Most importantly, getting caught in a PvP fight doesn’t feel like a total do-or-die situation. In PUBG, relocating to a new area meant a tense marathon across vast, empty terrain, whereas the intricacy of Dying Light allows for frequent stumbles into the laps of zombies or human players. In something like early access PUBG, you’re fighting with the controls to get behind cover or line up the perfect shot, whereas Dying Light’s parkour movement was generally perfected long ago. If you’re like me and you hate cowering in a bathroom for 10 minutes only to be snuffed out by someone with a Twitch stream to entertain, Bad Blood’s pace might put some of those frustrations to ease. Because it’s battle royale, but for people who hate waiting. Of course I followed him down, and of course he immediately killed me when we tumbled back into melee. Increasingly thin alleys gave way to residential interiors, slipping through doors and under holes in fences, until a fortuitous cliff allowed him an Assassin’s Creed-esque leap into a pile of trash below. When he saw my overpowered, electrified baseball bat, he made a break for it, and the chase was on. During our second round, I found myself brawling with a pack of zombies when another player came up behind me for an attack. Still, I can’t dismiss the moments when Bad Blood delivers fun, fluid first-person movement.

For a game so fixated on parkouring over and under the undead, it feels like a weird choice to make the meat of the conflict in Bad Blood all about whacking on some minibosses.

It never felt like the clever movement or precision was a major part of fighting enemies. Big baddies would charge you, just slow enough to sidestep their lumbering frame and kite them into a wall for a quick beating, rinse and repeat. Combat in Dying Light was never terrible, it just wasn’t terribly good either. You’ll need to collect 1000 points worth of blood, but regular zombies will only occasionally give out between 5 and 25 samples, making it impossible to win without engaging with at least two or three of the big baddies, or just camping another player and lifting her stuff. While it might have brevity on its side, I do worry about Bad Blood’s focus on collecting blood samples from the larger, more specialized zombies. Techland implied that Oldtown, with its increased verticality and tighter paths, would likely be a location that’s revisited for the mode. At its longest, it feels like a round of Bad Blood wouldn’t take longer than 10 minutes, depending on which areas of the original game’s map the developers reuse.

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