The Techland team is back at it again, bringing players a new chapter in their widely beloved parkour-filled zombie survival game, Dying Light. This time, the new chapter brings us to a whole new stage in the pandemic’s spread and puts us in the shoes of a new survivor with more to offer than they even know themselves. Dying Light 2 Stay Human is definitely an amazing continuation of the series and does a phenomenal job at maintaining the integrity that the series is known for. Before we even get started, I am delighted to say that this was an awesome experience!

Story

Following the closure of the first game, the world’s scientists had managed to find a way to bring the pandemic to an end. However, they didn’t want to stop at simply containing the virus; they wanted to do more with it. So, in secret, they continued to run tests and eventually weaponized the virus. This turned out to be a drastic mistake that quickly lead to another outbreak.

Improved and volatile, the virus spread faster than before and quickly ran rampant throughout the world. Bringing the world to an end and leaving only a handful of cities still surviving, only maintaining their humanity through scrutinizing situations. Forcing everybody to remain within the light during the day and living near a constant flow of UV lamps at night and indoors, the remaining survivors did everything they could to stay human.

Players take on the role of Aiden, a wanderer (which is called a ‘Pilgrim’ in-game) that has no true home and is on a mission to find his sister. Separated when they were children at the start of the pandemic, finding Mia has been his only focus in his travels. All of his information has led him to this city and here he must earn the trust of the people if he wants to get the information and help he needs to find his sister.

Even as you play through the game, the factor of everybody being infected is prominent throughout the game. This includes yourself as you can only be in dark zones and running around at night for so long before you have to find a UV lamp or reach sunlight. Failing to do so will lead you to a game over due to turning into a volatile yourself.

This was definitely an interesting take on the story that I wasn’t really expecting, but at the same time, it makes complete sense. It is something I can see happening as well since there are people out there smarter than their common sense. The overall goal of the game felt direr than the original title as well thanks to the main character having an ultimate goal before even reaching the city.

Gameplay

You’ll start the game off outside of the city, but approaching the borders of it. Here you will be introduced to your character and the initial controls of the game. You’ll get your first taste of running, jumping, climbing, basic parkour, and finding your pathway. Once you finish this section of the game, you will be roughly thrown into the city and meet the first character that will help you begin your journey.

Your first real mission will take you through some more aspects of the game that you will need to get comfortable with. That is traversing the city, going inside buildings, and passing through dark zones. When you are inside buildings, there is always a chance to find zombies around, but when you are in dark zones you will come across a specific type called ‘Sleepers.’ These specific zombies don’t notice their surroundings or move about, but if you make too much noise or shine a light on them for too long, they will awaken. When one awakes, they all do and then you have a horde on your hands! The goal here is to crouch walk around them and try to get through unnoticed.

Once you get through this section, you will be given a bio-bracelet. This bracelet will act as your timer for how long you have before your immunity runs out and you turn into a volatile. Maintaining your immunity when you aren’t in the sunlight or UV lamps is just as important as maintaining your health. If your immunity runs out and you are nowhere near any light, you will have to book it until you find some! Of course, there are items that can be found and crafted that give you an immunity boost, just like there are items for healing your health bar when it gets low.

Now that all the basics are behind you, it is time to get some real work done. As you go through different quests, you will be sent all over the city. When moving through the city, you will be doing a lot of parkour, especially if you want to stay on the rooftops, away from the zombie-filled streets. When you are going through the city, you want to look for the color yellow. When there is a ledge to grab, rope to swing on, or anything else that you can do with parkour, it will typically have something yellow on it - be it a tarp, paint, or whatever. Of course, not everything you can parkour on will be yellow, but they are an indicator to help you while you are a novice.

Completing quests, successfully executing parkour movement, and doing well in combat sequences are all ways to earn experience for your character. With this experience, you will be able to unlock more skills on your skill tree. The skill trees are separated by parkour and combat options, but they don’t share experience with each other. You will have to earn experience for both aspects separately in order to level each tree up.

Along with experience, you will need to level your character up to make some of the options available to you. To do this you will need to find inhibitors that are locked inside GRE containers. You will come across plenty of them as you complete the main mission, but some are hidden away in dark zones and buildings that you will need to go out of your way to access. Once you have three inhibitors you will be able to upgrade either your health or your stamina. Upgrading health will unlock more combat options on the skill tree while upgrading your stamina will unlock more parkour options on the skill tree.

Of course, you can’t have successful combat without proper weapons. While you can purchase weapons in the different safe zones, you will also find plenty of them out in the city. Once you gather weapons, you need to open your inventory and select the four weapons you want to have at the ready. Setting them at the ready will make them easy to change to by opening the weapon wheel and swapping to the one you want to use. Note that this is the same way you can switch between health and tool items. For PC players, holding number 1 will open the tools wheel, 2 will open the health wheel, and 3 will open the weapons wheel, but you can also change between your tools with the mouse wheel.

