Table of Contents
- Is Dying Light 2: Stay Human a sequel?
- The story
- Gameplay
- The Old Villedor
- Performance
- Dying Light 2 vale a pena?
Dying Light 2: Stay Human is the long-awaited sequel to the resounding success of the first title in the parkour and zombie apocalypse franchise developed and published in 2015 by Techland. The first game sold over 18 million copies and had active content and support, keeping the game alive to this day.
Therefore, Techland decided to bet again on the formula, with more ambition, aiming for a bigger and better game. This, I can tell you, that they managed to achieve successfully.
Even with the game's release delays, it's finally available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series. In this review, we will analyze my experience in Dying Light 2 on PC, in a review copy provided by Techland.
Is Dying Light 2: Stay Human a sequel?
if you never played Dying Light, don't worry, the story of the first game ends there and a new arc starts in Stay human. In addition, all the context necessary to understand the game is presented in a brief opening cutscene of the game.
In short, after the events of Dying Light, in which the contamination was controlled, scientists continued to test the virus for military purposes. And, if you're already familiar with sci-fi, you know this couldn't work.
In 2015, during the events of Dying Light, all contamination was contained in just one city, Harran, the setting of the first game. However, in 2021, during military testing for the virus after the events of the first game, a contaminated one escaped. That day is called 'The Downfall', the day the world collapsed and became this zombie apocalypse we play in.
Two years later, 98% of the population had already been infected and few settlements were resisting. But a single city prevailed, villedor. 15 years after the fall, in 2036, the year in which Dying Light 2 takes place, Villedor is the last bastion of humanity.
The story
In Dying Light 2, you embody AidenTo Pilgrim. Pilgrims are the few humans who risk wandering between settlements, carrying out dangerous missions. Aiden is 20 years old and has lived as a Pilgrim since he was 14.
Aiden's goal is to find his sister Mia, who he lost at the beginning of the global contamination. Both he and Mia were guinea pigs for sneaky tests, whose purposes we only learned about mid-game.
However, Aiden has abilities that other humans don't. He is stronger, faster and jumps higher, perfect for becoming a Pilgrim. The game begins with Aiden wandering around looking for contacts that he can lead to his family. When he finally finds an informant, Aiden heads to Villedor, the only place she could be.
In Villedor, Aiden is thrown into the middle of a power struggle between 3 factions that seek to control the city. You Peacemakers, Forsaken e Survivors. All seek to save humanity, but in extremely different ways.
To continue on his journey in search of Mia, Aiden participates in the conflict, making decisions and changing the course of events in Villedor. Here it is worth mentioning that some player decisions impact how the world transforms according to the story.
Due to his physical prowess, Aiden is a great asset to factions, who, of course, offer help in finding Mia. However, the story unfolds on two other sides: understanding the reason for the tests that Aiden and other children suffered and, above all, the fate of Villedor and humanity.
Gameplay
Techland was really ambitious with Stay Human. The game has a campaign lasting at least 20 hours, which for extreme completionists can reach up to 500 hours, according to the developer itself.
But the question is whether the game is good enough to hold you for that long. I had just enough time to finish the main story, playing in single player mode and I can guarantee that I will come back to the title a lot.
Dying Light was once a great game that brought a new lease of life to zombie games, with a focus on movement, parkour, and great combat. Dying Light 2 doesn't bring such an innovative air, but, look, it's high quality.
For starters, the game mechanics are super simple: you run, jump, crouch, hit and block blows. However, the way in which all the moves are applied generates a unique gameplay system.
Also, you have the bonus of starting with this basic skillset, and as you progress through the story and explore Villedor, you collect inhibitors — which increase your stamina and vitality — and add points and levels of combat and parkour experience to develop a skill tree for both categories.
This means that the gameplay experience will be different for each player. I, for example, chose to follow a balanced build, growing both niches at the same speed. However, if you prefer to focus on just combat or just parkour, you can and the system is great and very intuitive to follow and encourage you to improve.
In addition to its abilities, the game has good differences from the firstborn in the franchise. Now, there are no more firearms in Dying Light, which always felt out of place in the original game.
