Dying Light 2 has just passed its one-year anniversary, and it's come quite a long way in that time. When Dying Light 2 first launched, it was widely considered to be a fairly good zombie action game, with some great parkour mechanics, satisfying melee combat, and enough variation in its level design, open-world, and enemy types to keep players engaged for a good few weeks. Techland wasn't content just letting its game release, however, and the developer has spent the last 13 months updating the game continuously, adding a ton of new content.
Over the last year, the game has received new quests, parkour challenges, weapons, enemy types, a New Game Plus mode, and even a paid Dying Light 2 DLC expansion. But while all of these updates have been received fairly well by the community, Dying Light 2 really needs to recapture its original audience, and to do that, the game might need a little combat refresh.
Adding In New Guns Could Refresh Dying Light 2's Combat
Dying Light 2's current combat model heavily emphasizes melee combat. Throughout the game, players will find a variety of different melee weapon types, from one-handed batons and machetes to two-handed planks and axes. While Dying Light 2's combat is fairly satisfying, with each hit on a zombie evoking a rewarding thud sound and plenty of gore, it can get extremely repetitive quite quickly, with players often just needing to spam the right trigger or button to attack. Techland has tried to address this problem in the last few months by adding a slew of new one-handed melee animations to the game, making combat feel a little more fresh for long-time players, but that isn't quite enough to draw crowds back in.
Currently, Dying Light 2 has just one firearm in the game. Called the Boomstick, players can find this weapon by finishing the "Observatory" mission and purchasing the blueprint from a craft-master vendor in a Peacekeeper territory. Rather than act like any other weapon, the Boomstick is restricted to the accessory slot, making it fairly useless when free-roaming as players will likely want to equip the grapple hook instead. The Boomstick is also a bit weak in combat, and ammo is extremely scarce, essentially making it worthless for those who are longing for a ranged build.
An update that brings more guns to Dying Light 2 could be exactly what the game needs to feel fresh again. Techland has been pretty open about its reluctance to include guns in Dying Light 2, believing that a melee-focused combat system would feel more rewarding, and while there's certainly some truth in that, the game's long-time fans have been using the same melee weapons for over a year now, and it's about time for a change. Rifles, handguns, and shotguns could all make for great combat additions in Dying Light 2, and it would help to make crafting feel more worthwhile as well, with bullets likely being much easier to craft than find.
The Dying Light franchise is no stranger to firearms. The first Dying Light let players wield several different types of guns, and while they were definitely some of the most powerful weapons in the game, Techland did some interesting things to ensure that they remained balanced. Guns were fairly rare to find, and ammo was just as scarce, encouraging the player to only use firearms as a last resort. Shooting a gun would also alert nearby Volatiles and other special infected types, potentially putting the player in even more danger than they were in. Implementing a similar system in Dying Light 2 would add some much-needed variety to the game's combat.
Dying Light 2 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
