Welcome to Harran, a city with a viral outbreak so severe that they quarantined it twice.
The disease has turned the majority of the population into ravenous, flesh-eating zombies.
It's into this hell that the player is literally dropped.
Dying Light takes the overdone concept of a zombie apocalypse and grafts it to a first-person parkour-based exploration game.
This is the recipe behind Techland’s new zombie survival game, Dying Light: new formula revolves around the day/night cycle.
This attention to detail is something I admire greatly.
Right away you'll feel like a parkour superstar, zig-zagging through zombies!
Climbing is quick and easy, allowing you to sprint down filthy alleys and leap to open window frames.
Much has been made of the parkour element in the game, avoiding the zombie hordes on the ground by climbing walls, scampering across rooftops, and leaping over infested alleyways.
There are dizzying heights to be climbed, death defying jumps and drops, and zip lines crisscrossing the city.
It's an amazingly dynamic way of traversing the world that is actually needed to survive and thrive in the game.
Even early in the game you encounter a number of different zombie types, from the slow moving walkers which are easy to outmaneuver, to the more aggressive Virals that will actively climb buildings pursuing you wherever you go.
As the game progresses the zombies become more varied, more aggressive, and generally tougher.
Although not the toughest, it's certainly the most disturbing, and few will forget their first encounter with a Screamer
For the most part there are only a few dozen walkers and biters in an area at any one time, but occasionally you'll run into areas that have Dead Rising type numbers milling around. Underestimate their numbers at your peril, it's easy to become quickly overwhelmed and pay the ultimate price for doing so.
The trick is that you're able to vault over them on your way toward a building, where you then scramble up multiple stories for safer ground.
Being able to throw exploding throwing stars at hordes of undead is certainly dumb fun for everyone, and it’s hard to hate swinging an electrically-charged machete at a ten-foot tall zombie.
Tense moments are frequent during the occasionally frustrating, but generally awesome, chase-heavy dynamic night sequences that play host to stronger and faster enemies
I was just laying waste to all but the biggest guys in one swing, although the nighttime big guys did take a few more.
In a game where the story, environment, and movement feel entirely built around the player, it seems strange to have a single aspect in which the protagonist is lacking.
On the plus side, nearly everything in the environment can be traversed, allowing players the freedom to maneuver about the world in the way in which they see fit.
If a certain ledge appears climbable, it likely is (this is doubly true for the grappling hook that is available later on).
Side missions and important events are designated with a white exclamation mark on the map, but characters marked with said exclamation points could also trigger worthless two-line dialogue exchanges, thus making questing a chore.
Once night falls, the world is plunged into all enveloping blackness.
At times it's barely possible to see your virtual hand in front of your virtual face.
Worse still, the night hours bring out a special breed of nocturnal zombies that are stronger, faster, and much more aggressive than their shuffling diurnal counterparts, Volatiles.
These super zombies actively prowl around the darkened world seeking out any form of prey - mostly human.
On the game's radar, they show up along with a cone representing their field of view similar to other stealth games, and in the game's only real concession to making life easier, the player can use their survivor vision, a sort visual sonar that reveals briefly the location of these Volatiles.
Once spotted by a Volatile, the game really turns into the player's worst nightmare.
The zombies are surprisingly fast and agile.
The player literally has to run for their life as Volatiles will not give up pursuit easily, and getting caught means an almost certain death.
Charging panic-stricken and half-blind through the zombie invested streets with one or more Volatiles on your tail is a genuinely terrifying experience.
The only chance of escape is to throw the zombies off your trail using one of the many traps - car traps, light traps, electricity - set up by the survivors or by reaching one of the many safe houses scattered across the map that can be unlocked by the player.
When you're dashing through the city with these beasts at your heels, your path ahead lit only by the narrow beam of a flashlight, the parkour turns into a fun panicky dash for survival.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human is the sequel we hoped for and nearly everything Techland promised.
There are some technical issues that can affect your quality of gameplay.
Just because of those, I can’t give the game a perfect score, but it’s damn close.
This is going to be the game to beat this year.

