On February 4, my pre-order of Lost Light 2: The Battle of Man and Man (Extinction 2) was released, and like its predecessor, it was an open-world adventure game featuring parkour and zombie fighting. I finished the game on February 6th, steam game time is frozen at 23.3 hours, in fact the main line of the game can be completed in about 18 hours, I was somewhat disturbed.
Visiting relatives and friends during the New Year's Festival, our custom here is to go to the immediate family members on the first and second days of the first year, and then arrange them according to generations, and when it is my turn to come to my house, it is the sixth day of the first year. That day came a large number of relatives, and four children, three boys and a girl, not very old. By generation, they had to call me Uncle.
When I was pulled to discuss the marriage problem, my nephew and niece took over to play "Extinction 2" for me. Three nephews, one fainted in 3D, and the other two were frightened. My niece was the boldest, and when I came back, I was looking at her slumped in her chair, looking focused, and the mouse and keyboard crackled.
In fact, I spent the next full day working through Extinction 2 with the bear kids. The so-called fairy tales are unscrupulous, sitting in the VIP coaching position, they have a neutral stance and sharp criticism. So when I review the game "Extinction 2" next, I will also mention some of their feelings and statements.
01
From Harlan to Villedo
In 2014, a plague loomed beneath the imaginary city of Haran. The plague is caused by a potent virus that infects people who, after hours to days of suffering, eventually turn into bloodthirsty zombies. At this time, the plague had spread on a small scale in Haran, and although the mayor knew something about the situation, he still chose to press the news and insisted on going his own way. For him, economic growth in Harlem is the top priority, and the Games in a few days will undoubtedly drive this goal.
A few days later, the games were held as scheduled, and zombies rushed into the stadium at the height of the crowd, causing a large-scale outbreak of the virus, half of the residents were infected, and the city of Haran fell. In order to prevent the spread of the plague, the military built tens of meters high walls around the city in just a few days, blocking Haran's road to the outside world, and Haran City was completely isolated.
The origin of "Extinction 1" is roughly like this, and "Extinction 2" inherits this worldview, and the story takes place twenty years later.
Shortly after the outbreak of the virus in Harlan, scientists from The Global Relief Effort (GRE) came together to discover a vaccine against the THV virus, and humans eventually defeated the disease. After the end of the plague, the GRE verbally promised to close the THV laboratory, but continued to conduct virus research and development in secret for military purposes. The THV variant was accidentally leaked in an accident, and the "Great Fall" began.
Like Harlan, the way countries treated the THV variant was to build walls, but the "Great Fall" was faster than anyone expected, and no region was spared. Instead, the wall became a kind of shelter, isolating the zombies from the patches.
Humans in 2036 are scattered around the world in the form of settlements, and the only way to connect the enclaves is on rovers— a profession that can walk through zombie-infested wastelands.
Our protagonist, Aiden the Rover, embarks on a journey to find his long-lost sister, and he arrives at the end-time human fortress "Villedo".
Villedo is divided into two areas, the Old Villedo and the Central District, with an area of nearly 7 square kilometers, which is twice the size of the slums and the old town of Haran combined. The buildings of the old Villedo were dominated by low bungalows, while the city centre was lined with high-rise buildings, most of which could be explored. So counting the verticals, Villedo's space is actually more than twice as large as Harland's.
(On the left is the city of Haran in "Extinction 1", and on the right is Villedo in "Extinction 2")
Villedo is a densely populated and bustling city that has fallen into a zombie-filled, dangerous place of death. Zombies in the THV variant have more distinct weaknesses and activity characteristics. They are extremely afraid of sunlight, and ultraviolet rays make them sluggish, weakened and even killed directly. During the day zombies hide in the "dark zone" where sunlight cannot penetrate, and Villedo at night is their world.
To escape zombies, people live on rooftops or in high-rise buildings. "Ultraviolet lamps" and some long and short weapons are important means to resist high-level zombies such as "night demons". After the "Great Fall", the power system nearly collapsed, the factory ceased to exist, no one could build decent firearms, and coupled with the protracted confrontation with the zombies, humanity quickly retreated to the era of cold weapons. In Villedo, Aiden can only rely on short soldiers loaded with various mods to fight against crossbows and zombies.
(This game has added a lot of Rouge elements to the equipment, and the difficulty of collecting has increased linearly)
Different zombie mutants pose a huge obstacle to night travel, the night wandering growler will awaken the fast-moving "biter" to chase humans, if the whereabouts are exposed for too long, falling into the chase level 4, then even the ultimate creatures such as the "night demon" will fall into the nest. Villedo's nights were far more sinister than Harland's.
(Villedo's Night Demons are much more terrifying, and the player is almost powerless.) If you do, my advice is, run! ）
In Villedo, UV lamps are one of the most important supplies. For the inhabitants who live here, it is much more than just fending off zombies.
Today, humanity is no longer helpless in the face of infection. The people of Villedo have devices such as "inhibitors" and "biomarkers" that can control or monitor the development of the virus. Infected people in the dark environment will quickly "transform", while ultraviolet radiation can inhibit the spread of the virus and block the "transformation" process.
