Dying Light 2: Stay Human

Gameplay(one big exception) and graphics are very solid and it truly feels like the end of the world. The dying light zombies have always been a bit different with the day and night cycle and that continues here. Plus a way bigger map for you to explore. But there are some issues here that hold this back from being a truly great game. Story and the controls when traversing up and around things. What happens to the simple but extremely fun parkour system? Getting around, jumping and running was the best part of the first game and here it literally feels like I'm learning how to walk again. Way to complicated and there are parts of the game that I almost quit entirely due to how bad the mechanics worked. The story is a barebones story of a zombie apocalypse that you have seen before. Guy from a lab looks for his sister across a destroyed world. Boring villains, boring factions, terrible characters who you wish you had the option to kill. The reason I still enjoyed the game was because of the atmosphere, killing zombies, and once you learn how to get around it can be fun. Overall somewhat disappointing game but I did have some fun with it. Just brace yourself for frustration when first learning the controls, and don't expect TLOU story telling.

I just read a much-hated review of this game on this board. Could you have possibly imagined even five years ago that someone would complain that most of the zombies in a game are white? That's where we are, folks.

I put the title in quotation marks because I'm borrowing it from an article about this game. And I agree with it. This game has improvements from its predecessor-- I especially like the fact that so far the enemies aren't cartoonish James Bond movie-like villains. But the animation for the combat is a bit weird to me, and it's maybe even too easy. I've really enjoyed it so far, though. I will probably update this review when I complete it.

I liked it. I think it would've been better than the first game, if there wouldn't have been so many glitches like where the characters were so quiet(the whole cutscene before the final boss was utterly ruined because of the characters being quiet(not the main guy, just npcs)) I couldn't hear them or weren't even there or if someone was on the floor they were standing up but the screen still appeared as if they were on the floor. Just a big glitchy mess but still a semi good game. I think it'll be better once the glitches are fixed. Like the title says, I plan to play it again when I see there's more updates.

Long awaited sequel to an amazing game. Definitely feels different compared to the other but if you play it like the RPG it wants you to play it as it's a great time. As for the review crying about there only being white males. What about the all the female characters you meet in the first 15 mins? Or throughout the world? Or are you angry it's not a strong minority only game? Never the less...great game.

This review is a bit pre-mature as I've yet to finish but here's a few stand outs of the game so far.

Parkour - This a major step up the from Dying Light 1. It takes everything you know and love about Dying Light's parkour and turns it up to 11. This is certainly the best parkour system I've seen in a fist person game.

Environment - While there are a few issues the environment is near perfect, everything has been designed around the parkour element so you'll always find a path on the rooftops of where you need to go.

Graphics - They are a major upgrade from the first game but for a 2022 game it does suffer is some areas. The lighting is not as good as most games nowadays and when you use the flashlight no shadow is cast. But my main issue with the graphics is the NPC's. The faces are very cartoony and the facial animation overall is not acceptable for a game released in 2022. With that said the story is not a major part of the Dying Light franchise so it is not a huge impact on the overall enjoyment of the game.

Performance - This is a bit of a mixed bag, the graphics settings are very limited so it's difficult to tweak it for optimal performance. It's not terrible but it's not great either. With my 1070ti and 9700k with 32gb of ram I was running at about 35-45 fps @1440p on medium to low settings. The game is poorly optimized and mid level systems will struggle to run it. But there is a solution, there is an option to lower the tender resolution then upscale it with post processing.

This takes my fps from about 40 to over 100, the downside is with a lower render resolution textures become blurry.

Combat - Combat has both improved and declined since the release of Dying Light 1. Human vs Human combat has significantly improved since the first game, the flow is much nicer and more defined than before. But Player vs zombie combat has taken a hit, the rag dolls that were in the previous game were pretty incredible. Hit a zombie in the leg and he falls over, kick them and they'll fly backwards and fall on the ground. Kick them into someone spikes and they'll go right through the zombie. Unfortunately with Dying light 2 the rag doll is almost nonexistent. Instead if plays one of several pre-canned animations depending on where you hit a zombie. This is fine at first but becomes very repetitive and apparent it's just repeating the same animations instead of the dynamic rag dolls in Dying Light 1.

Story - I will not be going over this as it's spoiler free and I've yet to finish it.

Conclusion - Overall this is a great sequel and addition to the Dying Light franchise, some of the things that I've mentioned can be fixed post launch and I sincerely hope that Techland does fix them as this has potential to be one of the best games of 2022.