Dying Light Has A Tasty Competitive Side
Dying Light is in its final development stages, at long last. We’ve reported on the game last year as well, with a positive first impression, and this time we were able to try the cooperative mode along with a fellow colleague of the press.
The first thing I noticed is that the game seemed polished already, which is probably a result of the delay - Dying Light was originally scheduled to launch in 2014, but in the immortal words of Shigeru Miyamoto, a delayed game is eventually good - a rushed game is forever bad. Not that it would have been the case here, but though I personally enjoyed Techland‘s Dead Island games, they were clearly hindered by the lack of proper polish.
Now, however, Dying Light is finally getting that extra care which can literally mean the difference between a good and a great game. Interestingly, Techland also managed to add some competitive spice into the cooperative action: every once in a while during our session, there would be challenges pitting one against the other, for example to see who could kill the highest number of zombies in a minute or who was able to run outside the sewers first; this is meant to add a little of competition in order to keep the adrenaline level high during idle times. The real highlight of the playthrough, though, happened when we were confronted by another developer controlling a special zombie called Night Hunter.
In a twist clearly inspired by the growing trend of asymmetrical multiplayer (more specifically, inspired by Dark Souls), gamers who preorder the game will be able to access a PvP mode called Be The Zombie and then invade other players’ games. This human controlled zombie is very fast and agile, seemingly able to leap from building to building while stalking the other players. It is possible to try and locate the hunter’s location with a specific, sonar-like ability, but in order to harm it the zombie needs to be first weakened by light (pointing the flashlight at it seems to be the best option).
Even if you kill it, though, it won’t be the end yet. Our true objective was to destroy three hives and we had a limited number of lives to do it before the Hunter won, but in the end, we managed to do it. It was quite fun, especially since the regular zombies still kept coming after us, making the action even more frantic and exciting; that said, I really hope Techland has multiple objectives and variations of this mode in store for the final game, as I can see this becoming a bit stale otherwise. Moreover, it would be very disappointing if only those who have preordered the game could access this mode; hopefully there will be other ways.
Ultimately, it’s obvious that Dying Light is still based on the recipe Techland created with Dead Island, but between the freerunning/parkour and the competitive spice I’ve experienced this time around, there seem to be enough additions for this to taste quite different. With the extra polish, this could be a delicious meal indeed for zombie fans once it releases next January for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.