Dying Light 2 impressions

Well, after what seems like a very troubled development and several significant delays, Dying Light 2 is finally out. What are everyone's thoughts?

I adored the first game, although I only played it once, only coming back to it to play The Following expansion. It had the best feeling first person traversal and melee combat mechanics I had seen at the time...at least by the end of the game. The main reason I never really had the urge to play through it again was because the ramp up to the game feeling amazing is pretty slow. Not that its unplayable at the start by any stretch, but after knowing what it feels like later, it makes starting over unappealing.

So far, DL2 seems like it's going for the exact same gradual increase in power and abilities. I think it feels even slower than the first game, going by memory, actually. That said, you also seem a little more capable at the outset than you were in the first, especially when it comes to the parkour abilities. Still, this game has a very slow beginning, as it's a good 3 hours before the open world is even available. The game continues tutorializing a lot of things beyond that, though.

I'm about 10 hours in at this point and my overall impression is positive, but not without caveats. The parkour and combat still feel really good. It's perhaps just less impressive than DL1 was simply by being more of same 7 years later. I'm enjoying that the game has leaned a bit more into its RPG elements, and I'm just getting to the point where loot feels meaningful. There seems to be a good variety of things to do, but the map full of icons is giving me serious Ubisoft vibes.

Maybe I'm not far enough in the story yet, but I don't think it's terrible so far. There are a few fun characters, and the voice acting ranges between good, to "good," to just plain flat. I've done several side quests that have implications in the main story, a few of which have had various choices and outcomes that already make me curious to see how else things would play out if I did the other option or had not even tackled it at all. A few quests and their placement in the story make no fucking sense though. There have been two instances so far where I've been to areas and met characters I've already interacted with only for them to act like this is the first time meeting me. Either the writing has failed to account for this or certain quests are being given in the wrong order. It's hard to get absorbed into the story at all with something as immersion-breaking as that.

As far as visuals, it looks nice running on performance mode on the PS5, though there is little about it I would consider impressive. I tried the other two visual mode options just to compare and I still like that the performance mode, purely technically, somehow still looks better than the higher fidelity modes. I will say that I haven't seen many repeated character models yet. Every character you can actually talk to has a very distinct look and animates pretty well during conversations. This is something Techland has never really excelled at until now so maybe it stands out a little more because of that.

I totally understand everything Jeff seemed put off by in the QL. Your enjoyment of this game will heavily depend on your tolerance of modern open world mechanics and your commitment to building your abilities up. There is still a lot to like and the game can be fairly rewarding. If you're a fan of the first game, I think this should be pretty easy to get into.

I like it so far. It is a very slow paced game with regards to the progression. It feels like one of those games that you have to take it at it's own pace rather than possibly one you'd prefer. But it's working for me. I like having so many quests and tasks along the way to a main/side mission. It makes the slower progression feel a little easier to swallow because it seems like you are constantly gaining experience, items, equipment, etc. So far, after about 5 or so hours, that I'm not a big fan of is some of the balancing decisions.

Right now I have more than enough healing items to manage most encounters. But to balance that the game makes the healing animation so slow. Personally, I'd prefer the opposite (less healing items, faster animation). And the voice acting is either solid or awful. But that bothers me less, personally. And I guess if I'm going to nitpick, I agree with Brad in what he said about the game being really 'game-y' in the Nextlander podcast. This is a game, through and through. And some people will really like that. But it does sort of break the immersion a bit.

I'm maybe 5-6 hours in and I'm not going to continue playing unless something pretty significant changes. This game wants to be too many things and unfortunately does most of them badly.

The skill trees are crap - core abilities are buried way too far down the trees and given the overall glacial pace of leveling, it's a total pain in the ass to unlock anything. That feeds into the stupid "turn into a zombie mechanic" since at the beginning of the game you cannot accomplish anything meaningful with the time of the clock given you limited movement abilities. And trying to get any of the booster items I've been able to locate seem like an exercise in futility - they're all stashed somewhere I clearly need more abilities to get to, but I don't want to grind out the 3 hours it takes to earn a single skill point.

