Dying Light: The Beast Review

My watch beeps at me, indicating that it’s almost nightfall as I gather the remaining loot in a locked room inside a building I just cleared of infected. I crawl back through the vent that led me inside and head for the door, but unfortunately I’ve taken too long and night has fallen, bringing all the nocturnal hunters with it. At first I consider just fanging it for as long as I can, but activating my Survivor Sense (think Eagle Eye) via a quick R3 push and I see that there are three Volatiles very nearby. “Fuck that” I say, as I scram back inside, through the vent and into the locked room where I sit for 12 in-game hours waiting for the safety of sunrise, where I am the apex predator. That’s Dying Light: The Beast, a game that gives you tools to slaughter hordes of zombies in broad daylight but makes you all talk when it goes dark. It’s a feeling that was lost with Dying Light 2 Stay Human but has found its way back here.

The Beast is Techland’s third standalone entry in its Dying Light series and is a sequel to the 2015 self-titled original. It’s set in 2036, the same year the events of Stay Human occur. It sees the original protagonist Kyle Crane returning to parkour across rooftops and dropkick zombies all over Castor Woods as he endeavours to extract revenge on the man that captured him and experimented on him for 13 years – The Baron.

Castor Woods – a view to die for

It’s a pretty thin plot and nothing that you haven’t seen before, but it’s the best story execution we’ve seen in the Dying Light series so far. It has a couple of neat twists and surprises along the way, but what made me invested in Kyle’s vengeance was an array of interesting side characters. Some that were crucial to the narrative, such as Olivia – the person who helps you escape and Lydia and her group hidden way in the woods, or Max, an older man who gives you a late-game side quest. And Kyle, as juiced-up and goofy as he is at times, is quite compelling thanks to some great voice work by Roger Smith.

But Dying Light is a bit like John Wick – people aren’t really here for the story; even though the world is cool, they just want some entertaining action, and The Beast delivers this in blood-soaked spades. Combat is just as brutal and visceral as it’s always been, but in The Beast it’s the best it’s ever felt. You can feel the juicy thwacks as your weapon connects with a zombie’s head, resulting in blood splattering everywhere, like when you try and put sauce on a meat pie at a footy match. It’s just so bloody satisfying.

As is Dying Light’s modus operandi, you’ll have a vast range of weapons to use – knives, swords, shovels, bats and a whole lot more. A lot of these can be modified to deal additional damage, often elemental (such as fire and electricity), by finding Blueprints in the wild and using crafting resources. There’s also a bunch of ranged weapons: guns, bows and crossbows that can take your enemy down from distance, but sometimes nothing beats a good old-fashioned dropkick. I was using it so frequently that my partner would say, “You can’t dropkick your way through the game.” Well, you can bet I died trying.

There will be blood

The experiments Kyle endured mutated him further, giving him beast-like power that can be used in combat once your Beast Mode metre fills up. At first you won’t be able to control Kyle’s Beast Mode, with Crane pounding the living shit out of whoever was the unlucky one to push him over the edge, but early in the game you’ll unlock the ability to control when Beast Mode activates.

There’s a bunch of other perks that Beast Mode unlocks, such as a ground pound that would make King Kong proud, but Kyle is a little clunky to control when activated, so I found it easiest to simply rip and tear through anyone I could get my hands on (literally). Watching Crane rip off a zombie’s head is violent but extremely satisfying and comes highly recommended.

One major point of difference that The Beast introduces is boss fights against powerful infected known as Chimeras. An early one is an agile little fucker that jumps on top of a zombie’s head and then dives at you with its razor-sharp claws, but a lot of them are just different variations of a jacked monster. Once defeated, Kyle will inject himself with their blood to further mutate his DNA (unlock Beast Mode abilities), but these monsters will start appearing in the game world, adding another layer of challenge when navigating the world.

While I quite enjoyed these encounters, it’s here that I want to pull out my tiny violin. If you die in the world, any resources that you’ve used previously (ammo, health) are lost, as well as some XP. A fair trade if you’re gambling by taking on hordes of zombies. Where I take umbrage though (and I don’t know if this was a glitch), is that when this occurs in a story-beat boss fight. So on two occasions, I had boss fights where I was not successful, and upon restart at the initiation of the fight I had lost all of my resources I just used. Once, I had to spend over an hour doing a side mission and killing enemies to obtain loot to have enough resources to get me through. It was not fun. Now, later in the game this did not happen thankfully, so I am not sure if it was a bug that was fixed with a patch or punishment for being bad, but I flicked it over to Journalist mode (Story difficulty) if I lost a fight to ensure it didn’t happen again.

Watch out for what lurks in the dark

Castor Woods is a more compact map than Harran and The City, feeling more like a rustic European town than a sprawling metropolis. There’s still plenty of verticality though, and traversing across the rooftops and buildings of Castor Woods feels more fluid than ever. It’s why Dying Light doesn’t employ a fast-travel system, because parkouring is just so much fun. I can’t say the same for platforming however, which can be a rather clunky to engage with, and several times I thought I was jumping correctly only to be a human air ball.

But while parkour is fun, legging it through swamps and grasslands doesn’t quite hit the same, plus Kyle won’t always eat Nutri-Grain before a mission, so there will be times when you’ll want to get behind the wheel to make it to your destination. Dying Light’s The Following introduced vehicles to the series, but where that game allowed you to customise your ride, vehicles in The Beast are purely for transport and running over as many zombies as it can handle. The driving mechanics aren’t the greatest, but it beats running when you can’t be arsed.

There are a few primary safe houses that you’ll find yourself frequenting often, as well as plenty to be found out in the world. The story-related ones are more like hubs, and here you can engage with members of the community, where you’ll likely be asked to complete favours for them, buy and sell items, use a workbench to upgrade your weapons, and catch some shuteye until either night or the next day.

Driving Light

Dying Light’s gameplay hook has always been its day/night cycle, with stronger and more powerful enemies coming out to play when the sun comes down. It’s risk versus reward when venturing out at night, and The Beast’s night cycle really highlights this, so much so that I would avoid going out night altogether and sleep past it in a safe house. Let it be known, the night cycle is hard and it’s highly likely you will die. I did manage a few successful evening jaunts, but it was stealth all the way. I’ll admit, it’s thrilling when it works, and it works a lot of the time. But there were a few instances where I asked myself if the difficulty of the evening was making me avoid it completely, then is it correctly balanced?

My man Olivier Deriviere has once again composed a soundtrack that compliments the experience well. It’s got the high BPM cheek-clenchers that are required when the stakes are elevated, those tunes perfect for when the mood is more sombre, and those that just accompany you as you venture across Castor Woods.

Final Thoughts

Techland has spent more than 10 years refining its open-world zombie-slicing sandbox blueprint, and there’s no doubt that The Beast is best rendition of that. Techland has clearly been listening to its fans on what they love about the series, as The Beast is a mix of everything that Dying Light has been made of thus far, but all the good bits. It’s got the survival horror of the first game, the heavy action approach of Stay Human and the vehicles of The Following. Castor Woods’ more condensed layout allows for the gameplay strengths to shine, with tight parkour mechanics, brutal and satisfying combat and a terrifyingly tense night time (even if it feels a little unbalanced) makes for a thrilling and comforting experience. It’s great to see Crane return and the story has some good moments, even if it’s a little plain and predictable. Regardless, Dying Light fans will be happy here.

Reviewed on PS5 Pro // Review code supplied by publisher

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