Hi, my name is ColdBeer and me playing Dying Light 2 while being sober was an act of heroism.
You know why?
Because this game is scary and it amplified my anxiety levels by at least one thousand...
pififies.
I don’t know if anxiety has a measuring unit, so I just invented one, because my pififies
went up through the roof while playing it.
And I will tell you why: in Dying Light 2 you are never safe.
Well, except in dedicated safe areas, but the entire city is a danger zone no matter
where you are.
And yeah, you can encounter zombies even on the roofs as well, you can never let your
guard down.
It's an uneasy feeling and it wears you down rather quickly.
Also I should say that I have never played the first Dying Light.
I watched other people play it, but I have never played it myself, so my review will
not be biased because of that and I will not compare the games.
So in Dying Light 2 every time you go anywhere you have to focus.
And it takes a lot of mental power to always be on your toes.
It’s not only the zombies that are the threat, but also your inability to be a great parkour
master.
Well, my inability - because I died while running on the roofs about 15 times already.
By falling to my death.
So in general, this way of life isn’t really working.
You think I wasn’t trying to avoid death?
Of course I tried.
And I failed.
Yeah, probably not as much as I would have in real life, because I never died in real
life yet, but Dying Light 2 always tricks you like that stranger who offered candies
to you when you were a kid.
Let’s not talk about that.
Here you jump from one roof to another once - everything is good.
Twice, three times, four - you are a great jump-master!
So you run further, your confidence level rises and then you jump again and suddenly
realize that the next building is like twice as far as the previous four were and you just
plunge into your death.
You may say - so be careful, take a good look before jumping and stuff like that will never
happen, are you stupid?
Yeah, you are right, but where is the fun in that?
The whole fun of parkour is to run as fast as you can and not to stop every ten meters
to assess the situation.
Despite that fact, the parkour part is the best part of the game.
Running and climbing everywhere is really fun, especially when you kinda know the way
and manage not to die.
But knowing your way will take a lot of playtime.
When you are on a roof, there are no distinctive markers to orient where you actually are - all
roofs look the same.
That’s a shame.
Well, of course there are far away structures such as water tower and church that can help
you realize where you are, but the game was built around the fact that you will spend
your time on the roofs and all parkour part of the game is based on the fact that you
run there and not on the ground.
To be fair, I played the game for around 11 hours so far and in those 11 hours I spent
about 5 minutes on the ground.
This whole game could be metaphorically renamed to Floor is Lava.
I don’t even know if the city itself is beautifully done, there is no need to go down
- it’s too dangerous and you often bump into a dead end with too high unjumpable walls.
And that is inconvenient when you are running from a herd of brainthirsty mothers in law,
uhhh... zombies and the level of your pififies are rising like hell.
And zombies are everywhere.
Although they are really weak, you can take down about ten of them at once and not die
if you have enough room to wiggle your way around - your character is really nimble and
can dodge zombies with ease.
Just like beautiful women are dodging you in real life.
Now I will tell you about the worst part of the game, not in a bad but in a fun way instead.
That is because the game's missions always force you to put yourself in dangerous situations.
Here is how the game works: at night zombies leave the buildings and start to crawl in
huge herds all around the city.
They are mostly concentrated on the ground, but at night time they start crawling on roofs
as well.
Also faster, more powerful zombies with various special abilities are appearing at night as
well, because they can’t stand the sunlight.
So the logic tells you to never go out at night - that is a bad idea, it’s dangerous,
so you are always sleeping until the morning in the safe places instead of roaming around
and stupidly killing yourself.
Yeah, even the parkour part at night is way more difficult as well.
But, there is one but.
Buildings, especially abandoned stores or military facilities are filled with great
loot and they are filled with zombies as well.
But only in daytime, because they all go out at night to roam the streets.
So you have to go there at night if you want something nice.
But it’s too scary.
I was like “naaah, I’m good, let those stores keep their secrets, there is no way
I’m going out at night, I’ll be at my home feasting on my potato salad or pussy.
But when you take another quest it specifically instructs you to go to some abandoned metro
tunnel at night and retrieve some specific item.
You know, the situation - hey kid, I lost my bottle of vodka, can you risk your life
and bring it back to me?
I will let you sip from it once.”
Well, sure I can - it’s not some lost kid, a bottle of vodka is a serious thing.
So you are forced to go out of your comfort zone and that is great.
It pumps adrenaline into your veins and you feel like a bravest hero of all times.
Also, you know, this game is scary, but it’s scarier to watch others play than to actually
go to an abandoned building at night with your flickering flashlight.
Game is not that scary when you realize that you are in control of the situation - most
of the zombies can be handled with a few blows on the head or they can be ambushed from behind.
Which is not a sexual thing sadly.
Your flashlight doesn’t trigger zombies.
And it has no batteries.
It’s a dream come true - you can have your light at night all the time without consequences
and that takes a lot of tension away.
Well, when you are sneaking through the creepy parking garage filled with undead, you may
not think that this situation could be worse, but it actually could.
Imagine when your battery goes out in the middle of a mission and you realize that you
have no spare one.
That has happened to me many times in many games, but in Dying Light 2 your light never
dies, it’s endless.
Oh the irony, right?
