Dying Light 2’s parkour is chef’s kiss, perfection

polygon.com:

I’ve done a lot of climbing in recent video games, from Horizon Forbidden West to the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves collection, and although both of those have stronger characters and significantly more stunning vistas to enjoy from the mountaintops, I can’t stop thinking about the best climbing experience I’ve had in a game so far this year. I’m talking about Dying Light2 Stay Human.

I love to climb in games. I love to run and jump and grab a ledge and swing upwards onto a rooftop. It almost never feels like real-life rock-climbing — but that’s not the point; I don’t want to deal with the mundanities of finding the perfect hand-hold. I prefer to feel like an unstoppable god of parkour, careening across rickety roofs and scrambling up water pipes to reach crumbling alcoves and dilapidated balconies. Dying Light2 doesn’t force me to step back and analyze each surface, scoping out architecture or terrain for a developer-determined set of prescriptive ledges. In Dying Light 2, if it looks like you can grab it, you very likely can, with scarcely any exceptions. It’s incredible.

Dying Light 2’s climbing controls are blessedly simple, too. It’s just one button – the right bumper on your controller – and it doubles as the button for both jumping and grabbing a handhold. The flow of leaping, climbing, and flinging yourself upwards to the next handhold before pulling yourself up onto the next rooftop is all so fluid and satisfying. There’s a stamina bar that stops you from climbing forever, but eventually, you’ll unlock power-ups to extend it. Later in the game, you’ll collect even more traversal tools (like a grappling hook), but the foundational mechanics already impressed me from the very start. The simple act of pressing one