And the movement isn't even all that fun when you get the hang of it. The parkour is floaty and inconsistent, making it super hard to judge jumps that want any degree of precision. I've basically given up trying to hit the landing pads at all. The way the game basically flings you off roofs as though gravity didn't exist means you're going to hit them 2/5 times at best.

The combat is super boring and the game basically relies on throwing 10 billion zombies at you to provide any sort of challenge. Hit detection seems sketchy in places, too.

The voice acting is generally cringeworthy and the story isn't going anywhere.

It just sucks. I loved Dying Light 1 but this is bad. I kind of don't know what happened or where all those years in development went.

I don't have the game, but hearing the Nextlander crew talk about the lack of firearms in the game has made me less interested. I'm okay with the melee combat in Dying Light 1 (and Dead Island for that matter), but that's the thing: I'm just okay with it. The level scaling (on normal difficulty) between you doing less damage as the zombies do more damage over time takes away from the power fantasy of mowing down a horde, and getting a gun 10 hours into Dying Light 1 feels like a major milestone.

So, this is not a $60 purchase for me.

I'm really digging it. It's going to be my Day's Gone of 2022 I think. There is something more tangible to me about doing open world games in a setting thats scary and dangerous; I feel like the improvements I make collecting things or beating map objectives go a long way in allowing you to survive and navigate in ways that following map markers in Far Cry or Assassin's Creed does not.

I wasn't a big fan of the original game but there was a lot there that I liked - this game seems to be doubling down on the parts that I do enjoy while trimming out the stuff I didn't. Namely I'm able to run and sneak around the world unimpeded and only deal with chases and fast zombies when I choose too.

The story is also pretty alright and far more interesting then the first game, at least so far. Though the voice acting is pretty all over the place and whoever was voicing/writing the kids in this game should be fired. Its like they left in the placeholder voicing. Google Voice would be less jarring for these kids.

Big props to the setting and open world - I havent gotten to the second "map" yet on the other side of the tunnel but from the first half of the game anyway it really is a well thought out and interesting world. I'd like to see more emergent gameplay, there are only maybe 4 or 5 different "events" that happen. It'd go a long way to see that number tripled.

Lots of people on the reddit are complaining about zombie physics and stuff like that - posting videos of zombies not being impaled on spikes or rag'dolling. I'm playing on Series S and my zombies rag-doll and impale on spike barrels and traps the same as the first game so it seems like there are some rather disparate bugs depending on where you're playing it maybe.

So far I've had one crash and one audio bug where the sound stopped until a hard reset. Maybe 10-12 hours of playtime so far. The crash was made more annoying then it needed to be because the autosave in this game is absolute trash. I have no idea what causes it to save or what - the only thing I know for sure is that sleeping saves the game so I do that often. (You need to do it often anyway to engage with mechanics.)

Overall I'd say I'm pretty impressed and having a blast!

I've been over zombie games for several years at this point and I thought this one might be the game changer. I was really interested in the idea of not seeing certain areas due to certain choices. All the stuff they said about your choices affecting the literal world seem to have vaporized. Techland made it sound like you could have very different experiences based on certain decisions and reviews make it sound like that's not really the case anymore.

Otherwise, the parkour and combat sound fun enough for those that enjoy it, but its not enough to onboard me. Shame really, as I did quite like what this game set out to be all those years ago.

Looks to be well recieved by players based on Steam reviews.

I might give it a go once on sale.

This looks like another one of those games where reviewers are tired of this shit and have to play another long ass open world game like the last one of those they played. Whereas players are just like "But it's fun though."

I dunno, I really liked the first one but this month is so packed with higher profile games.

I am TENTATIVELY enjoying this stuff. I really want to level up a bit and get more skills before I make a final judgment on it though. It's weird how the level cap is like...six? Apparently?

