When comparing Dying Light vs Alien Swarm, the Slant community recommends Alien Swarm for most people. In the question“What are the best 4-player local multiplayer games on Steam?” Alien Swarm is ranked 26th while Dying Light is ranked 33rd. The most important reason people chose Alien Swarm is:
The game consists of tried-and-true top-down shooter mechanics that will be familiar to most players; it is reminiscent of older arcade and console shooters.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Fluid parkour movement
The main protagonist is capable of scaling buildings, jumping over obstacles and vaulting over zombies with ease making traversing the open world city a lot more enjoyable.
Pro Expansive weapon-crafting system
There are blueprints found throughout the gameworld that can be used to modify existing weapons in a wide variety of ways by adding various elements to them and creating weapons such as enemy seeking grenades, exploding throwing stars, and makeshift bats with nails through them.
Pro Satisfying combat
The combat is impactful, visceral and offers a great deal of variety in terms of available weapons and different enemy types. It presents a reasonable amount of challenge that is rewarding to overcome and offers multiple ways of emerging victorious in each encounter.
Pro Enjoyable co-operative multiplayer
Dying light features up to four player LAN and online co-op.
Pro Rewarding side-missions
There's a wide variety of side-quests and a large chunk of them are multi-part adventures with great storytelling.
Pro Easy to pick up and play, even for beginners
The game consists of tried-and-true top-down shooter mechanics that will be familiar to most players; it is reminiscent of older arcade and console shooters.
Pro Anyone can download and play the game as it is free-to-play and open-source
The game is completely free and has no microtransactions or ads.
The source code is also free and accessible, so the game can be easily modded.
Pro Easily play with up to 4-players in online co-op
Alien Swarm allows for up to 4-player online co-op, which makes for an easy way to play with a small group of friends or strangers.
Pro Convenient offline LAN support
Alien Swarm offers offline LAN (local area network) support, meaning that the game can be easily played locally with each machine connected together in the same place.
Cons
Con Poor VR UI
Things such as subtitles, instructions, menus, prompts, etc are hard to see clearly.
Con VR has a downgraded visual experience
VR version of the game is low fidelity and introduces visual glitches that the standard version doesn't have.
Con Poor plot and characters
The story is nothing new with many elements that are too familiar at this point. A Reluctant hero and a cold government agent mixed with a plot that can bee seen from miles away points to a lack of imagination while trying to create a game for the masses.
Con Poor multithreading
Sadly Dying Light does not do multi-threading very well which results in low framerates. For a modern game that is to be played on consoles with 8 cores or PCs that also have multiple cores, to not take advantage of proper multi-threading is pretty mind boggling. Really it just comes down to laziness, something that is not new to Techland and their poorly optimized ports.
Con Enabling VR support isn't straightforward
Enabling VR support requires editing config files. Instructions can be found here.
Con VR may cause motion sickness
In addition to some minor persistence issues, there are some sensory information mismatch issues created by the in-game characters movements and players stationary position that can easily induce nausea. The issue is a lot more prominent during cut-scenes that take the control away from the player completely.
Con Can get a bit repetitive
The gameplay doesn't change much from mission to mission; you’re generally just shooting aliens over and over again.
Con Gameplay is too short
The main story only takes about three or four hours to complete, which means you could beat the game in one sitting pretty easily.