scenario possible explored ad-nauseum. To make your voice heard over the lumbering groans, you need to do something unique for your vision to stand out, and that's exactly what Techland did with Dying Light in 2015.

The unique parkour system took elements from games like Mirror's Edge and then mashed them together with zombies, making it feel fresh. The game also had a day/night cycle with more powerful foes for you to face at night.

It took a while, with development road bumps and delays, but we finally have the sequel Dying Light 2: Stay Human. Does it hold up to the original? and more importantly, is it still fun to dropkick the undead in their face?

Story

Sometime after the events of the first game, the city of Harran is overrun and wiped out, resulting in the deaths of all the citizens but The Global Relief Effort (GRE) manages to create a vaccine and subdue the Harran Virus.

Despite assurances, the GRE continue to experiment with the strain of virus and unfortunately, a mutated variant manages to escape from their labs.

This starts a worldwide pandemic that wipes out nearly all population on Earth, leaving pockets of survivors scattered on rooftops all over the world.

20 years later, Aiden Caldwell makes a living as a Pilgrim, someone who takes up odd jobs and deliveries between human settlements to earn a living. Turns out, Aiden and his sister Mia were experimented on as children by Dr. Waltz, and Aiden arrives in the fictional city of Villedor to meet an informant that has clues to his sister’s whereabouts and the location of Dr. Waltz.

Predictably, the informant is killed, and Aiden manages to get bitten and infected.

Without spoiling anything else, the rest of the story involves you tracking down your sister Mia and Dr. Waltz. Naturally, this isn’t as easy as it sounds, and you must contend with three factions of survivors with their own motives and agendas – The Peacekeepers, The Renegades and The Survivors.

There are multiple choices to make, many side-missions to undertake and many places to explore.

The story weaves the same tapestry of cliches that you have seen countless times over in zombie fiction, and while the multiple branching paths and choices seem interesting at first, they don’t really have a major impact in how the plot plays out.

Like the first game, the story takes a while to get going but by that point, there aren’t any interesting revelations or twists to keep you hooked, and I found myself losing interest in the narrative fast. There are so many boring dialogue exchanges and cliched scenarios to sit through before you get to the interesting revelations at the end, but by then, I couldn’t bring myself to care about the story.

Presentation

On a decent PC, Dying Light 2 looks impressive. Techland’s new graphics engine offers a lot of options for you to tinker with, like ray-tracing, and higher resolutions with unlocked framerates. There are plenty of settings for you play with, along with preset profiles for you to use.

The art-style that Techland has gone for is very striking, with muted browns seeping through the streets filled with undead, to green, lush rooftops where the remaining humans survive. The lighting, in particular, has been greatly improved compared to the first game.

During night, survivors band together under the purplish hues of UV lights, the only way to keep the undead at bay. The sequel improves upon the visual palette of the first game, adding a lot of colour and vibrancy compared to the rather muted palette of the original.

The music does its job well, with a nice bed of ambient tracks and more upbeat ones that fit and change according to the scenario. It isn’t all perfect though, on our review copy we ran into a myriad of issues and bugs, like enemies glitching through the floor, broken quests, audio completely cutting out, game settings being reset and many more.

Thankfully, as I write this, Techland has released patches that have fixed many issues and given the company’s excellent track record with the first game, you can expect them to fix these issues with continuing patches.

Gameplay

While the story doesn’t quite deliver, the gameplay is where Dying Light 2 shines. I feel like I should put an asterisk here though, because the first few hours of the game are rough. Like most modern RPGs, Dying Light 2 locks traversal and combat skills behind a skill tree.

This made the early hours kind of feel like a slog, but if you get past that you will soon find yourself zipping across rooftops and gliding in the air. Movement mechanics in general are a lot smoother and tight than the original game, which felt janky in some places.

As you slowly unlock more skills like faster stamina recharges or the ability to sprint up walls, movement slowly starts to become more and more fun. The world design places a huge emphasis on verticality, and you can also unlock shortcuts to make travel between zones even faster.

Like most modern open-world games, there are tons of optional challenges, collectibles, and bosses to fight. You will soon find your map littered with icons and checklists, and if you have gotten bored of this formula in other games, then Dying Light 2 will do little to change your mind.

For me, the traversal mechanics and parkour kept exploration fun, and if you don’t burn yourself out trying to 100% the game on your first run, it isn’t too bad. The world, while huge, is nowhere near as obnoxious or cookie cutter as some other games, and compared to the first game, there is massive jump in variety, which keeps things interesting.

Combat also takes a different approach to the first game, you have a varied arsenal of melee-weapons to swing at and take out your foes. When you engage in a fight for the first time, you will notice how improved and smooth it feels over the original.

Weapon sounds are meaty, the impact is satisfying in its brutality and the animations (while stiff at times) sell the fights well. There are a variety of different weapons from shovels to hatchets, swords, and everything in between. Most of them can be crafted using resources found in the world, and nearly every weapon will wither and break down over time, incentivising you to craft more.

Some of them can be modified using special slots, that will allow you to add abilities to them for an added advantage. Combined with the combat skill tree, the game succeeds in giving you options when it comes to taking on the undead. There is enough variety to optimise for certain builds like tank, ranged, or stealth. What brings it a notch down however is the enemy AI, especially with human opponents like bandits.

The day/night cycle from the first game is also back, and Techland incentivises you to explore more at night. At night-time, stronger and more deadly infected crawl the streets, some are massive damage sponges, some can leap at you from far away, some spot you from a distance and initiate a chase sequence where you must evade them. The trade-off to braving the streets at night is that you get better gear and items. You can also take on missions to defeat specific undead for more rare drops. Like the first, some of the tensest moments in the game happen at night, and you are missing out on a lot if you choose not to explore during night-time.

Should you buy it?

If you have played the first game and enjoyed it, then this is a no-brainer. If you are someone new to the franchise and are wondering if you need to play the first game for the complete narrative, then you don’t need to worry. Besides a few names and certain organisations, this is a stand-alone story, which functions as its own thing.

If you are someone who likes deep narrative-driven games, then Dying Light 2 will be a tough sell but if you can stomach the weak story, then there is tons of fun to be had just exploring the large-open world and going from one area to the other.

You can pick up Dying Light 2 on Steam for Rs 2,999 for the standard edition. The Deluxe Edition goes for Rs 3,999 and the Ultimate Edition will cost you Rs 4,999.

Alternatively, you can pick the game up on the PlayStation 4 and 5 for Rs 3,999 or on the Xbox Series X|S for Rs 3,999.