Some weapons will have little slot icons next to them in the menu. This means that they can be upgraded with some crafting materials. You do need to find or purchase blueprints to be able to craft items, including weapon upgrade options, but once you have that you can do it to any weapon that it fits. I would just suggest making sure you always have plenty of crafting material because you never know what you will need to make and when. So when you are near a shop, make sure to stop by and always purchase everything they have in the ‘Goods’ tab because it is all super cheap anyways.

We can’t close out the gameplay section without talking about the new gadget we get for this game though! You do get some Nightrunner tools that we are used to, such as the UV flashlight and grappling hook, but I really enjoyed the paraglider aspect that was introduced. This new tool lets you gently glide down from high places, given you have the stamina for it. If you run out of stamina, you will quickly switch to a freefall, so make sure you are aware of how much energy you have before trying to use it and considering when to pull the string. The good thing is that if you catch an airflow, be it horizontally from high up or spewing out of the ground below, you can get all of your stamina back and get a push forward. If you are running in the street and see one of these upward vents, you can use them to take off on your paraglider as well, making for a quick way to get to the top of smaller buildings. Also, note that gravity does play a role when pulling the paraglider, so if you jump from a tall building to reach the ground quickly, the longer you fall the more velocity you pick up, and the more velocity you pick up the longer you need with the paraglider to actually slow you down to a safe landing speed.

After getting a chance to try out the multiplayer, it is definitely an interesting setup choice. For one, only the host player will actually be given any progress when it comes to the completion of quests and activating windmills or safe zones. As the guest player, all you will be able to take away from the multiplayer session is any experience earned, items collected, and general aspects that affect your character or inventory directly. There are some interesting aspects, such as the host player being further in the game than the guest player simply means that they are given the gadgets they are missing. This will allow players to continue doing story quests or late-end side quests that require gadgets, such as the grapple or paraglider, even though the guest hadn’t unlocked them yet. If the guest player is the one who has advanced further in the story, they are still able to use their gadgets even in a host player that is at the start of the game. At least you can have up to four players in one game and early-stage players can equip items from late-stage players. If you want to see the multiplayer in action, check out the video at the end of the review.

Audio and Visuals

Visually speaking, the game is just sort of an upgraded version of the original title. The graphics themselves aren’t super realistic, but at the same time, they are very fitting for the genre. They do a great job making each area type stand out on its own, making the different sections in the city have its own style, making the various NPCs all look different from each other, and especially the zombies all look wildly different from each other.

The music style and voice work is all very well done as well. There is a lot of similarity to the first game when it comes to the style itself, but it worked back then so why wouldn’t it work now? All of the audio work is pretty well done and definitely can stand out on its own.

Replayability

Of course, there is replayability! There are countless moments of opportunity, plenty of side quests, a multi-choice main questline with multiple endings, dark zones to explore, a whole city to explore, and a non-stop wave of enemies to fight. Honestly, this game offers a ton of activity to do aside from the main game that if you run out of things to do, then you have already put in a ton of hours into this game.

Not to mention, they have been providing updates and events for Dying Light for so long. There is even an event for the first game as this second title is releasing! They are sure to continue showing love for this game and the player base that supports the series itself.

What It Could Have Done Better

There were occasional issues with the movement that was rather annoying. One big area that brought issues more often than not was when I had to crawl through a vent. Almost every time I went through one, I would get caught on something and have to maneuver my character to go around this invisible blockade. Eventually, I got used to sort-of wiggling as I went through vents to make sure that didn’t happen, but it was a weird occurrence regardless.

While there were some fast travel options available, I wish there were a few more than we were given. At most, I had one fast travel per section of the map, but each section is pretty huge. While one section made sense for some areas, there were other sections that should have had two fast travel options available by the time I reached the end of the game.

Verdict

Dying Light 2 Stay Human provides a stunning experience! I absolutely enjoyed the entire game and thought the story itself was pretty provoking. I kept wanting to know what was going to happen next, where was Mia, and when will I get to finally take down Waltz! Then it managed to wrap it all up with a proper final fight and difficult series of choices to be made. As a fan of the first game, I can honestly say that I believe this second title is an improvement on the original game and I can’t wait to dive back in to get some more side quests completely. Not to mention that it is time to find more Easter Eggs that are surely lying in wait around the city.

If you enjoyed the original Dying Light game, then this is a must-buy for you. If this is the first time you are checking out the series, then this is definitely not the title to sleep on. You won’t need to truly know the first game to enjoy this one as there are only a few times that aspects of the original game are brought up and it is more of a reminiscence than anything else. I highly recommend Dying Light 2 Stay Human to anybody who enjoys action, a solid story, fighting zombies, a bunch of parkour, and even playing with friends.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human will be available on PC via Steam and Epic Games, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. If you haven’t claimed your copy and are ready to, you can get the game in any edition on their website.