Is it human to take five and a half months to beat a modern videogame campaign, even when one skips thousands of side missions and objectives? Picking it up when one has increasingly rare playtime, getting stuck on a challenging part of the game and not coming back to it for two weeks? Is it human to say "Wow, this game is great, but when the hell does it end?"
I found out this year with Dying Light 2: Stay Human, the latest and greatest entry in the Dead Island/Dying Light series, which I've enjoyed very much over the years. I was ready for a release-day AAA title, and knew this game would be good, but I was surprised at how good it really is.
This is a polished, smooth, and complete game package with a great story and reasonable level of challenge. I really wish I had more time to go back and hit all the unfinished business I left behind in that world, but other people release games I want to play, too, so it's not happening. I'm glad all that content is there, because it helps create a huge amount of gameplay for those who want it.
Combat and Parkour are the main focus of the gameplay, with the concurrent levelling of those traits happening based on what missions or challenges the player completes. Upgrading and modifying weapons is there, too, but I just got by with what I found and was fine doing little of that. Armor is upgradable too, and like their previous titles, lots and lots of looting fuels all this.
The "Stay Human" part of the title is one of the game's challenges. The player is already infected but only starts turning at night, when out of ultraviolet light. This makes the early part of the game very challenging in terms of nocturnal activity. There is a timer on how long one can remain out of UV light, and while there are items that can prolong that time, it really comes off as a huge inconvenience in the early game, but hey, that's the game. The timer expands, too, as one finds certain items and applies them.
Combat is almost all melee, with archery added later, and it handles like a dream. Blocking enemy hits is essential and makes the combat fun. Enemy AI is pretty smart, but one must often use the environment to their advantage, climbing away from trouble when necessary. The player has a stamina bar to watch during combat, preventing button mashing battles and adding to the challenge.
The stamina bar is also depleted during parkour moves like climbing and swinging from one's grappling hook, but it expands as the player levels, once again making the early game harder than the later part of the game. Oddly enough, to this acrophobic old gamer, the parkour was much scarier than the zombies and human enemies one faces. There are a few places where the player must climb a dilapidated skyscraper, making series after series of jumps and watching the stamina bar dwindle. Add in grappling hook use, where one has to hook onto something at the corner of the building, swing out blindly around the corner, jump off, and quickly grapple to another hook and then to a platform, and my nerves were shot.
It's not even a VR game, but it looks so good that those challenges were the most nerve-wracking part of the game. There were very few frustrations in this game and very few bugs that I found. Both sections of the enormous map were well designed, the rooftops and other parts of the city clearly created and tested for cool parkour moves.
Just playing the main missions left me more than capable of beating the final boss through multiple phases and the ending was satisfactory. After the six hour credit sequence, one can continue in the open world if so desired.
And I so desire, but time is not on my side. It's not you, Dying Light 2 Stay Human, you did everything right. It's me and the nature of middle age that keeps me from your rooftops going forward. Maybe I'll swing by again in retirement.
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