So not only the entrance to the safety zone, but also the places in the Villedo living quarters, even the bedside, are all equipped with ultraviolet lamps. Because almost all of the surviving residents are infected, and they and the zombies wandering in the city are separated by only a few minutes of light.
02
Villedo Spider-Man
Fifteen years have passed since the outbreak of the Great Fall, and human beings have long been accustomed to the current mode of life. Villedo's roofs are full of fields and safe houses, and people are consciously or unconsciously rebuilding civilization on the roofs.
(Pods grown by the inhabitants of Villedo)
The roof is Villedor's main stage, and the biggest feature of the "Extinction" series is the parkour shuttle above various buildings.
Compared with "Extinction 1", the parkour feel of this game is closer to reality. Perhaps in order to increase the sense of realism, the previous game adopted some uncomfortable designs for players, running and climbing process accompanied by violent graphics shaking, 3D vertigo players played either fatal or treated, "Extinction 1" is also jokingly called "the treasure of 3D vertigo".
The picture shake of "Extinction 2" is much lighter, and the sense of vertigo is also greatly reduced. This design change is undoubtedly due to the game's action director, David Bell. He starred in "Violent Block" and played the face of the important role "Haken" in "Extinction 2". If you search for David Bell on Baidu, you will find that he is a well-known movie star in France, in addition to his important identity - the founder of parkour sports.
Obviously, in the real world, freely moving between buildings is not a simple task. Thanks to the guidance of this originator, the parkour of "Extinction 2" is much more difficult to control than the previous game, but it is also more fancy.
Aiden, who first entered Villedo, did not master any parkour skills, and it can be said that he only climbed with strength beyond ordinary people. As the game progresses, a variety of skills... It should perhaps be called a skill, and all kinds of tricks will be unlocked one after another.
The game is designed with two skill branches, combat and parkour, and the combat skill tree does not need to be mentioned, which has little impact on combat. Parkour is definitely a qualitative leap compared to the previous generation.
Needless to say, more supernatural actions add a lot of fun to the game, such as being able to speed up after making an action, jumping over a low obstacle, continuously pedaling the wall on the billboard, turning around in the air, etc., and the behavior mode is comparable to the "iron ride".
The only problem is that the climbing position and jump landing point of Extinction 2 are more stringent, coupled with the variety of action designs, it takes more time to practice if you want to run smoothly. But believe me, it's all worth it, and the visual impact and adrenaline rush it brings won't disappoint.
The environmental factors of "Extinction 2" are more restrictive, the old Villedo street is narrow, mostly low bungalows, the distance between the tall buildings in the central area is very far, and there is often a need to climb the building, so the game progresses here, and the player will be delivered two auxiliary tools, paragliders and claw hooks.
Paragliding, as the name suggests, can be glided for a distance when dropped from a high place and requires physical maintenance. Vents restore stamina while climbing with the help of upwardly discharged airflow. After asking the Master Craftsman to upgrade the drawings, you can even load a jet device.
To be honest, I didn't do well with the spray device, always face to face first, and most of the time it was worse than the nieces and nephews who were watching. The instructions of several "coaches" are very messy, and I will probably repeat them in my words. In simple terms, holding down the "S" stabilizes the paraglider and slows down the falling speed, at which point the character will lean back to obtain an inclination angle, and the right time to press the "shift" jet can climb upwards.
So as long as it is properly operated, the route is planned, and with the help of vents everywhere, it is theoretically possible to go to most areas of the central area.
And the claw hook, according to the producers, the previous generation of claw hooks is too contrary to physics, so they spent a lot of time redesigning. Say to be as realistic as possible, conform to basic physics, and prevent players from running the entire map in a minute with a claw hook like Extinction 1.
(That's right, the parkour of Extinction 1 is flying in the sky with a claw hook most of the time)
Obviously he did. The epic weakened claw hook can no longer point to where to fly, and becomes a shuriken toy tied with a hemp rope, which the player calls "swinging rope". The protagonist Aiden is like Spider-Man in a Marvel movie, and the official version is more appropriate, saying that it is Tarzan the Ape. Probably because the player can only drag the rope around, unable to lift the height.
The rationality of this design was questioned by his nephew, who thought that since "this man is so strong, is it not okay to climb up the rope?" I was dumbfounded by the moment.
Later they discovered that they could do this with another property of the claw hook. In simple terms, the claw hook is released after catching the building, you can jump up slightly, and then release the claw hook again after the character raises a certain height, so that you can climb up one by one.
(Although it can achieve the effect of the previous claw hook, it is still a lot worse than it, and it is not easy to control.) ）
The design trade-offs make "Claw Hook Superman" no longer in the past, but it's not hard to see that Techland wants to improve the parkour experience for players as a whole. As for whether the parkour of "Extinction 2" has lived up to the expectations of players, I think a lot depends on the patience of players.
