Dying Light: Platinum Edition Is A Perplexing Value Proposition

Dying Light, and the meaty expansion that followed (aptly named The Following) are two beloved titles in zombie-survival gaming. They’re also over six years old, so when developer Techland showed off Dying Light 2 a few weeks ago, fans breathed a sigh of relief to see the project at all after an indefinite delay early last year.

But in the interim, Dying Light has been supported with free and paid DLC. Community events, weapons, and character skins compliment meatier DLC like The Following and smaller releases such as The Bozak Horde. These tinier, expansion-style DLC packs were included in the Enhanced Edition that dropped in 2016 and is currently available on Steam for $60 retail. The recently released Platinum Edition, meanwhile, costs $100 and includes every piece of DLC for the game to date.

What you’re getting in Dying Light: Platinum Edition is all the good stuff Enhanced Edition provided, plus a slew of weapons, skins, and buggy paint jobs that will more likely than not go unused. The only DLC of note in the Platinum Edition that isn’t included in the Enhanced Edition is the Hellraid mode, a dungeon-crawler that was much maligned by fans but recently got a bit of an overhaul by Techland (including a new story mode).

There’s almost no way you could fill your cart with enough Dying Light DLC (that you’d actually use) to justify buying this whole collection. This is without mentioning that you can’t upgrade an existing purchase to the Platinum Edition. That’s right, even if you’re missing just one DLC, the Platinum Edition requires a full purchase. Meaning it also isn’t useful to collectors trying to fill out their catalog.

After spending some time seeing what it has to offer, I can’t recommend Dying Light: Platinum Edition to anyone but the most diehard fans, and even then it would likely be cheaper at this point to buy whatever DLC you’re currently missing. What I can do, however, is suggest Dying Light: Enhanced Edition, which is often on sale. If you’re so inclined, and enjoy the game, peruse the DLC packs, maybe pick two or three that appeal to you, and grab those. There’s plenty about Dying Light to like, and more than enough content in the vanilla release to keep you satisfied until the release of the sequel.

This coverage is based on time spent with the PC version of Dying Light: Platinum Edition. A copy was provided to us by Techland.