Dying Light 2 Stay Human - Game Review

You could easily spend 30 odd hours in Dying Light 2's first area and walk away happy without even realising there's another bigger map to find and explore. So, yeah, it's big. Techland may have tried to backtrack when people reacted badly to the promise of a game that would take 500 hours to 100%, but this absolutely that game. I eventually rolled credits around 80 hours, with a ton of side stuff under my belt but still feeling like I barely dented it in places. Right now I'm probably 100 hours in, mopping up stuff and exploring a few bits of foggy map I've barely touched.

So, it's a big game and, for the most part, a good one. There are some issues I'll get to later but nothing that puts me off recommending it. It's a huge and enjoyable open world zombie game that realises it's core fantasy well as you explore it's corpse infested city, seeing what you can find, picking up missions, and - when all hell breaks loose - making split second fight or flight decisions as you run through streets full of the undead.

When the tools and skills you have click you can enter a total flow state - pivoting on a footfall to avoid danger or leaping from rooftops without looking first, pretty sure you can fix the problem before it's too late. There are things like a paraglider to fly across buildings and a grapple hook you can fling out with barely a thought. When it all falls into place you can just sort of wake up blinking at the end of a mission not entirely sure how any of it happened.

Combat can have moments like these too and features a beautiful two-footed kick that gives Deathloop some competition. The entire first half of the game's fighting is shaped by waiting for the perfect moment to hoof enemies into oblivion. Later, though, especially in story missions, the human enemy count increases and, with too many enemies doing too many things at once, the beautiful tactical precision of early fights later becomes more of a desperate mash.

The day-to-day existence in the world is great, with plenty to discover and do, but the story,  characters and your ability to change any of it is less impressive. Hardly anyone is likable or memorable, and the dialogue is all over the place (possibly due to the removal of a big name writer after harassment accusations). There are a lot of strange moments where characters clumsily lever unprovoked backstory into a simple fetch request. It's far from ruinous but can break immersion and often feels like you're meeting theme park performers trying to keep the show going, rather than actual people living in a real world.

It's also disappointing to discover that your choices have very little impact. The original pitch was that everything you did would have huge and sweeping ramifications to the world. What actually happens boils down to unlocking things like water towers or electrical substations and giving them to one of two factions in return for city upgrades. Give stuff to the Police-like Peacekeepers, and you'll add traps and weapons to the streets. Give it to the survivors instead and they'll add parkour gear like ziplines and jump pads.