Dying Light 2: Stay Human Reviews
This is a confident sequel at heart. One that effortlessly switches between precarious leaps of faith from high-rise buildings and nervous crawls through undead-infested interiors. One that finds time to indulge in dread-inducing horror and explosive intensity. Where it perhaps lacks in structural ingenuity, it more than offsets by finely-tuning the things that made the original a success.
Dying Light 2: Stay Human is probably the first game of this year that you must play. It just has too good of a narrative to pass by, and it’s always a good time to meet new characters and get presented to a cool world. For those who enjoy titles where the plot is vital such as The Witcher 3, The Last of Us, Uncharted, or God of War, then this game will be right up your alley. Also, if you are looking for Game of Thrones in a video game format, then Dying Light 2: Stay Human is a perfect recipe for that.
There’s always something to do, the first-person parkour and combat remain top-class, and the story missions offer both memorable locations and set-pieces. On the other hand, the bulk of the gameplay on offer feels derivative. It’s hard to immerse yourself in the world when you’re engaged in methodical icon-clearing.
Dying Light 2 offers everything fans wanted: a bigger world, more and better characters, new modes and locations for exploration, among a multitude of content. Although with some questionable design decisions, it presents an even more immersive story than its predecessor, with a slow start, but a climax worthy of the term.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Techland's Dying Light 2 builds on the previous installment and introduces fresh, fun gameplay and a cleverly designed open world that you'll be happy to spend dozens of hours in, despite the weaker story. This is an excellent, refreshing game that creatively blends RPG elements, a fun combat system, and fluid movement. You shouldn't play Dying Light 2 for the story's sake, but you'll enjoy it if you want something other than just another generic shooter.
Review in Czech | Read full review
Dying Light 2 is an improvement on the original in almost every way despite not being the game that we've seen several years ago. Some of its promised features feel downgraded but overall, it's a well-structured title with a stunning open world that is packed with detail at every corner.
I'm having a blast playing Dying Light 2 and could easily see myself breaking the hundred hour mark, or more.
Dying Light 2 gets off to a slow start, and some might even see it as a slog, but if you see it through just a bit longer, you'll discover a tension-filled journey through the zombie apocalypse that rewards players who are fearless and leap into danger. Soon you'll be gliding, leaping, and zip-lining through the world and cleaving the most deadly of Infected with precision and utter brutality. This is not an easy world to live in, and at times the darkness can almost overwhelm you, but more often than not the rich characters, compelling narrative, and thrill ride combat create a mixture that just can't be resisted, and it's a world I look forward to returning to.
In a world where hyped AAA games are a letdown if not a complete disaster (*cough Cyberpunk 2077 *cough Battlefield 2049), Dying Light 2 rises from the ashes delivering every single thing as promised and marketed. No misleading trailers, no misleading mechanics, nothing, and in fact it is really a better version of Dying Light (minus the downsides I mentioned earlier). Techland has already revealed its future roadmap and the first free DLC is going to drop very soon. And judging by their track record, providing content for Dying Light 2 will be Techland’s new labour of love. Not to mention the tons of eccentric uber-powerful weapons and Easter Eggs (like the famous Left for Bread) that the developers might have snuck in. Once the updates roll out to fix a few glitches here and there, I’m gonna drop into the coop with my homies just like I did with Dying Light and its DLC The Following because Dying Light 2 is going to be a major GOTY Contender of 2022.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human is a solid sequel and one of the best structured open worlds of recent years. The great work on the level design enhances a huge and varied game world, where the gameplay evolves hand in hand with our choices, giving life to an extremely dynamic and never monotonous adventure. In spite of a revisable artificial intelligence and a visual impact between high and low, Techland has managed to create a production of absolute level, an experience destined to lay important foundations for a franchise, now more than ever projected towards a rosy and even more ambitious future. Considering the many references and the vicissitudes related to its development, the end result is undoubtedly less obvious than we would have thought, it is certainly not the revolution expected a few years ago, but certainly a fair evolution of a title that tries, often succeeding, to excel where others have failed in Action / Adventure.
Review in Italian | Read full review
We played Dying Light 2: Stay Human on an Xbox Series X and it’s a gorgeous-looking game and does offer a few graphical options from the menu. Three to be exact: “Performance”, “Quality” and “Resolution”. Performance mode runs at 1080p while offering a smooth 60fps, the Quality mode offers 1080p but adds ray-traced lighting support, while Resolution is all about hitting 4K, with both Quality and Resolution aiming for 30fps. With a game like Dying Light, I personally found the game and parkour more enjoyable to play running at a smooth 60fps, as long as you don’t mind the visuals taking a bit of a hit.
A definitive improvement from the first game, with enhanced parkour mechanics, weapon customization and melee combat.
With Dying Light 2 Techland has surely outdone themselves by creating a game that is bigger, and better than the prequel.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human has a compelling core gameplay loop, as well as a great day and night system that makes it a fun game to play. While the story could be better, and even with the bugs in the current build of the game, it's still overall well worth checking out.
As an open world game it works phenomenally well and, although technically not perfect, its gameplay mechanics are addictive and will appeal to any zombie survival enthusiast. The day-night cycle is implemented wonderfully.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Dying Light 2 is vast, enjoyable and definitely worth playing. It’s hard to recommend against some of the titles it’s currently up against (and likely others to come) but what it offers is mostly polished content with a solid gameplay flow. Repetition rears its head quickly, though, combat regularly frustrated me, and I definitely found myself more tuned out than in with the game’s story.
Dying Light 2 ups the ante from the original in almost every way, offering more satisfying parkour, combat and enough jump scares to make you never want to walk in the darkness ever again. A worthy and essential sequel.
Dying Light 2 is a delightfully fast paced game, which has a few persistent issues bogging it down.
If Dying Light 2: Stay Human remains a successful action game with an interesting story, an immersive atmosphere and well-integrated role-playing elements, the title does not reinvent anything while using a theme (zombies) that have been used far too often in recent years. The end of the scenario is quickly dispatched while some fights against powerful enemies are more like a game of cat and mouse. Not to mention that progress is not transferred to all players during a cooperative session. I particularly recommend the title to those who loved the first game and are looking for a more than similar experience without a huge change in gameplay.
Review in French | Read full review
Dying Light 2 has some positive moments: parkour mechanics, horror elements, and the main one — the game is really good to show you — what it’s like — to be a monster, and how it’s hard to stay human. This is especially hard to do nowadays.