Dying Light 2: Stay Human. Game Review

The world collapsed, civilizations fell, and now, in addition to billions of revived dead and a miracle of surviving animals, only miserable handfuls of people remained, which are hiding in small settlements and the last large city of Villadom. You play for Aiden, a man from the caste of pilgrims – people who are not afraid to go beyond the fortified villages and live in the wasteland. They make money that they wear parcels to distant places-after all, there is no other postal system in the world of the victorious zombie apocalypse.

Before starting to discuss Dying Light 2, you need to describe a little historical context a little. In 2015, Etchant, the creators of the ambitious, but passing Dead Island, released Dying Light. The novelty was an event in the genre: if they ran in Dead Island from the zombie, because it was easier than to peel the dead oars on the head, then the parkour became the basis of dynamic gameplay, a source of entertainment, speed and fun.

Dying Light combined many elements at once: a role -playing part, plot history, open peace, crafting, parkour. Each of them individually inferior to analogues in other games: the parkour was more convenient and interesting in Mirror’s Edge, the role component – in any other RPG, crafting – in any other survival. And the plot and kudzu firing from firearms did not scold only the lazy. But the power of Dying Light is that it was all at once – yes, not perfect, but quite good.

And at the same time, it itself was built around an outstanding combat system: tough, dynamic and spectacular. Bones and skulls of bits, showing fractures in the slush in the manner of Mortal Combat, cutting the walking dead in two blades and, perhaps, one of the most funny and effective kicks in the video game industry along with Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

This combination of well -implemented ideas made the game Dying Light unique. The successful and loud release was followed by the excellent addition to The Following and for many years of support – the new content to the game is still released. Of course, there were failures: the unsuccessful Bad Bad Blood spin-axle and the slurred Hilliard mode, assembled from scraps of the abolished project. But the rest of Dying Light is the main success in Etchant career.

Therefore, the sequel was conceived extremely ambitious. The innovative system of a changing plot that Chris Abell on advertised. Improving each aspect of gameplay, whether it is a combat system or parkour. The new setting of the dead world, where people rolled away in the Middle Ages and exchanged a firearm for blades and axes collected from garbage. Dying Light 2 is quite obviously throwing Etchant on the title of new main blockbuster.

However, with the development there was a harsh reality. From the project, due to the public scandal, Chris Abell on dropped out. Judging by the reviews, the production itself was damaged due to rethinking the game design and the mass of the problems of internal management of the studio-from sexism to kumovism in the authorities.

And then, already in the real world, the pandemic of the deadly virus erupted. As a result, Dying Light was transferred and redone, so diligently that the advertised system of complex plot elections was stored to the usual forks “choose the smaller ones” and a pair of endings.

However, despite all the troubles, Etchant had a good first -person open world. However, she is clearly trying to imitate her genre colleagues like Assassin’s Creed or Horizon: Zero Dawn. And this is perhaps her main problem.

Although humanity managed to defeat the zombie virus from the first part, the infection returned-of course, through the fault of the evil military structure. Instead of the complete destruction of the virus, scientists decided to continue to study it in closed bunkers, from which he escaped, successfully mutating and causing an unstoppable pandemic. Masks and Locks did not help, and the living dead captured the world, plunging humanity into a new Middle Ages.

All the same ill -fated military put experiments on our protagonist Aiden. He was imprisoned in a certain nurse with his sister Mia, with whom he was separated by the collapse of the laboratory during the second outbreak of a zombie virus. As a result, Aiden remained outstanding physical abilities, nightmares and two goals in life – to find a sister and take revenge on the Valets, the main scientist who set up experiments on children.

The search leads Aiden to Villadom – the last big city. All the people in it survived due to the fact that they were infected with the virus: because of this, the government lined up around the Villadom wall, which eventually allowed the metropolis to survive the apocalypse. However, thanks to this “happiness” the remaining ones have to live under the constant light of ultraviolet radiation – in the dark they begin to mutate in zombies.

Villadom share three fractions among themselves. Survivors are a typical commune of people who adapted to a new reality. They built settlements on the roofs of houses and skyscrapers, where the zombies are not awkward. Peacekeepers are a militarized structure on the model of the old world, which supposedly monitors the order and observance of the law in the city. Although in fact, it invited him unscrupulously without asking anyone’s opinion.

The last faction is the renegades, the former military and prisoners of the local prison, which renounced everyone, repair robbery in the city and seek to capture it entirely. They are commanded by a butter, the former commander in chief of the troops in the midst of the second outbreak of the pandemic, as well as his faithful assistant – the same Waltz, the search for which we will engage in the whole game.