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Dying Light
Techland's spiritual successor to Dead Island lets players free-run across a zombie-filled open world. We’ve already gotten our hands dirty with the game, but at this year’s Gamescom we got a chance to partner up for a run though the city in co-op.
During our hands-on with the game, our goal was to set up a bunch of explosives inside an apartment complex in order to send out a signal to other survivors who might be out there. However, this larger goal was punctuated by several smaller challenges that pitted us against our partner.
While in co-op, you’ll want to spend a lot of time working together to ensure that you and your friend survive, but during these co-op challenges, you’ll be presented with the opportunity to have some friendly competition. One challenge had my co-op partner and I competing to see who could kill the most zombies in a set amount of time, while another challenge had us racing to get through a section of the sewers faster.
These challenges are always opt-in, so you can choose to not participate if you’d like, but they’re a good way to earn extra cash and other bonuses.
Co-op challenges won’t be the only point in the game that you’re interacting with other players, however. Much like in games like Dark Souls, other players can invade your game and hunt you down. When dusk comes, your game is vulnerable to attack from other players. These players choose to invade your game as a hunter – an extra-powerful zombie who can easily eviscerate you and your co-op friends.
When these invasion challenges happen, human players will have to survive the hunter’s attacks and then find and destroy his three nests to win. Meanwhile, hunter players have unlimited respawns, and if they kill the human players six times they win. Hunters are quick foes who can jump around the environment and climb up the sides of walls. Fortunately, humans are equipped with a ultraviolet light that will temporarily stun the Hunter and give them some time to run away. Players will be able to opt out of these co-op opportunities.
During our hunter invasion, my partner and I barely won, but I’m eager to jump into the role of a hunter and see how challenging that role is. Dying Light releases on PS4, Xbox One, PS3, 360, and PC this coming February.
For a deeper look at the game's single player, check out our hands-on from E3.
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Dying Light
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