Dying Light 2: Stay Human review | Laptop Mag

Our Verdict

Dying Lite 2: Stay Human injects some new blood into the series with a more varied landscape, an expansive campaign with multiple endings and tighter combat.

For

Engaging story mode
Unique blend of gameplay
Co-op mode saves progress for all players
Story decisions touch on gameplay and endgame
Excellent parkour movement and combat progression

Against

Combat feels glitchy at times
Lots of fetch quests

Laptop Magazine Verdict

Dying Light 2: Stay Human injects some new blood into the serial with a more varied landscape, an expansive campaign with multiple endings and tighter gainsay.

Pros

+
Engaging story mode
+
Unique alloy of gameplay
+
Co-op mode saves progress for all players
+
Story decisions impact gameplay and endgame
+
Fantabulous parkour move and combat progression

Cons

-
Combat feels glitchy at times
-
Lots of fetch quests
-

Dying Light 2: Stay Human being arrives 7 years after the original, the eagerly predictable follow up to the striking survival-horror parkour game (certain, that old genre) suffered a number of delays and development issues along the style, merely that's a pretty common story in recent years.

While Dying Calorie-free 2 doesn't devious too far from the formula that fabricated the original a success, that is far from criticism. It packs such a unique blend of action, adventure and RPG components into a pretty compelling story (with multiple endings) with strong performances from the voice talent.

Leaping across rooftops, scaling windmills, paragliding through the ruins of a in one case-great city and then dropping downwards to draw your electrified machete and facing off against the hordes of infected in the metropolis beneath but doesn't get old quickly. Programmer Techland claims there is upwardly to 500 hours of content to 100% the game, and then there's plenty in that location to exam that theory.

While the zombie genre feels a bit overserved in video games, Dying Light 2: Stay Homo feels like a breath of fresh air, which is specially welcome with the fetid stench from all of those zombies.

Do yous need to take played the original Dying Light?

The short respond is no. While the games accept place in the same universe, the merely existent through-lines are the overarching story of the outbreak, the fallout from that event and i primal organization. Then from a earth-building perspective, you may appreciate knowing what happened in the original, but y'all aren't missing whatever critical information by skipping information technology.

Spoiler-gratis overview of Dying Calorie-free ii: Stay Human

I'g sticking to the basics every bit the central plot and diverging decisions you make in the game are core to enjoying the campaign. Dying Light 2: Stay Human being is set twenty years subsequently the events of Dying Low-cal, so society has settled into the mail service-apocalyptic reality. Information technology's an essentially medieval society surviving in the ruins of the old earth with some limited technology hanging on.

You play as Aiden Caldwell and you are what is known as a Pilgrim. You travel beyond the state and serve as a courier betwixt cities and as a desperado for hire. You lot have spent most of your life searching for your sister Mia and that is what drives y'all to the City every bit the game opens. There are three factions that you have to deal with in the urban center: the Peacekeepers, the Renegades and the Survivors. It's not an all-or-nothing commitment to any of them, but aiding any of them has merchandise-offs.

Survival horror parkour!

In the aforementioned fashion that I can spend hours spider web-swinging around NYC in Spider-Human being: Miles Morales, there is something incredibly satisfying about wending your way through the cluttered streets and crowded rooftops of Dying Light 2. It didn't start out that way. In my first couple of hours with the game, I felt like the showtime-person perspective made the corybantic movement difficult to command. However, some other hour or ii and a couple of stamina and parkour skill upgrades later, I was happily ricocheting across the rooftops to avoid the hordes of undead shuffling along the streets.

While the skill tree isn't massive, it's enough to give you the feeling of some control over your mode of play. Some of the nuts are the most impactful as they allow y'all to fall further without taking damage, sprint upward a wall a few anxiety to grab that ledge that would have been just out of reach, or pull yourself up on that ledge despite being out of stamina.

As the game progresses, y'all can unlock changes to the environment that volition make traversing the city faster and easier, like set up zip lines and winches. New tools equally yous progress similar the paraglider and grappling hook dramatically transform the game from what you've become accustomed to in the early going.

My ane pocket-sized complaint with the traversal mechanics in Dying Light 2 is that it is unclear at times what y'all can take hold of onto. In areas with a specific climbing/traversal challenge, like the windmills that you must scale and repair to merits specific areas, the intended spots are always painted or otherwise constructed with something yellow. In the earth at large, it'southward a bit more of a learning experience; there is some edifice geometry that certainly looks like yous could scale it, that will have you just scrambling on the side of the wall equally the infected drag you to your doom. You somewhen get a pretty solid handle on this, but in the first couple of dozen hours, you will likely make more than than a few leaps that end with "Yous are dead" smeared across the screen similar Aiden on the pavement.

That last quibble aside, the motion in Dying Light 2 feels outstanding, a blend of some of the best of Assassin's Creed, Spider-Man, Breath of the Wild and Far Cry. I could spend hours just running around the surround, which is a expert matter because at that place are many fetch quests.

