'Offensive' Dying Light 2 Is Being Review Bombed
While the jury was already out on whether Techland's Dying Light 2 was a well-deserved sequel to 2015's original, there are continued complaints the zombie RPG lacks the "bite" of its predecessor. Worse than this, some have taken to the internet to purposefully review bomb the game.
In Dying Light 2 Stay Human, you leave behind the events of Kyle Crane and the city of Harran. Although the Global Relief Effort had found a cure for the virus, an outbreak has wiped out most of the world's population - sparing the rest inside a walled city. It's all pretty standard fodder, but what has always set Dying Light apart is its USP of parkour skills.
Why Are People Review Bombing Dying Light?
Click to enlargeThere are all the usual complaints about subpar graphics and glitches, but if you look at other corners of Metacritic, you might notice Dying Light 2 is being review bombed with a score of 0/100. Even Atari's famous E.T. game would struggle to match a score like that.
Although the critic scores are all in their 70s, the user scores range from 6.5/10 on PS5 to 4.9/10 on the Xbox Series X. It's when you dive into these reviews that you might notice something of a common theme that's masked as a genuine review.
Apparently, Dying Light 2 only has voiceover localisation in English, French, German, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese. This means VO in the likes of Italian and Czech (as well as a tonne of other languages) are MIA.
What Have Fans Said About Dying Light 2?
One angry review writes, "the absence of Italian language and inclusion of all other languages in the game is a heavy offense to Italian culture and people." Another didn't seem to realise Techland is a Polish company, as they raged: "I really don't understand how is it possible to insert Polish spoken dialogues but forget to include Italian dialogues?" they wrote. "Shall we run a survey and ask the people all around the world if Poland is more well known than Italy?"
Someone else concluded, "I couldn't find any positive aspect in this game: terrible punishment for Italian players (our language missing in the game); boring story and gameplay; no button assignments; no manual save system; crashes; bugs (many bugs); terrible graphics for a 2022 game; Denuvo added just two days before the realease. Gamers will not forget dear Techland"
The problem with the Italian backlash is it then backfired the other way. It quickly transpired that others were then giving the game 10/10 for p*ssing off the Italians. With racist comments a plenty, the whole Metacritic board for Dying Light 2 is a mess.
At the time of writing, it's hard to discern what's a genuine review, someone who's peeved because there is no Italian VO, or someone that's hating on the Italians. Either way, at a time Techland should be celebrating and learning from genuine mistakes, the gaming community is warring like the city of Villedor.
