Review of Dying Light 2 Stay Human – Parkour and its dangers

My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the first Dying light game because of the co-op feature. Roaming around Harran and fighting zombies with another player makes for a fun walk. That brings us to Dying Light 2 Stays In Humans, Released on February 4th. I’d definitely like to get my hands on this game to see if it sticks to its predecessor, as well as other open-world action and narrative-driven games that have launched recently.

Okay, this one Dying Light 2 Stays In Humans Ratings are mainly based on single player experience. While there was a recent update that allowed multiplayer co-op, Nvidia DLSS, and a bunch of bug fixes, it arrived a bit late. As such, these additions didn’t play a big part in my 50 hours of playtime.

Modern Dark Ages

Dying Light 2 Stays In Humans Set 15 years after the events of the first game. Although the Global Relief Effort (GRE) produced a vaccine, greed and corruption allowed the virus to spread around the world unchecked, mutating as the years passed. In this “modern” Dark Age, the remaining humans fight for supremacy in a world divided by conflict and hordes of the undead.

This is where your character, Aiden Caldwell, comes in. Aiden is a Pilgrim, a wanderer who travels through a land with no place to call home. He is also searching for his sister, Mia, who he thought was lost. Bitten by a Volcano early in the campaign, Aiden must find the Inhibitor and stay in the sun/UV light so he can, as the game’s title suggests, “stay still. People”.

Along the way, you’ll meet the rest of the cast, including Lawan (played by Rosario Dawson) and Waltz, a disgraced scientist who is always trying to get back the GRE key Aiden has. Perhaps my only point here is that some of the characters and scenes are poorly written. Some are purely caricatures, others you barely care about their motives, and a few show up but aren’t mentioned again. A prime example is when Aiden becomes emotional and heartbroken after a team is killed by infection, a team he only knows about in a two-minute cutscene.

City of Villedor

Villedor, also known as the City, is where most Dying Light 2 Stays In Humans takes place. On the surface, I have some apprehensions here. Towering skyscrapers, ruined houses, military checkpoints and irradiated wastelands are scattered across the vast open-world landscape. You’ll find lots of loot stowed around, various challenging quests, and an Inhibitor Container (used to level up your health and stamina). Likewise, there’s an incomparable sense of gratification when you get the grappling hook and the paraglider, allowing you to swoop and glide over distances with ease.

Compare to Assassin’s Creed franchise where you just climb to a vantage point to sync and use for quick travel, Dying Light 2 There are many points of interest. Nightrunner Hideouts is just a place to act as a checkpoint and a resting area if you need to switch between day and night. Windmills, meanwhile, have one more jumping puzzle that you need to complete before they can be activated. They will then unlock the beds, as well as notify you of nearby faction outposts (some of which have vendors or side quests).

As for the metro/subway station, these are your quick travel points. You have to get past the enemies, then turn on all the generators to power up the building. Some sections may also have physical requirements, implying that Aiden will need to jump and climb a lot to get to the top. Finally, there are facilities or infrastructure that can be assigned to two factions: Survivors and Peacekeepers (more on them in a while).

Technical brief

From a technical standpoint, I’ve noticed a drop in frame rates in certain areas of the City. I’ll get 15 to 20 fps, which is enough to make me pray that I get to the interior or other area just to stabilize my frame rate. Honestly, I have an Nvidia RTX 3080, Intel i9-10900K, and 32GB of RAM and I had to reduce my settings a bit to make it more manageable. However, this is also a time when we have not enabled DLSS and DX12 fixes. Your experience will likely be different from mine as these fixes must be valid for the game’s release.

Moreover, you should be careful with elevators and towers. There are moments where I fall to the floor while riding an elevator or I reload a save and fall through textures if the nearest respawn is a tower hide (dead when you hit the ground fixed this once) magical way). And, yes, there are annoying incidents sometimes.

Parkour mechanics in Dying Light 2 Stays In Humans

Original Dying light famous for combining parkour mechanics and first-person gameplay. The sequel takes advantage of that, but your stamina is limited by the Inhibitor Containers you used to upgrade. You still have some moves at your disposal, such as wall running (horizontally and vertically), monkey bars, airbags, ziplines, using the aforementioned grappling and paragliding hooks, and lots of puzzles jump. The more often you use sports moves, the more parkour experience you get to unlock additional skills.

