Are you a fan of open-world zombie RPG games? Dying Light is one of my favorite zombie games ever, and this co-op experience will be on Dying Light Platinum Edition for the Nintendo Switch. Dying Light Platinum Edition comes with base game, The Following expansion, Hellraid DLC, Be The Zombie mode, and much more.
Dying Light runs so brilliantly on the Nintendo Switch docked or handheld. I played this on the Nintendo Switch OLED mostly in handheld mode. There is so much multiplayer content available in this game, and nothing is more comforting than having a friend to watch your back in this dark and scary zombie apocalypse. There is PVP (Player vs Player) and up to four players for PVE (Player vs Environment). In PVE, you can play the story, go on raids, attempt to defeat behemoths, destroy volatile hives, engage in friendly competitions, or race dune buggies! Lets go over the details below…
Story
The story in Dying Light will feed off whichever player hosts the game. This means if I join my friend’s game, we will progress their story and side quests, and when I go back to playing solo, I will still be where I left off before playing co-op. This wasn’t a big deal for me ,and if I wanted help with anything, my friend would hop on my game since we enjoyed the stories and DLCs so much. The main story is located in Harran, a city in Turkey that has been exposed to a virus that turned citizens into flesh eating zombies. The main story involves providing the anitzen- an anti virus vaccine to keep everyone from turning. Due to a shortage of antizen, this becomes quite difficult to obtain in large enough quantities, so helping to find a cure becomes a bigger priority. One quality I really enjoy is that no matter how fast your friend gets to the next area before you, a fast travel option will appear on screen so you can instantly teleport there without having to wait on each other to progress. Whenever you’re playing Dying Light, the cutscenes will be shown to both of you but only the host is allowed to skip these cutscenes. The story took us around 35 hours on hard difficulty, and we’re still playing through the expansion story called The Following, which is even darker than the main story but transitions the story smoothly to a new area called the country side.
Behemoths & Challenges
Behemoths are world bosses, and although it’s possible to defeat these super mutated giants alone, I’d advise to bring along some company. Once you discover one of these Behemoths in Dying Light, there will be an icon revealed on your map, so they will be easy to locate and return to later when you have friends or the confidence to fight alone. You’ll noticed a big intimating health bar above the behemoth and a zombie skull icon as well. It’s so fun to fight these special bosses as a team! If teamwork gets stale, don’t worry, Dying Light has friendly challenges and can be set in the settings menu to the frequency you’d want them to occur. When one of these many challenges appear, you’ll be prompted to press the corresponding button appearing on the screen to accept the challenge. Once accepted, you and your friends will see who is the best in the group. Challenges vary from who can kill the most zombies, race to the waypoint marker, and who can collect the most loot. This makes questing together have a fun distraction while traveling across the map to your next destination.
Dune Buggy & Hellraid
In Dying Light you have a dune buggy to drive around the country side map. Your friends can drive their own or ride with you while getting some target practice in. The buggies are customizable with lots of upgradable parts and paint jobs to show off your whip to others online. There are also some cool zombie killing machines that can be attached to your ride! Tired of cruising the country side? Jump into one of the many raids in Dying Light which include the most recent DLC: Hellraid. Hellraid takes you back to the ancient crypt timeline, where you’ll be battling through hordes of skeletons and demons while trying to save a mage. You can’t rely on guns, but you will have plenty of fun using maces, swords, bows, and more ancient equipment. This is a very fun raid to take on with friends, and we had a blast trying to make it to the end. The enemies get pretty overwhelming playing solo, so it’s best to wait for some friends to help with crowd control.
Hives
This is where multiplayer shines in the creepy, dark, bone chilling quest to destroy Volatile Hives. First things first, a Volatile is a zombie that comes out only at night, and if a Volatile sees you, be prepared to run early on in the game. These zombies are extremely tough, fast, aggressive, and terrifying at first. You can find these Volatiles in caves where they have their nests. This is what is called a Hive, and it’s infested with an uncomfortable number of these monstrosities. Clear out these hives and destroy their nests to complete these very hard quest. This is where I highly recommend co-op because you will need all the help you can get and it’s nice to know you’re not in these dark caves alone.
Be The Zombie
Be The Zombie mode is a PVP experience where you play as a Volatile and invade random player’s games or your friend’s games. There is a level up skill tree for your zombie to make you more powerful as you play. The only downfall on Switch is finding random games to invade, which can become quite difficult, so unless you have a few friends to join this feature can be frustrating after multiple “quick join” attempts. It’s almost better to just play a regular game with friends and set invasions to frequently in your settings. That way, a random player can invade your game, and it’s very exciting trying to take down a player controlling a Volatile!
The Co-op Experience
Overall, this is a great co-op experience, and although the Switch version struggles sometimes to find random players to play with, it’s great to play with a dedicated friend. There are plenty of multiplayer features, and most are extremely difficult to try alone, but it’s not impossible. The skill trees and level up systems make character progression feel very satisfying, and friends can join conveniently no matter where you are in the game. Most systems your friends can party up in game voice chat, but for Switch, I used Discord voice chat. Some emotes would have gone a long way with communication on the Switch.
Dying Light Platinum Edition can be purchased on the Nintendo eShop for $49.99 (USD). Will you be playing this with a friend? Let us know in the comments, or hop on over to the Boss Rush Discord!
Source: Techland
Featured Image Source: Techland (Via MyGameWallpapers)
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