Played on Xbox One S.

If you played the original Dying Light, or either of Techland's previous zombie apocalypse titles Dead Island, or Dead Island 2, you have an idea of what you're in for here.

Cookie cutter story to work as a guide to explain where you are and why you're here, a well designed open world to explore filled with ravenous cannibal undead along with post apocalyptic psychopaths known as Renegades, and plenty of loot to scavenge.

If you've never played any of these games before, think of a combination of Mirror's Edge, Far Cry, and Zombies.

Couple things to note up front, if you play games for gripping story, or for gunplay, this is not for you. The absence of firearms is conveniently explained away in a side quest, so on the menu to satisfy your appetite for destruction will be all manner of one and two handed weapons, blunt and bladed of course, that can generally be modified to add special damaging effects like fire, shock, bleed, poison, etc. On the rarer side (or if you choose one group over another) you have Bows and Crossbows that serve as the main ranged weapons.

The loot system follows your standard rpg rarity scale of gray trash, green meh, blue pretty good, purple pretty awesome, and yellow legendary. Each weapon or gear piece will be assigned a tier classification, the higher the number, the better the quality. Interestingly, there is no level requirement to gear. A friend could drop in on your game, drop some tier 9 weapons to you, and you could happily wade through the games hardest setting one shotting everything until the weapon breaks.

Weapons cannot be repaired in the traditional sense, or as most recently Dying Light 1. Each weapon has a set number of mod slots, from Tip, Shafter, Grip, and Charm. Placing a mod into a slot restores sone if the weapons durability, so if you really like that weapon you have, it's best to wear it down un modded, then as it breaks down, apply mods one at a time to restore durability and increase its longevity.

This isn't the greatest system, but it does promote variety in weapon use, at least until late in the story when you can reach a developer room complete with love letter to the fans, that provides a charm that can repeatedly instantly repair your weapons fully.

The progression system improves the player in a few ways. Players must scour the ruined buildings looking for inhibitor chests, after collecting 3, the player can level up total health, or total stamina.

Skill trees are comprised of Combat, and Parkour and each tier will require a set amount of stamina or hp to access skills. Skill points are acquired Skrim Style, by doing the thing you want points for. So kill shit to get combat skills, and traverse the city as stylishly as possible while keeping a good line going to generate parkour xp.

While I generally enjoy Skill trees, these are definitely on the lazy side. For instance, You need to build your hit points up over 220, just to be able to unlock the simple act of PRECISELY AIMING A RANGED WEAPON. Like. Honestly. Who the **** doesn't know how to aim down sights?

Other dazzling skills locked behind this sham progression are the ability to sprint, (yes....you can't sprint until you unlock it), jump high, baseball slide, crouch run, strong attack, climb at a normal pace instead of a 70 year old woman, or jump to ledges. Just a lot of gameplay mechanics that a character with an iq above room temp would already know how to do.

That minor annoyance aside, the game does often feel like everything you are doing is constantly moving you toward being a stronger, better version than when you picked up the controller that day.

The story offers the illusion of choice, allowing you to decide which of the cardboard cutouts you like best, and help them. Taking control of facilities in districts will allow you to give over control of the district to one faction or another, in return for various perks. Supporting the militant Peacekeeper faction offers weapons and environmental traps in these districts to help combat the infected, while turning the district over to survivors generally offers more traversal bonuses like ziplines, launch pads, and landing bags.

Personal playstyle preference effect only, as you get to the end of the story in basicly the same spot after all is said and done.

All that said, the strength of the game is its moment to moment gameplay. The combat is very good, much improved from Dying Light 1, especially when fighting humans, which you see much more of. The ability to perfect dodge, block, or parry infuses the combat system with much more variety and can make you feel like a complete boss when you take down a group of thugs without a scratch.

The new mechanic to deal with in the game harkens to the games subtitle Stay Human. Your character becomes infected, and niw must remain in the presence of UV light at all times, or a countdown timer is initiated at the end if which, if you have not used a consumable to add time and stave off the infection, or gotten out into the sunlight or to a UV lamp, you will turn into a zombie and die.

This was off putting for me at first, with only a 2:30 timer before dying, but as you progress and add health and stamina levels, the timer increases as well. My current character has 11 minutes on the timer before turning, which in this game is a lifetime. Immunity boosters are plentiful, and so this aspect of the game is more of a reminder that your character is infected, rather than an actual detriment. In certain areas, chemicals are present which cut your timer by around 66%, so in these areas the infection has to be managed, but overall it never becomes a problem.

In the 35 hours I've spent with the game, most if that time has just been spent exploring the city, killing enemies, and looting. It's an extremely fun and addictive loop that you get into. Night Is far better than in the first game where instant kill enemies roamed the streets. Now there are howlers that if they see you, start a chase. Think of these like stars in GTA. The chase levels go from 1-4, with the instant kill volatiles showing up around halfway through level 3. Getting to a UV source, or hiding spot ends the chase. Very fun sequences to be had in these.

All xp is boosted during night gameplay as well as making interiors of most buildings labeled "dark zones" much safer to enter and loot. Entering a dark zone during the day causes you to encounter much denser enemy population, as well as running the risk of encountering the volatiles that can instantly kill you.

This is a game where you may intend to go do one thing, and then get sidetracked for over two hours because you kept finding more interesting shit to do. The moment to moment gameplay here is the strength.

That said, my experience on Xbox One S has been horrificly riddled with bugs. Audio lagging, or audio cutting out altogether forced me to turn subtitles on lest I miss what was being said for me to do. Repeated hard crashes, tons of lag trying to enter the map screen, hell I've even had the game repeatedly soft lock because I chose to skip the opening cinematic.

It is in extreme need of an optimization patch, which the devs gave estimated will be out next week.

If these bugs can be ironed out, this is a solid game to pick up and play. The gameplay loop is addictive, Traversal is a lot of fun, and combat feels really good with some eyebrow raising sequences that can take place.

For instance, stealthily moving through a bandit camp, and I find a spear. An extremely powerful one off thrown weapon that usually instantly kills most non heavy enemies. I see the guy with the alarm device on his back, and I throw the spear to remove him as a threat to blow my cover and bring the whole base down on me.

He's got body armor, so the spear slams into him, spinning him violently, but leaving the slightest sliver of health. ****! In a moment he will gain his bearings and alert everyone. I have no throwing knives. No arrows. I do the only thing I can think of.

I charge at him full speed, holding my block button and pressing X to tackle just as he's about to shout. I spear this dude off the side of the building, and we plummet 7 stories to the terrace below, me using his body to break the fall. He dies, I don't have a scratch, and the enemies rushing around 7 floors above have no idea what has happened.

I have had literal hundreds of moments just like this in this game. My hdd is overflowing with game clips that I've flooded the inboxes of my friends with.

Once the bugs are fixed, this game is a solid 9/10 for me.
Gameplay is why I play games, and there's no other way around it, this game is a ****ing lot of fun to play.
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