After a series of friendly Dead Island games that will return to the front of the stage in the more or less near future, as well as with the unexpected success of the first opus of Dying Light, Techland continues on its zombie fetish with Dying Light 2: Stay Human, where the developer promises us the small dishes in the big ones with a dynamic story that evolves according to your choices full of consequences, an even more dynamic parkour system than the first and a gigantic world filled with things to do. It is therefore after many postponements that the meal is finally served on PC, Playstation and Xbox. Let's see together who will have to do this dishes...
In Dying Light 2, you play as Aiden, a Pilgrim (sort of messenger/handyman that people despise because these Pilgrims will do anything for money), 15 years after the events that started the apocalypse. zombie. Aiden searches for his missing sister after experiments on them when they were children and Pèlerin's job allows him to travel and glean information to find her. It is therefore after a prologue in nature that you discover a new track: the town of Villedor, the last bastion of civilization.
But all is not rosy in this fallen city surrounded by ramparts, since not only are the infected zombies also present there, but the ideologies of the groups already in tension make your presence risk setting fire to the powder kegs. And it won't fail...
As in the first Dying Light, the gameplay revolves around different gameplays starting with parkour. Don't rely too much on me to tell you how it evolved because I didn't have the opportunity to play the first one apart from a short demo when it was released. What I can tell you is that while there may be some slight hiccups due to small collision bugs... or more problematic ones like getting stuck between props, getting around town, s clinging to ledges, overcoming obstacles, climbing on the slightest architecture by the strength of your hands and legs, as well as with tools that you collect along the way is pleasant. At least, after a little time of adaptation because, even if the parkour system is simple to use, mastering it will require practice and endurance which you will have to improve as much as possible to unlock new movements and increase your ability to chain them together, and therefore be able to reach new places in this vast city.
The "fighting" part will not be unknown to Dead Island fans like me, since you will find yourself with many makeshift weapons that will be used to defeat, until their destruction, infected as humans in exchange also for endurance, of course . The game even offers to mix parkour and fights for ever more powerful and violent attacks, such as jumping with both feet on the head of an enemy who has fallen to the ground, going so far as to burst his noggin if his life is too low, and again the double joint kick in the middle of the race, my favorites.
But beware, because the day/night cycle will bring very different dangers. Indeed, if during the day, the infected are relatively few in number and calm because of their sensitivity to the UV rays of the sun, it is above all bandits and people whom you may have alienated who will be hostile to you. At night, it's a different story because the infected hitherto confined indoors, particularly the special infected, come out in droves and are more aggressive than during the day, making it more than advisable to move through the roofs, but also allowing explore buildings with less difficulty.
It is then up to the player to choose the time of day wisely to tackle his objectives, whether they are essential to your progress or additional.
And choices, the player will have to face them at many times, mainly during his conversations, sometimes by accomplishing certain secondary objectives. These choices have their consequences such as the positive or negative appreciation of a person or a group towards you, sometimes it is people who will die rather than others, the access or the impossibility of doing missions generally secondary. Be careful, the choices are never obvious and the consequences can occur only later in the adventure. Especially since some are timed and we will have to decide quickly. But rest assured, there aren't really any bad choices as the game will still continue taking them into account and modify various elements accordingly.
Also, don't expect totally drastic changes as promised by the developers, these are very few. So depending on your choices, the set will not really change outside of 2-3 moments. A little disappointed that this aspect was downplayed because honestly, it was this element that attracted me when the game was announced. Afterwards, maybe it was my choices that did that, but for this test it's impossible to know unless you play the entire game dozens of times with different choices. So I prefer to warn not to expect too much from this system. But for once, the game has a huge replay value and lifespan between that and the many missions and activities to perform.
The people who took care of the dialogues must have had a lot of fun because they adapt very easily to your present and past choices with indecent ease despite bugs (especially the texts of certain characters which are zapped as soon as they are a bit long) and translation typos. It's been a long time since I've seen in a project of this magnitude chord errors of the genre and great classic in Dying Light 2 with the absence or presence where it is not necessary of a plural "s" : a verb put in the infinitive of the first group (-er) whereas the subject of the verb is "vous" and would therefore require an "-ez". It is not extremely serious, the dubbing of the voices in French being him of quality, but the Grammar Nazis are going to fart a cable so these typos are frequent.
Can you imagine 4 guys with very distinct mustaches straddling the spelling and raging because there's such nonsense in the ongoing dialogue? I do, and it makes me laugh just to imagine it. Because yes, the game is played in coop up to 4 players. And what an incredibly complicated co-op, so let's talk co-op!
Or rather let's not talk about it, since connecting to a game is a nightmare with its search or its perpetual connection to a game and when it rarely manages to connect, the game perpetually loads the game... Some lucky few seem to be there happen if we rely on the list of parts. But these are rare.
Let's hope that these concerns, especially for the co-op, are resolved quickly, but even in solo mode, Dying Light 2 is extremely pleasant despite all its small concerns specific to an open world game. And then you know me: when it comes to bursting the living dead who expresses himself as my maternal grandmother did when waking up, I'm in!
- Xbox (version testée Xbox Series X)
- Playstation
- Steam