Still, there are hilarious moments. For example, there was a time when I knew I was pressing buttons to run on a vertical wall, but my character would slide. Alternatively, I can use the monkey stick to swing to another part, but there are points where Aiden will (stupidly) jump sideways. And, there are cases where I can jump over the heads of the undead, and cases where that simply doesn’t work (i.e., Aiden will awkwardly bump into a zombie). I can’t tell if this is due to input lag due to frame rate drops or something else entirely.

Combat mechanics in Dying Light 2 Stays In Humans

Dying Light 2 Stays In Humans still focuses on the close combat that players already enjoy. You will see a wide variety of weapons ranging from blunt weapons like pipes and hammers to sharp blades, katanas and axes. They tend to break the more you use them, and as of right now your only recourse is to add mods to increase durability. You also get throwables like mines, decoys, grenades, knives and Molotov cocktails.

Sadly, combat can become repetitive and tedious. At the start, I was awestruck by the weight of each weapon or “oomph”, with its powerful swings, bone smashes, and ferocious cuts. After dozens of hours had passed, I was merely skimming through the motions.

However, perhaps the focus on melee combat is a bit too much, as guns have been completely removed from the game. This can be a deal breaker for some (and it certainly frustrates me). It might make sense from a lore standpoint, considering that these are modern Dark Ages. Unfortunately, that inference also fails when you have mods that can generate electricity and high-tech items like biomarkers. If they have those, then surely someone still remembers how to make gunpowder or repair guns.

At the very least, you will find bows and crossbows from time to time. This is likely why gun arming would be controversial, as bows have trivialized so many encounters. For example, there are BLUE Anomalies where you need to remove Revenants before you can select an Inhibitor Container. I’m mostly just on an elevated platform to shoot that target and kill it within seconds.

That brings us to the battle with AI, which needs a few tweaks. Villedor is said to be a city filled with camps and outposts. But, only a handful of times have I seen human NPCs fighting the undead in the streets. Worse yet, there are instances where I’ll see Peacekeepers chilling my spine on a rooftop, while Renegade bandits are comfortable on the roof next door (they only start fighting once I’ve intercepted them). robbers). Then, at night, deadly infectious variants roam the land. However, they will turn into small rocks if you find raised areas, wooden beams or scaffolding that they cannot reach.

Choices and consequences

Dying Light 2 Stays In Humans presents a number of opportunities where your choices will greatly affect the outcome of missions or campaigns in general. In the case of facilities, these are utilities or infrastructure that you can assign to a Survivor or a Peacekeeper. You will then receive additional rewards of functions as you explore. For example, Survivors can add more airbags on the road or a two-way slide between buildings. Meanwhile, if you choose Peacekeepers, you can activate car traps or Molotov bombs that can destroy crowds.

However, important decisions all have an associated timer. Your decisions here can have short- or long-term consequences. I remember choosing to ask Sophie for help (she was with the Survivors). Little did I know that it would cause the Bazaar, a hub of the Survivors, to be attacked by the Peacekeepers. That caused some NPCs to disappear, and at least a few with side quests. While the area has become more accessible since then, I’m really guessing to myself when those consequences become known.

Unfortunately, choice and consequences are tied to how I feel Dying Light 2Worst error: only one save file for the entire campaign. And that’s an autosave there (no manual save at all). It resembles its predecessor, only joined by branching paths in the sequel.

In narrative RPGs with ramifications, you can have multiple save files to replay the seasons and see different results (for example: Wasteland 3). Also, there are certain games/series where you can replay chapters, although you still need to review scenes (eg: The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes). Dying Light 2 Stays In Humans Avoid those ideas, opting instead for an extremely restrictive system that forces you to replay the entire campaign from scratch if you want to see all possible outcomes.

Maybe that’s why Techland claims that it will took 500 hours to complete 100%. If you only have one autosave, then you have no choice but to start from scratch. It is true that there is a save file in your My Games folder, but this file is only updated whenever I launch the game so I was skeptical about using this file as a backup.

What’s next?

Overall, I found Dying Light 2 Stays In Humans interesting for a while. I love exploring every nook and cranny in Villedor. Likewise, I felt the euphoria of the night chases and the tension whenever I tried to sneak past the zombies in the quarantine facilities. I also had no problems with progression as I obtained the Inhibitor Box and regularly gained skill XP.

My main interest is related to technical problems, complex mechanics and limited saving systems. The first one should be fixed during the release time, and as mentioned, your launch date experience may differ from those updates. The second is mostly about getting used to those issues, and hoping that they’ll be fixed later. The third is the core ingredient, which may or may not be controversial depending on how you approach the game. Since I’m also a guide writer, it’s hard for me to have to go through the entire campaign again just to see the difference between Option A and Option B.