Review: Dying Light 2

destructoid.com:

Hold out your hands in front of you like Giorgio A. Tsoukalos and say “zombies.” Now go run toward the wall and do a little kick off of it. You pretty much got the idea behind Dying Light 2.

Not that the combination of those ideas is automatically a bad thing! Dying Light 2 more or less leans into the marriage of parkour and zombies, just like the first game, but it does it in such a fluid way that you’ll forget about some of its issues.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human (PC, PS4, PS5 [reviewed], Nintendo Switch (cloud version), Xbox One, Xbox Series X)Developer: TechlandPublisher: TechlandReleased: January 28, 2022MSRP: $59.99

Dying Light 2 is going to be very familiar — not just for folks who played the first game or have watched a lot of zombie media, but familiar in general.

So the setup here is a time jump between games, with two main storytelling goals. It’s simply a bit all over the place, trying to balance both the personal plight of our hero Aiden, and the lore of the world (chiefly the city of Villedor): it gets about halfway there on both. This story is set two decades after the original, taking place in the 2030s, and things are a bit different now in terms of zombie world tech.

It’s all serviceable. While I would have preferred another hero entirely and more detail on some specific elements of the lore, this is far from a cringe-worthy zombie tale, which is so easy to ease into these days. Characters are generally lively with their performances, especially in the more intimate moments of the story.

That aforementioned familiarity comes into play in several respects. Dying Light 2 has a detective vision mechanic. There’s crafting and lockpicking. And radio towers (windmills). There’s also crafting and gathering, and