Watched the two Nextlander streams and I just didn't feel hooked. It takes a lot for first person to grab me in the first place so there's that, but it gave me real Far Cry 4 vibes in terms of everything seeming about 80% of the way there? But then Maddy Myers said on Triple Click that if this game didn't try to tell a story at all it might be her favorite game ever, which she was obviously being a bit facetious about but did really, really seem to like it.

Maybe if I'm desperate for something to kill time late in the year when it's 50% off or more I'll give it a shot. I think I need to get over just how uninterested in the story pretty much everyone seems to be. I didn't play the first game but have been keeping an eye on this one since 2018 or whatever mostly out of curiosity for the ambition going into the development. Seems like Techland eventually realized they needed to actually ship a game and stuck to what they do best, though.

People keep saying the don't understand what the 7 year wait was for. It's pretty clear, they were trying to make good on their ambitious promise, but found out the new consoles aren't as powerful as they hoped and couldn't. So they went back to the drawing board and made an expanded version of the first game. I like the first game a lot and I noticed during the quick look, the good camera angle that does a good job sensing height hasn't changed. So I will play it, but after the price drops. Jeff G, himself, said the game is okay and he plans to revisit it once some of the updates are made, since the developers claim they are going to support the game for 5 years. I also believe it will be on Game Pass soon. At least I hope so.

Thought about grabbing it at launch, but reviews (and some other things unexpectedly eating up my money) made me hesitate enough, that now I'll probably wait for a sale and a more quieter time of the year in terms of new releases to think about giving it a go.

@av_gamer: Dying Light 2 is nowhere near a next gen title its barely better graphically than the previous game, we have better looking last gen games especially in animation and IQ.

Dying Light sold 17m copies and DL2 peaked on steam at 274k concurrent players I very much doubt it'll be on game pass anytime soon.

Im loving it so far, but the bugs seem to all hit me. Ive had the sound bug just completely cut out audio or make it sound like my sound bar was about to explode at least once a day. Had two quests glitch out when events never triggered. Other than some technical issues, its fun and mindless and thats what i wanted

Much of the game is ok while the rest edges towards pretty good. Story is serviceable so far. I don't think it's as horrendous as I've read elsewhere. The "running around" is fun as long as you stay within its groove of slight turns and avoid letting the left stick veer to close to the left or right otherwise you almost feel how the game really stops you or slows you down when it thinks you are strafing. You will even notice this when you crouch which feels pretty bad since you will be doing quite of bit of stealth here and there.

I will say, I think it's interesting what they are doing with the dark mechanic making areas more difficult for high risk high reward gameplay. That said I hate the mechanic and it not only punishes you at night but also in any area during that day that's slightly darker than normal. Scavenging Night Zones with a five minute timer just seems overtly strict considering you still have to travel to a night zone then deal with volatiles( that run faster than you) that are roaming around and alerted to your presence. Maybe you will get enough upgrades later on so you don't have to hear the alert chimes after three minutes.

If you are willing to burn through half a dozen weapons and kill most of the zombies in night zones this would be the only way to make sure you get everything in an area without being bothered but that's very expensive and I'm sure the higher tier reward(aside from gear) is probably a few weapons to replace a bunch you just broke.

But I will say after all that, it is fun enough to keep going and exploring the world while following around a guy that looks way too much like the Actor Aiden Gillen for it to be a coincidence.

@merxworx01: I agree that I don't necessarily hate the idea of the timer, but it's so badly implemented that it isn't worth it. As you say, on the one hand, at the beginning of the game, the timer is ridiculously short. While I haven't been having as difficult a time sneaking around at night as maybe some other people, sneaking by definition means that you need to go slow. And that means you can't really do anything meaningful with the time you've got. You can get maybe a third to halfway to clearing out a location, but then you need to scamper back to a UV source and then trapse all the way back to clear the rest of it. And while you have UV "Shroomz" as the kids say, you waste half the benefit by the time the glacial animation for using them plays out.