Skillful. Bad. You're the guy without a gun.

Unlike the original, there aren't guns in Dying Light 2 (the aptly named boomstick doesn't really count), but rest bodacious yous have a varied arsenal for dealing out punishment to the masses of undead, bandits and others that would do you damage. Weapons range from cleaved shovels, hammers and machetes to subsequently bows and crossbows. Some weapons support modding, which allows you to add together special abilities to them via a number of available slots. All weapons take a durability score that wears down and volition ultimately break, and then information technology's wise to proceed a healthy supply of weapons on you as having to resort to your fists won't get well.

Weapons have a discernibly different experience to swinging them based on their weight and whether they are blunt or bladed. A hefty two-handed ax takes some serious stamina to swing and really thunks into your opponent. At times, the kills are ruthless, with a severed limb or caput flying off and the remaining stump standing to gush as the body drops to the ground. I'chiliad not sure if information technology's a issues or an intended feature, but the bodies will occasionally continue spasming for several seconds after the kill. It'south particularly off-putting as you stand over a corpse waiting to search it.

Gainsay is the other skill tree in the game, and it's deep enough to feel like y'all have crafted a fairly unique character while not being overwhelming. Y'all can optimize for ranged attacks, stealth fighting, fast-moving attacks or more than of a tank of a character. Hacking your mode through a horde of zombies in the street or a grouping of bandits is a chip of a challenge in the early going, merely like parkour, you will rapidly start to feel superhuman as you add a few skills, health and stamina points.

The mini-dominate and boss fights get a niggling trickier, but the AI isn't much of a challenge in general. Information technology's the fact that y'all ofttimes have a horde of infected coming later yous that typically makes it tougher and similarly, you are unremarkably squaring off with at least three human combatants. Yous would be hard-pressed to handle the volume of attackers if the AI were any improve than information technology is, and so ultimately, it is probably the right choice; it just can kickoff to feel a little repetitive if you don't mix upward weapons and strategies from time to time.

Combat was notoriously pretty clunky in the original Dying Light, so this is a massive step forrad for the franchise, but I nonetheless ran into the occasional result. The most frequent involves one of the primeval combination attacks yous make it the game that allows you to vault over a stunned opponent and kick some other. It'southward a straightforward combo, but it fails too frequently. The latter comes upwards about frequently in mini-boss and boss battles, but weapon attain will sometimes become vastly unlike mid-fight, making dodging an impossibility. I'm hopeful Techland addresses these bugs in a future update every bit overall, the gainsay is solid and once you've leveled up enough skills it gives y'all enough variety to keep things interesting.

A hard day'south night

The day-nighttime cycle in Dying Calorie-free 2 features some changes from the original as the Techland team sought to incentivize players ameliorate to travel out into the metropolis after dark. While some of the infected are always shambling about the city whether it's day or nighttime, the infected party kicks off in earnest once the dominicus sets.

Far more infected are on the streets afterwards dark and a more than varied assortment. The virals are the recently infected that won't become out in the sun and are considerably faster than the biters that you lot run into during the mean solar day. Volatiles are even more than active and will take you downwards in the open if you can't escape. Demolishers are massive brutes that are glacially boring, but have a long attain with their clubs and volition crush y'all in just a few hits early. Howlers call out to the residuum of the infected in the area if they spot you, which initiates a chase sequence like to GTA, building from i to 4 stars if you lot tin can't evade notice. Finally, banshees with massive claws that leap long distances and revenants power-upwards nearby infected.

So what's the motivation to head out into that? Many missions accept to exist completed at dark. Some of these are just areas that tin be raided at nighttime for gear and items, considering naturally all of those infected wandering the streets aren't hanging out in their indoor nests. At that place are besides areas where you must defeat a specific infected to gain access to an inhibitor or other precious resource.

If you get the settings right on your display, and are just operating with the cone of vision provided by your (thankfully endlessly charged) flashlight, there are some terrifying moments roaming the streets of the City at night. Added to this is a ticking clock as you are also infected and must either ingest UV shrooms, take a UV inhibitor or seek out UV lights earlier the inaugural hits nil and yous are turned.

While you can generally avoid going out at night, you lot are missing out if you do; it's some of the well-nigh harrowing action in the game.

Look at this stuff, isn't information technology bully?

Like Fallout or almost any RPG game, there is an all-encompassing crafting and item collection component to Dying Light two. Some of it is simply stuff that you can sell back to the shops in the various communities y'all visit, while others are vital for your survival every bit you will utilize them to modify or craft weapons, make medicine or tools like lockpicks.

In that location is a huge spectrum of blueprints for y'all to find or purchase to make life a lot easier for you lot. You can as well upgrade these blueprints as yous go forth, and then your homemade medicine is a little more potent to use one common example. I know not anybody loves crafting in games, but overall, I plant it to exist useful and not overwhelming as you lot stumble upon the ingredients for the most mutual crafting items you lot need frequently plenty.

