Dying Light Platinum Edition (Switch) Review

Note: Dying Light Platinum Edition is not available on the Switch eShop in Europe at the time of writing this article pending an issue with the game banned in Germany.

In 2011, Techland launched Dead Island on most seventh-generation consoles to a largely positive reception. Still, Dead Island had never been the game Techland envisioned it to be, due to both creative differences with the publisher and hardware limitations. As a result, the study started on its own and began development of Dying light, a much more ambitious release that would hopefully be much closer to the studio’s original vision.

Dying Light launched a few years later, in 2015, to much more positive reception and sales, and now Techland has carried out the herculean task of squeezing its flagship release on Switch. While there are some undeniable hardware limitations, the Dying Light Platinum Edition nonetheless translates the entire experience in all its hideous undead glory to the Switch with impressive results.

Dying Light puts you in the role of Kyle Crane, a member of an organization called the Global Relief Effort, which evidently aims to curb the problems that arose from the zombie pandemic. We begin with Kyle performing a HALO jump in the city of Harran, which has been totally invaded by zombies, in search of a man who is believed to have files related to a possible cure for the infection. Of course, things don’t exactly go according to plan, and Kyle is bitten almost immediately, but a local coalition of survivors saves him and he soon joins their ranks as a ‘Scout’ who handles supplies around town. Dying Light may not present a particularly memorable or gripping narrative, but the story still has the right tone and doesn’t get much in the way of enjoyable gameplay.

At its core, Dying Light is a platformer and first-person fighting game, with some light RPG elements to keep things interesting. As an open world action game, Dying Light follows the tried and tested method of giving you a great playground to explore and complete missions. Most of your time will be spent wandering the decrepit streets, full of the undead, trying to find the most efficient routes over buildings and other environmental objects as you go here to search for an object or there to kill another special enemy. Kyle is particularly skilled at freerunning, and this athleticism is crucial to surviving while jumping, climbing, and practically jumping. everything.

Looking at any surface and hitting ‘R’ will make Kyle climb, and his mobility is often his most important asset in getting through in one piece. You always can quarrel zombies, and there are often situations where you have no other choice, but it is very clear that this is not the most ideal option.

For one thing, guns aren’t a big factor here. Not only are bullets extremely difficult to find, but firing any shot risks attracting the attention of zombies, which are much more difficult to shake just by jumping a fence. Most of your time will be spent using pipes, pipe wrenches, boards, and whatever else you feel can decapitate a zombie if you hit it hard enough. Everything has different levels of power and rarity, and using a weapon too often will cause it to break and become effectively useless. Don’t worry though, as you can use spare parts to repair and even upgrade your favorite weapons with new upgrades if you have the right materials.

In practice, it feels a bit like a less infuriating version of the Breath of the Wild gear system. Your weapons are not necessarily made of glass but, like the fluid game, we encourage you to avoid stagnation and keep moving on to other teams. But if you Really Like that pipe wrench, maybe you can drop a mod on it that will set your enemies on fire and make the weapon that much more viable.

RPG elements come into play most strongly when it comes to building Kyle, who starts out with three branching skill trees governing his abilities. Every time you climb another ledge or jump on the hood of another car, Kyle will earn a few more points to level his agility tree. Every time you hit another zombie with a piece of wood, you will earn some points towards your power tree. This creates an enjoyable and rewarding feedback loop in which no instance of Dying Light’s game feels like it’s going to waste. It does not matter what you do, something is leveling up and eventually awarding rewards to make the game much easier.

Being the Platinum Edition, you can be sure that there is an absolute mountain of content to chew on. While it may at times seem like Dying Light 2 has perpetually been the game to come out ‘soon’, Techland has kept fans busy by maintaining a near-constant stream of updates and DLC for the last time. six years. For Switch, all of this content is free and easily adds an additional fifty hours to an already sizeable base game. Also, those of you who want to search for this content with a friend or two can enjoy the local cooperative (wireless) or online. There’s even a fun ‘Be the Zombie’ game mode for those of you who want to fight other players, although it has to be said that this feels more like a fun distraction than a full game mode. All of this is to say, Dying Light is a tremendously good investment for your money; Chances are you won’t end this one feeling like you’ve been ripped off.

The only major complaint we can really make against Dying Light is that this Switch port is obviously not the prettiest version on the market. The 30 FPS frame rate stays reasonably close to your target, but things tend to get more choppy when more things happen on the screen, and this can be especially excruciating when fleeing the night hordes.

Beyond this, the murkier textures, blurrier shadows, and more frequent pop-ins also take a bit of the excitement out of the action. All that said, let’s not discount the miraculous effort that went into making Dying Light work. absolutely on the humble hardware of the Switch. It may look pretty rough around the edges, but these visual compromises are easily removed for the convenience of playing such an ambitious launch on the fly. Given this, it goes without saying that if you are not one to take your Switch out of the dock or out of the house very often, there aren’t many reasons to buy this version unless you don’t have access to other, more powerful hardware. to run it.

conclusion

Dying Light on Switch is quite a remarkable achievement, and we’re happy to report that Techland has mostly stuck with this one. Its ambitious zombie-filled open world is unlike anything in the Switch library, and between the main campaign and six years of constant DLC updates, there are potentially hundreds of hours of fun here. Of course, all of this comes at a performance cost that can be medium compared to other platforms, but this is perfectly offset by the convenience of playing in handheld mode. We’d give Dying Light a strong recommendation, albeit with the caveat that Switch owners who rarely play handheld may want to pause and consider buying it elsewhere. Wherever you are, we highly recommend that you consider this Switch port; it really is pretty good.