I was really nervous to play Dying Light 2 Stay Human.
I had put the first game on such a pedestal that I hoped I hadn’t set the bar too high for the sequel.
Techland promises more parkour, more mutations, lots of replayability and consequences for your choices.
The game looks good graphically with fleshed out environments and zombies with hair!
One of the things that tickled me about the first game was just how bald all the zombies were.
There are plenty of repetitive character models for the zombies, but with new mutations comes new looks.
You have your standard life cycle zombies: the fast Viral, the slower Biter and the desiccated Degenerate that looks like something you would find milling around some ancient Egyptian tomb.
Volatiles are back and just as mean as ever alongside other mutations like the Howler, Revenants and Demolishers.
Most mutations can be avoided by managing your quests through the day/night cycle unless otherwise required by the mission.


Two new mechanics in the sequel have to do with stamina and health.
In the first game, stamina would deplete with running, dodging and swinging.
In this sequel, even holding onto ledges and climbing will deplete your stamina meaning that certain places are off limits until you level up.
The parkour mechanics are most definitely fleshed out in Dying Light 2.
With double the parkour animations, traversing the maps quickly and efficiently was easy as pie.
It’s not without its problems, however.
At first, you feel very floaty in your movements and almost out of control.
All through the game there were moments that Aiden didn’t go the direction I told him to go in and would get clipped on something.
He would be stuck until I went full button masher and wiggled him out.
In addition, the paraglider takes a LOT of getting used to.
I can’t tell you the amount of times that I died trying to manage the paraglider across Central.
It does get easier with time and practice but it takes work.

Oh! I almost forgot, there is fast travel available!
You can unlock fast travel locations through metro stations but unlocking them are tasks in themselves.
They are filled with Renegades at the best and Volatiles at the worst.
The best thing to do is wait until night time and run like hell into the metro to accomplish the task.
There is one thing I see that Techland didn’t change and that was the lack of manual save.
I love a game that has checkpoints AND manual save.


There are three factions fighting for control in Villedor:
- Survivors which are your average Joes that took life to the tops of buildings after the chemical bombs destroyed all living things on the ground
- Peacekeepers (or PKs) which are the homegrown militia that believes order and punishment are the ingredients to bring civilization back
- Renegades which just believe in taking your sh*t and killing you.
You can only align with two out of the three which means that any time you activate a water or electrical plant, you choose the faction who gains the power over that plant.
Any Windmill (which are the safehouses) you activate in that faction will belong to them.

Choosing a faction opens up new things in the city to help you make your way around.
Teaming up with Survivors means you will have access to ziplines, air bags and other pieces of equipment that will make quick travel on the top of the buildings easier and more efficient.
Teaming up with the PKs means more traps on the ground to kill, maim or otherwise mess up any infected that may surround you while traversing the ground floor.
Because of the ease of traveling the high road, I chose to give the Survivors more than the PKs but you do have options.
Speaking of options, there are many different ways to communicate to people in the game.
During any given conversation, you will have at least two options if no more to answer questions and steer the story.
Gray options means additional information that doesn’t steer your path but yellow options are directional.
There are also some conversations where you will only have 20 seconds to make your choice, steering your character one way or another, truly pushing you to side with one faction or another.
It truly makes the experience feel a lot more RPG-like, especially with the expanded skill tree.
Not only are you able to upgrade fighting and parkour skills, but you can find cases with inhibitors throughout the maps to upgrade your health and stamina.


There are two maps in the game: Old Villedor and the Central Loop.
You will also receive a pair of binoculars to marks points of interest on your map, like stores to visit at night, windmills and alignment changing locations.
Old Villedor is where you will start your experience in the city as you get used to the idea of life on the rooftops.
The buildings are suburban tall which act almost like training wheels as you gather skill points.
The Central Loop is where most of the trailer footage is from with the skyscrapers that require a paraglider to traverse.
There are certain quests that can only be done at night which means nighttime is unavoidable.
I would avoid nighttime like the plague in the first game (pun intended) but night time feels a lot different.
With Volatiles on the hunt everywhere in the first game, the night cycle was terrifying.
In this game, Howlers are posted on every corner and they will call for all of their Viral buddies if they see you.
The only time I encountered Volatiles were in dark zone buildings and those guys are no joke.
They will swipe you in half in no time.