The volume of other random flotsam and jetsam from the old world that you find, on the other mitt, seems unnecessary to me. Y'all do absolutely zero with it other than selling information technology and I have a hard time imagining why some of it would have value in the world of Dying Light two. Early on, I imagined that perhaps you would barter with it or use these items for crafting or for advancing skills, only there'southward just a lot of stuff that you are just gathering up to sell. You need to practice it to beget to buy useful items from the traders, simply it gets a little tiresome. This is hardly unique to Dying Lite 2, information technology's a common trope in the genre, just I'd love to come across someone suspension from it.

It'due south dangerous to go solitary! Take this.

While Link's sword would be great to survive in the game, in this case, I'm referring to bringing a friend or iii. Dying Calorie-free two offers co-op support for upwardly to four players. The game can exist played in co-op straight through to the end. The player hosting the game volition dictate where they are in the action, but others joining will retain their progression made during the co-op play.

As I mentioned previously, there are many points in the game where yous need to make a decision that will touch the issue. In co-op manner, everyone gets to vote on these decisions, just the host makes the ultimate decision.

In that location are some notable limitations to co-op fashion. You cannot play cantankerous-platform, and then hopefully, you have only made friends with other PlayStation, Xbox or PC players, simply as the console and PC wars intended. At launch, information technology's fifty-fifty more ambitious than this as yous tin't play co-op across generations, so no PS4-owning friends for PS5 owners either. Techland will address this in a future update, but hasn't offered a timeline withal.

Dying Calorie-free 2: Stay Human PC functioning

I've split my time with Dying Light 2: Stay Human between both my Asus Zephyrus G14 (2020) with its Ryzen 9 processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU and 16GB of RAM and my PS5.

I've spent considerably more than fourth dimension playing the game on PS5, largely due to being able to play it on the 65-inch TCL TV that I'm in the midst of reviewing, merely I was impressed how well the Zephyrus G14 held up, it tin can't deliver ray-tracing, but it was able to go on up just fine at 60 fps. I didn't run across whatever performance problems during the game that were attributable to the laptop and while another patch is coming, a Jan 31update addressed my nearly pressing concerns for the PC version of the game with objects and enemies occasionally sinking into the surroundings.

Dying Lite 2: Stay Human PC requirements

Whether y'all are merely looking to eke past with the minimum acceptable specs or you lot want the absolute elevation of performance from the game, here's a look at what you lot'll need in your PC to run Dying Low-cal 2.

With ray-tracing off the bare minimum specs to run Dying Light two at 30 fps in FHD on low quality are Windows 7 with an Intel Core i3-9100 or AMD Ryzen 3 2300X, 8GB of RAM, at least a 60GB HDD and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti or AMD Radeon RX560 4GB. The recommended specs with ray-tracing off for 60 fps in FHD on high quality are Windows 10 with an Intel Core i5-8600K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, 16GB of RAM, at least a 60GB SSD and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 6GB or AMD RX Vega 56 8GB.

If you want ray-tracing on, things ramp up but a bit. The minimum specs for 30 fps at FHD on low are Windows x with an Intel Core i5-8600K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, at to the lowest degree a 60GB SSD and an Nvidia RTX 2070 8GB. For top-terminate ray-tracing at 60 fps in FHD on loftier-quality, you demand Windows 10 with an Intel Core i5-8600K or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, 16GB of RAM, at least a 60GB SSD and an Nvidia RTX 3080 GB with 10GB of VRAM.

Bottom Line

Dying Lite 2: Stay Human isn't reinventing the wheel, just it didn't demand to; the original did that. If this were the fifth installment in the Dying Calorie-free serial, I might be looking for more of a modify-upwards, merely for a sequel, this hones the crude edges of the original and adds plenty new components to keep things interesting for old fans and those just jumping in for the first time.

The multiple endings, large open-globe with compelling side quests and Techland's promise to back up Dying Light 2 with added content for at to the lowest degree five years all make this game an easy solar day one recommendation. I'one thousand dozens of hours in already and despite the murders' row of games coming out soon, I tin can't imagine moving on from Dying Calorie-free 2 right now.

Sean Riley has been covering tech professionally for over a decade now. Most of that time was every bit a freelancer covering varied topics including phones, wearables, tablets, smart home devices, laptops, AR, VR, mobile payments, fintech, and more. Sean is the resident mobile expert at Laptop Mag, specializing in phones and wearables, y'all'll notice plenty of news, reviews, how-to, and opinion pieces on these subjects from him here. Just Laptop Mag has also proven a perfect fit for that wide range of interests with reviews and news on the latest laptops, VR games, and computer accessories along with coverage on everything from NFTs to cybersecurity and more than.