Speaking of weapons, there is a huge variety of melee weapons in the game, which can be customized and improved, as well as armor and clothing items that influence your stats and serve as building blocks for different gameplay styles.
The Old Villedor
The game, of course, can become quite complex, even more so because it is a giant open world in which you do most of the crossings on foot. Villedor has several districts, different themed sectors and different crossing challenges, ranging from a suburb, a city with giant buildings and even factories.
The great charm of Dying Light 2 is not in its story, but in its world construction and map design, added, of course, to the gameplay and unique mechanics. In Villedor you have, in addition to your main missions, varied and non-repetitive side quests, parkour challenges and countless places to loot and seek loot.
Despite having focused a lot on variety, at times the defects of every open world game appear: some rooms are the same, textures are similar, NPCs repeating phrases, etc.
However, I can forgive all this with the fact that Villedor has a differentiator: the infected. Villedor's zombies infest the ground of the city and occupy the interior of almost all buildings, leaving civilization on the roofs.
All safe movement is done on top of the city and this creates a unique open world experience, which is to enjoy moving around the map. Every time I had to go somewhere it was an adventure to challenge me to do different parkour jumps and lines.
In addition, Villedor has a day and night cycle, in which the infected are quieter during the day and are extremely dangerous at night, making it riskier to move around during this period.
To close out the complexity that is Villedor, some player decisions impact how she actually transforms. The city is divided between two predominant factions, the survivors and the peacemakers.
During the game you will repair points of interest like windmills, power stations and water stations, which can be assigned to one of the two sides and, depending on which side you assign, you get different benefits in the city, like more zip lines or more traps.
Performance
Before saying anything about performance, it's necessary to clarify that the game has been tested in a pre-release version and that it will receive a day 1 patch to fix most of the bugs and glitches.
Dying Light 2 is a graphically beautiful game, definitely what we call next-gen game. But of course this comes at a cost: performance. For the next-gen console versions, it's expected to run smoothly at 4k 30 fps, but as usual, the PC version struggles.
I tested the game on a PC with a 7th gen i9, 32gb of RAM and an RTX 3060. With this configuration, the best performance I found was running the game at maximum 1080p, keeping a fixed fps at 72, without dropping to below 60.
However, it's still a very demanding game and can end up being a limiter for PC gamers, so check the list of prerequisites above, because your experience will vary depending on your hardware. I didn't experience any crashes or bugs other than stuck NPCs.
Dying Light 2 vale a pena?
Dying Light 2 not only has the content analyzed in this review, it can be played in co-op and, like its predecessor, has the promise of receiving content and support for the next 5 years.
With all that in mind, the game is really worth it if you're looking for a gameplay focused on gameplay and have fun performing impossible parkour jumps, killing zombies and doing slow-motion combat moves to kick two feet in the chest. your enemy,
That's because Dying Light 2 has a story that has an incredible world and context, but it unfolds in a confusing way and often leaves something to be desired in the development of most characters, who just disappear and suddenly reappear in the plot.
Also, much of the story that should be impacted by the player's decision doesn't carry the weight the game seems to give, and decision moments lose their impact. So on most missions I was anxious for the cutscenes and dialogue to pass so I could get back to parkour and insane combat.
Dying Light 2: Stay Human was released on February 4th for Xbox Series, Xbox One, PC, PS4 and PS5.
gabriel.benziDying Light 2: Stay human
Dying Light 2: Stay human 9 10 0 1 9/10 Total Score- Story 6/10 Normal The story is pretty basic and can get confusing, making for exciting moments without much impact, despite the amazing world and context created.
- 10/10 Gameplay Excellent The game has the gameplay mechanics that have entertained me the most in years, with an amazing world and multiple customization paths, appealing to many types of players.
- Incredible 9/10 performance The game is very heavy and graphically intense and even then I didn't experience any crash or fps drops during my gameplay, with everything at 1080p maximum. (PRAÇA)
- Cost/Benefit 10/10 Excellent It is an extremely complete game, which will receive two more story DLCs and a lot of content over the next few years, being a game that will entertain many players for much longer than the period necessary to fulfill the campaign main.