On the other hand, you will very quickly upgrade the timer to the level where it just becomes a non-issue which makes you wonder why the mechanic is in the game at all.

@therealturk: @merxworx01:I really don't think the timer during the night/dark parts is nearly as bad as it seems at first. It's supposed to create tension by making you manage your resources to ensure you have what you need to survive. If you overestimate your ability to survive, you're gonna get your ass kicked.

A few hours in and you have access to better items to increase your survivability. You use the shrooms to create immunity boosters rather than just taking the shrooms themselves. The boosters are used much quicker and provide a bigger increase in time, and continue to get better as long as you upgrade your blueprint for them. Like the first game, certain aspects become much easier the farther you get and the more you invest resources into the right things. But also like the first game, the increase in your abilities is very slow and gradual. I'm 15 hours in and have upgraded my timer a good bit but don't think I'm anywhere near close to trivializing the entire mechanic.

Right now I have only 6 minutes or so of base immunity time, but have a ton of boosters, UV sticks, and a bunch of purple weapons that have high durability. I can get a bunch of stuff done during the night and come away feeling decently rewarded without losing too much. Not saying it's a perfect mechanic by any means but I think it's very manageable once you get your bearings. Honestly though, I think the first game had the better nighttime mechanic. It was more punishing but also felt more dangerous and scary in a fun way.

Also, I'm assuming you're talking about Hakon when referring to Aiden Gillen? I can see the resemblance, but Hakon is played by and modeled after David Bell. He is an actor but is more importantly credited as the creator of parkour. He was involved in the first Dying Light too, as far as I know, doing motion capture stuff. If you've never seen the District B13 movies, you definitely should.

@therealturk: Yeah, usually when a difficulty gets mitigated like that it might be a sign that the devs are encouraging the player to up the difficulty once things too get easy ::shrugg::.. Maybe I'm was being to harsh saying I hated it. I'm sure I'll be able find a way to make it fun.

@killem_dafoe: Sure. I just need to go into the zones more often and push my limits more often and figure out a good balance of staying alive while getting some worthwhile items out of the area. I also don't love the items that add time to the clock since they are either very fleeting or relatively costly early on.

Also yes I have watch District B13, pretty great movie. It's pretty cool they got him. Didn't know that he also worked on the first one. Looks like time aged him enough to look like Petyr Bailish.

I thought they fashioned a model to look Aiden Gillen in the way some games try to evoke certain actors with out having to pay them like what Naughty Dog did with the Elle character.

Alright a pretty good chunk into the game so far I'd say. I've long gotten my money's worth out of it, level 5 or so, almost 6 and done a lot of the map content. Still havent unlocked the grapple hook so I cant say how that informs the gameplay at all afterwards...

...but what I will say is I found the game to be decidedly less enjoyable once I got to the second map with all the tall buildings. I did not find that environment fun to navigate in the least, despite giving it a good college try. Cruising around in old Villedoor is so much fun always having to look a head to plan your next move so you dont loose momentum - but the second area deletes all that by having small clusters of buildings broken up by frustratingly dead areas of paragliding that are at best rote and at worst frustrating.

Overall a rather anticlimactic final lap for an otherwise really tight, fun game. Probably a good 20+ hours in now on Series S and just those two bugs (One crash, one sound bug) I mentioned on Day 2.

Once you level up your skills enough and amass enough gear to craft a "build" its a lot of fun racing about and tackling the night chases.

I went all in on upgrading the Moltov and kind of broke the game with how cheap and good it is. Another critique I have is how punishing the consumable upgrade system is. Each consumable needs a significant number of components to increase its level, but each of these upgrades is significant. So they're either too worthless to try out or awesome depending on which you want to pick. Kind of punishes experimentation unfortunately.

Overall a strong 7.5/10 game.