I had pondered whether I would have any less excitement from this brutal survival horror-parkour when I embarked on my fourth adventure of jumping across roofs while chopping zombies in two via the Dying Light series. Even if the fundamentals haven’t changed much since 2022’s Dying Light 2: Stay Human, I’m pleasantly happy to report that it’s still a ton of fun after more than 40 hours of tucking and rolling. The fact that you play as a human with monster DNA pumped into you, allowing you to tear people’s heads off with your bare hands, ups the ante a little on this journey across undead Eurasian cities and countrysides.
That’s both gratifying and unnerving, and getting caught out at night and surrounded by volatiles you have no chance of overcoming is still utterly terrifying. The Beast doesn’t contribute much beyond its intimidating mechanics, which is the single significant letdown. After ten years of games with minimal advances, that hasn’t left much space for surprises. Nevertheless, there is merit to a consistently enjoyable series, and I gladly slogged through every climbing problem and side quest I could come across.
The story of Kyle Crane, the main character of the first game, is continued in this sequel. After a series of rather graphic events, he is changed into a half-beast, half-man monster that can jump fifty feet in the air and scream so loudly that it causes psychic damage to the undead. It’s still really strange. The paper-thin plot, which pits you against the most clichéd Bond villain and mad scientist in the world on a revenge quest that unfolds exactly as you expect, isn’t much more than that, but it’s at least a decent enough pretext to go after bosses and take part in the side quests, which are typically better written and occasionally downright ridiculous.
Additionally, despite the tale requiring as little work as possible, I didn’t feel the need to skip the extended talks where you get to know the characters because they are at least memorable. You energize yourself by hunting dangerous, genetically enhanced zombies with superpowers called Chimeras and injecting yourself with their blood as you race toward your final confrontation (which took my completionist self approximately 40 hours, but could be completed in less than 20).
The Beast’s primary new features, such as the ability to shoulder-charge through a group of zombies without getting hurt, and some truly goofy ones, like the ability to reverse direction in midair by yanking on your grapple hook with profane force, come into play here. The ability to transform into a Hulk-like monster to exact retribution adds a clever twist to an already fantastic structure, and it’s really thrilling to be able to drop your machete and kill 20 zombies in ten seconds.
Most of your time will feel familiar if you have played Dying Light before.
You only get to go full werewolf occasionally after you’ve filled up your wrath meter from dealing and absorbing damage, so even this is a rather minor change to the standard Dying Light blueprint. If you’ve played a Dying Light game previously, the great bulk of your playtime will feel very similar because you’re still swinging lead pipes and escaping from Volatiles as usual for the remainder of the game. It seems like a bit of a run, jump, or slide down memory lane, but that’s not necessarily a negative thing because it reminds you of some happy experiences.
The boss battles against highly skilled infected that provide you with new skills are another feature that sets Beast apart from its predecessors. Each of these encounters introduces a new kind of bad guy that then begins to appear in the wild. For example, there may be a muscular, brutish ghoul that gains the ability to turn invisible, leaving you frantically looking over your shoulder and listening for growls in the dark, or a fast-moving skeletal zombie that leaps through the air, dances on top of lesser undead, and tackles you with sharp claws in the blink of an eye.
The new location where you will spend all of your time while pursuing your vengeance is the open-world valley of Castor Woods, which blends classic Dying Light game mechanics into a comfortable small package. It features both a city region with lots of stone buildings to climb and expansive rural expanses reminiscent of the original’s The Following expansion.
Castor Woods is relatively small in comparison to the expansive maps of Dying Light and its first sequel. You can clearly see that The Beast was initially intended to be an extension of Dying Light 2 when you encounter the mountains that enclose a circular area that can be traversed by car in a few minutes. However, this isn’t a huge deal because they make good use of the available space without being overshadowed by vast stretches of emptiness.
It also has the essential components of any quality Dying Light game: I was reminded of the benefits of staying on rooftops and jumping from one location to another to avoid the crowds below when I was in the large metropolitan area. When I ventured out into the woods and swamps that occupy most of the map, I did my best to use cars to smash my way to my destination and stay out of the open. Everything about Castor Woods is very appropriate and doesn’t really stand out, much like a lot of The Beast, but I still made a ton of new memories and left a horrifying trail of devastation in my wake.
Lastly, I must give Techland credit for creating the most technically sound Dying Light game to date, as I managed to finish it without encountering any significant or recurring flaws. Aside from a single crash and a little pop-in here and there, it was a rather smooth ride throughout, and that’s even though I played primarily before the day-one patch. I played on my high-end PC, so I probably had about the greatest experience one could wish for.
There were a few annoying instances where my character got stuck in a vent because of some buggy geometry, and I had to move my character around for a few minutes before I could move on. There were also a few instances where my character got stuck in the environment at the worst possible time and my mission was in danger, but these were infrequent enough that I didn’t feel like throwing things at the screen.
Verdict
The rooftops and flesh pits I’ve grown to adore over the previous ten years make a fun comeback in Dying Light: The Beast. The tactic of turning into a terrifying monster in order to battle other monsters works well and largely compensates for the map’s lack of surprises and the story’s basic nature. For those who have recently played the previous two games, The Beast may seem a little repetitive, but aside from your newfound ability to go on rampages and some strange new boss battles, it does keep fairly closely to what worked in earlier games. Although its distinctive mix of parkour and melee-focused action is still present, more Dying Light is definitely not a bad thing.
