After many delays, Dying Light 2 finally released on 4th Feb 2022. Our hands were eager to get our review copy and really jump into the zombie world of parkour and night terrors.
Here is our experience with it.
Before we begin just a couple of heads-ups:
We have been playing this game over months and been patient with all the updates.
We’re going to be comparing Dying Light 2 to its predecessor, as that is our benchmark for this game. Yes, we are fans of the first game.
We are trying to keep this a spoiler free review, but there might be some gameplay elements that we have to talk about so you have been warned.
Visuals
Dying Light was a decent looking game and was great for when it came out. Dying Light 2 is a bit of a mixed bag for 2022.
While the views in the distance look amazing, the building and world textures are phenomenal, but sometimes the items populating the world do not look as good. It feels like a flat image plastered in to fill up space. This is a nippick but it bothered TJ enough for it to be highlighted here. Bacchus Adoneus, didn’t seem to notice until it pointed it out to him. So it might not be an issue for you.
Music & Voice Acting
They’ve done a great job with the soundtrack, especially the music in the start menu before you load up your game. We did initially miss the original theme from Dying Light, but this one’s grown on us just after a few playthroughs. It almost sounds epic. We also like the in-game soundtrack. The first game just had a horror theme throughout, except for a few seconds when you unlocked safehouses. Dying Light 2 has some beautiful pieces playing in the background, and some bits of uplifting music which brings a bit of hope traversing the dangerous landscapes of the game.
In terms of Voice Acting, Dying Light was not that great. You won’t find them winning any nominations for it. Sadly Dying Light 2 doesn’t do much better. It is better, just not a huge amount.
Overall not a bad thing at all, just about enough to be acceptable.
Game Play
To summarise, Dying Light 2 feels like the same game, but also feels like a different game. Oh wait we still need to talk about the gameplay.
The reason we said that, was because the general game play is very similar to what you would remember, or probably have forgotten at this point since it’s been so long.
There are some differences though. Firstly the parkour feels a bit smoother, and the more you progress with the game, the smoother it gets. What was already a lovely parkour style just got better with Dying Light 2.
Some buttons have moved around a bit, and you no longer have any accidental health pack uses. Was that just a problem with TJ? Ok well, it doesn’t happen anymore.
But there are some more features and complexities in Dying Light 2. Night time gameplay is much more complicated, where not only do the zombies get harder, but you have to manage your sickness which has a time limit. There are ways to extend it, but it’s just another thing to look after in order to survive the night.
What was initially an annoyance, later became an enjoyable challenge. What we also love is how safe houses and similar structures are alive rather than being static like in the first game.
One aspect of gameplay that is absolutely infuriating is the upgrade mechanism. Everything, and we mean everything, needs to be upgraded. It’s extremely stupid, frustrating and makes the game more of a farming/looting expedition than a fun extension of Dying Light 2.
This is one of the worst aspects of the game.
Another funny change is that now the main character does not tire while running, but instead gets tired while climbing. We prefer it the other way around, but it just means you now need to be more strategic with how you play the game.
The parkour combat has been made more involved and allows you to play in a less hack and slash manner, if you chose to. Requiring you to get more involved in order to defeat zombies or enemies in the best way possible.
You also lose the god-like grapple hook and it is replaced with other items. Some extremely fun, some not so much. Wish we could have that version of the grapple hook back. But oh well, you win some, lose sum.
As we’re playing on a console, we’re not the biggest fans of using a cursor to navigate the menu as it feels quite cumbersome. It’d be much easier to just toggle through the menu options like every other game. Also, if they did go with a cursor it may have been a good idea to let Playstation users move the cursor with the touchpad. Maybe something to think about with future updates?
In terms of the story, it might feel a bit stale or similar to the first one, but the world building is pretty good. With all the various characters that inhabit the world of Dying Light 2, such as pilgrims and the legendary nightrunners, as well as factions such as the Peacekeepers, Renegades and Survivors.
The last thing we want to point out is the conversation and choice based story progression. The team has a split opinion on such games, but looking past that. The introduction of this type of story progression meant the developers chose to mess up the multiplayer aspect of the game.
Which is a great segue into…
Multiplayer
We play Dying Light as a crew of 4-5 people. We rotate one person as not everyone is available all the time. But in the past, one story run through was enough for everyone to progress through the game equally.
But now because you have to choose the story progression, the story only progresses for the person who’s session you are playing on. This was such a big hit for us and honestly has meant that the entire crew hasn’t gotten into DL2 yet. It doesn’t actually matter. SMH!
They could have simply made 2 gameplay options. When you start the game you choose “dictator or democracy”. In a dictatorship gameplay, only the session owner’s choice matters. In a democratic gameplay, the crew decides via a vote and in the case of a tie, the session host breaks the tie. Simple! Give everyone the progression.
This is especially annoying when you unlock story progressions unlockables, like the paraglider or the crossbow. In the paraglider’s case, everyone gets it, but only the session host can upgrade it. In the case of the crossbow ONLY the session host gets it! This was probably once the worst let downs.
Thankfully character progression carries over between games. But this was a huge issue for us.
Other than this, Dying Light 2 is still a fun multiplayer experience. With the addition of “Call for help” where you can randomly request for a person to momentarily join your game, kill a few zombies and then go on their merry way. It’s a lovely touch. Doesn’t work all the time, but when it did it was a random treat.
Another aspect that we liked is how Dying Light 2 has taken a step forward in fast travelling your co-op crew to your mission. In the first game if someone happened to be AFK while you were trying to trigger a mission, you’d have to wait for them to return and fast travel to you. In Dying Light 2, the session master can teleport your crew to the mission point.
Stability
Dying Light was not a stable game, playing it today, it is still not completely stable. Dying Light 2, is not any better.
The initial game play was almost perfect, no bugs or anything. But the moment we got into multiplayer gameplay, the bugs started creeping up on you. Sometimes this is great as it can help with the farming effort, but sometimes it is annoying and makes the game frustrating.
From not being able to access the shop, to getting stuck in random places, to zombies being able to straight up run through buildings.
The game has a lot of bugs, they really need to get around to fixing them.
Still Dying Light 2 is completely playable.
There have been a few updates from when we first got the game. The single player gameplay seems to be quite stable. It’s when you get into multiplayer when things get a bit lairy.
The most frustrating of glitches we have had are things like: ladders not working (being droppable for some, and completely unusable for others), zombies not dropping collectables, players going invisible or needing an exorcism, missions not progressing, etc.
Verdict
One thing that we feel the game missed out on in general, was that there should have been some form of continuation from Dying Light. Maybe in terms of some unlockables, or some skills or something. Maybe not at first, but later through the game, easter eggs don’t count.
Other than this, Dying Light 2 is a fun game that we expect to keep playing for months on end and possibly over the next few years – especially if Techland supports it the way they have continued to support Dying Light over the years.
We highly recommend getting Dying Light 2.
For new or old players. It is a fresh experience that has enough content to keep you entertained for hours on end.