03
"Man" and "Benevolence"
"Dying Light 2 Stay Human" is the full English name of "Extinction 2", "Stay Human" is translated as "the battle between man and benevolence", which can only be said to be quite high-level.
In fact, before I started "Extinction 2", I read a number of media reviews, they said that "the decisions made by players have a limited impact on the direction of the plot". I was schadenfreude because it would most likely not have had an impact on my gaming experience.
One of the things that attracts me to open-world American RPGs is that I can always find the option that is closest to my own idea when faced with a choice, to see what happens to myself in different worldviews, and it doesn't matter to me whether it can affect the direction of the plot.
Unfortunately, in Extinction 2, as a player, I can only be a spectator and cannot interfere too much with the growth of the character. Compared to Harlan Superman Kyle Crane, our protagonist Aiden is more nervous, emotional, and even naïve.
Aiden is completely unworldly and sleek as an adult, and the near-"diode" option of complete opposites often leaves me with dilemmas. The game forces the player to choose between "Ren" and "Ren", and then guides you in the direction of "Ren".
And I brought in the role of Aiden vertically, always with "finding relatives" as the primary code of action, jumping left and right between the two camps of Villedo. This caused my gaming experience to plummet. I have reasonable reason to suspect that the developer Techland did not expect any players to do this, because the plot I experienced was so chaotic and difficult to sort out, so that after completing the level, I had to go to other live masters to watch the recording to find out what was going on.
Fortunately, the side plot is much better, and incidentally makes up for the lack of the main line. Coupled with the fact that Before the release, Techland publicly stated that the text volume of this game was as high as 500,000 words, and the whole process was matched, and the overall experience was acceptable.
Many of the CVs in the game are old friends, such as "Spike" who appears in the prologue of "Extinction 2" and "Jack" in Cyberpunk 2077. The game's Chinese localization is quite good, the dialogue is frequent "national essence", very emotional tension, somewhere around the campfire, you can even hear NPCs singing Chinese songs under the end of the world.
The fly in the ointment is that Aiden's mood seems to be unstable, often polite and easy-going one second, and suddenly anxious the next. Considering the blind matching reasons of online transmission, such "drama" is also excusable, but these unreasonable contents have more or less affected the game experience.
There was also an irrational chase in the game that impressed me, and I needed to follow an NPC to escape the villain's pursuit. Maybe I was running too fast, and every time I arrived at the NPC, I would always see her open the door in a hurry, and then lock me out of the door with her backhand.
(Gif originates from B station UP master @ lao dai here.) "Ravan" said that there was no time to rub it, and the way he closed the door casually really had a program effect. ）
This design may be for the host-side reading disk to load the map, but her behavior really gives me a headache. During the play, my blood pressure increased, and the voices of the children around me.
"This man is so annoying!" The nephew complained behind me.
"This tells us a truth, no matter what situation we encounter, people must adhere to the noble moral quality, at least to maintain the good habit of closing the door at will." I thought for a moment and turned my head to warn him.
I followed the temptation, but my nephew yelled at me twice, saying that I was and.
These jumping contents have largely dragged the game's art and music hind legs, the sense of substitution has been greatly reduced, and some of the plot arrangements are not very reasonable, and you can feel the concept of "people" and "benevolence" that Techland wants to express, but the word "war" in the translated name "Battle between Man and Ren" is not well conveyed.
There is no doubt that "Extinction 2" has some shortcomings that have been criticized, but we can also see some good phenomena from it, and at this stage, the quality of Chinese localization content of various games is increasing year by year. I think this is enough to prove two aspects, one is that the Chinese market has great potential, and the other is that more and more manufacturers realize that the Chinese market has great potential, which is undoubtedly a good thing.
04
Expectations can still be maintained
It's been a week since The Extinction 2 was released. According to official statistics some time ago, 6 million users have added it to the wish list. After the actual release, multiple versions of the game slaughtered the list, occupying six of the top ten seats in the Steam weekly sales list. Over 40,000 player reviews, 81% positive rating.
The bad reviews focused on two areas. One is bugs, especially online bugs, but it's almost all about luck, I only encountered two insignificant BUGS in my twenty-hour experience, NPC floating, and zombie death without falling. The second is to complain that the character model is too scary, and the player advises Techland Studio to "Stay Human".
The gameplay is almost no one picky, which goes without saying, the previous game laid a good foundation, the design of this game went a step further, and some Easter eggs also took care of the needs of different players. For example, durability, there are many rogue elements in the game, in case of a weapon with a good entry, you can also use the cork ornaments in the Easter egg to infinitely reset the durability of the weapon.
Perhaps, as the player said, if you only look at gameplay, then "Extinction 2" is a blamelessly good game.
For Techland, which has been committed to five years of continuous renewal, I think they still have quite a bit of time to take the game 2 to a higher level.
Remember that whenever "Extinction 1" came out of the DLC, players would urge Techland to quickly develop a new game. Now I just want to say to Techland, don't make a new game, hurry up and get out of DLC!