And there is another feature that you won’t encounter in other games - every time night
falls or when you enter a dark building - a timer starts to count minutes backwards.
When all the time ticks out - you die.
That is because everyone is infected by a zombie virus and only the UV light of the
sun or UV lamps can stop you from turning into a zombie.
So every safe place is littered with UV lamps, creating this nice strip-club atmosphere everywhere
you go.
You can extend your timer by using UV shroomz or by inhaling some medicine, but the game
doesn’t let you use the most obvious thing: you can’t just take a battery-powered UV
lamp with you, so you could just turn it on when needed and refresh your timer that way.
Nope, nobody in this entire city has even thought about it.
That is the first thing I would do in this world and it’s sad that every character
in this game can’t use logic.
And now let me talk about quests.
In general they are kinda cool, stories are interesting, and filled with unexpected plot
twists: obviously I can’t go into details for spoiling reasons.
Sadly every dialogue with NPCs almost always feels like a long monolog.
They just speak and speak and speak and you listen.
It’s not how people talk in reality.
I know it’s a game, but I’m a writer and I can see when things are off.
Also bad writing is kinda common here.
For example I spent about a week on roofs looting and sleeping in safe zones and then
I came back to the quest area.
And this woman just casually says that I was here yesterday.
Lady, I was here last week, not yesterday.
But I know that this is not your fault, it’s the fault of the person who wrote this.
Also voice acting is weird.
A lot of the characters are speaking with accents.
Polish, Czech, Russian, Lithuanian, I don’t know.
The game is filled with those characters.
And some of those accents feels fake.
You know I can imagine the situation where the director said to the actor “Dmitri,
your Russian accent is not Russian enough, do something”.
And Dmitri tried his best, his Russian accent was way more Russsianer than before and the
director was really happy and paid him a lot of rubles.
I’m not Russian, not even a slav, but my fake Russian accent is probably better than
of the few of the characters in the game.
Also the advertising of the Dying Light 2 often stated that choices matter, but they
never mentioned that only few choices matter.
For example, I encountered some asshole and he wanted me to find his friend.
Probably some other asshole.
In real life I would never do that so I’m excited that the game gives me an option to
ignore his wishes.
But oh surprise, surprise...
Dying Light 2 doesn’t care what I want and what I would do, I have to follow the script
and go find his friend anyway.
They gave me the choice and then they just overrode it.
That is sad, that is bad quest writing.
And bad directing and bad everything else.
And no, it wasn’t the first time something like that happened.
I just started to record those conversations after I recognized the pattern.
Why do you even give me the choice if everything is settled already?
There is no way for us to influence the story somehow differently, because some dude in
the development team decided that the main character is a noble knight and he can’t
be selfish.
It’s a horror game, dude, can my character please be an asshole if I want him to be?
No?
So why do you want me to do what is already decided?
What’s the point of the choice if it doesn’t matter?
But if I don’t do what I’m supposed to do, the quest will not be completed and I
will not get another one.
Is that the main flaw of this game?
Yes it is.
Everything else is a minor inconvenience, even the same looking bland roofs and weather
system, which is nonexistent, but giving me a choice and then overriding it, is a rookie
mistake.
Well, to be fair it would be a mistake, but Dying Light 2 forces you to do things all
the time.
For example sometimes the game just takes control of your character.
Like in this scene from one questline where I'm looking around like I'm here for the first
time, despite the fact that I was doing side quests in this place for an in-game week or
so.
You can also see that I’m following this other character.
I’m not.
My hands were not even on the keyboard and mouse at that moment.
I was drinking beer.
Yeah, my cup is huge, I need both hands.
Anyway, this sucks.
But of course not everything is like that - choices matter on a grand scale, you know
when you have to pick one faction over the other and then become enemies with former
friends and vice versa.
The thing we already saw in so many games, for example in the Fallout franchise.
In general Dying Light 2 has a lot of questionable design and development decisions.
One of the worst is that there are no manual save games.
You can’t go back and replay the quest differently.
Nope, the last checkpoint is always your last save point.
So if you have chosen some faction and then immediately regretted that decision, you can
easily undo your mistake by playing Dying Light 2 from the beginning.
Also your weapons break all the time.
Imagine you have a nice artifact battle hammer - you bash five zombie heads and then it breaks
down.
Also I’m not overreacting - five to ten zombies - all it takes for your weapon to
shatter.
Every ax, hammer or baseball bat you have breaks down in a matter of minutes when you
are fighting.
That is sad and bad and I don’t even want to talk about it.
It infuriates me that I can’t have a favorite weapon here.
Finding something really good doesn’t give any joy because of that.
But the fighting part itself is nice, it takes some skill to keep yourself alive against
stronger opponents.
Fighting and parkour is great, those features save the game big time.
In general Dying Light 2 is a nice game if you can buy it for 15 to 20 Euros.
Wishlist it and wait for a sale, I don’t think it will take a lot of time for it to
go cheaper.
So the verdict: six vodkas out of ten.
Or seven if you can get it cheaper and you are a crazy fan of everything zombie-related.
Dying Light 2 is not a bad game, but it’s nothing really special as well.
Thank you for watching, have a nice day and I’ll see you next time.
Keep your pififies low.
Lye.