NIGHT CITY

DYING LIGHT 2 is bigger and better than the original

- Christopher Livingston

I land a flying kick into a bandit and send him screaming off the edge of a roof and onto the zombie-filled streets below. In Dying Light 2 this has become my singular goal: Kick dudes off roofs. The city is in peril, I have a half-dozen unfinished sidequests in my journal, and my map is littered with icons imploring me to scavenge resources, discover new locations, and undertake parkour challenges.

Apologies. I can’t actually deal with any of that right now. Somewhere in the city, another bandit is standing too close to the edge of another rooftop and he needs booting off it. And reaching that rooftop is just as much fun as kicking someone off it.

To get there I slide down zip lines and bounce off jump-pads, swing like Spider-Man from the rope of my grappling hook, sail through the air with my fold-up paraglider— or I just climb, clamber, wall-run, and ledge-grab my way there. Dying Light 2 is a huge and exhilarating playground for crunchy, kinetic, two-footed combat and satisfying first-person parkour. It doesn’t start out like that—there’s a few long hours before the game really opens up and gets fun, and there’s a lot of not-so-great storytelling along the way. But it’s worth it.

PILGRIM-DARK