Dying Light: The Beast is neither an expansion nor a sequel. However, it is another good opportunity for an extremely spectacular extermination of zombies in a beautiful, open world of reasonable size.
Much more than a DLC, but probably a bit too little for a sequel, and certainly not a spin-off… I admit, I had a lot of trouble categorizing Dying Light: The Beast into a standard type of game releases. But it seems to be just the next big game in this universe, telling the next tale about the characters known from the previous games. It feels almost like the third main game, but based heavily on the second. The Beast initially started as a DLC to the second game, but during production it grew to the size of a standalone game.
Dying Light 2: Stay Human was a very pleasant surprise for me. I did not expect such pleasant and well-implemented combat, exploration, and parkour mechanics. The necessity of making decisions under time pressure without the option of loading a save perfectly complemented the whole, even if these decisions did not significantly affect the course of the plot.
The Beast returns with equally enjoyable parkour, minor changes in combat, and a more condensed, open world – no longer for 500+ hours – and a plot devoid of choices. We once again play as Kyle Crane from the first game, which immediately rules out one of the endings of The Following expansion. Throughout the game, we learn how he survived with the DNA of the powerful Volatile monster in his blood and who he is now seeking revenge on in the picturesque outdoors of Alpine villages and one larger town. And while all gameplay mechanics and changes in them are definitely a plus, the new story and especially the main missions disappointed me a bit. Compared to the second game, it’s a small step back. Fortunately, there are still side quests and some of them really stick in your memory for a long time.
An old friend returns
The beginning of the game will reveal what happened to Kyle Crane over all these years after the events of Dying Light: The Following. It’s no secret that he was infected with a potion that turned him into a powerful Volatile attacking at night, and now he has become something of a hybrid of a human and a zombie – a beast endowed with superhuman powers. He wants to use his strength to take revenge on his tormentor – a mad scientist known as the Baron. He quickly finds an ally in the form of young and sharp Olivia, residing in an abandoned monastery somewhere in the Castor Woods valley, modeled on the Swiss Alps, and then he wins over the local community occupying the town hall located near the town.
Dying Light: The Beast, Techland, 2025
Why does Olivia live alone in the monastery, instead of with an armed, battle-hardened, and neighborly community? Probably just so that we could run between these two places. Indeed, the plot quickly becomes predictable. We alternately do missions for Olivia and for the town hall, running back and forth to have a conversation. Olivia’s quests are related to Kyle’s “beastly” side and always end with a fight with a mini-boss – a powerful Chimera, which allows the hero to increase his superhuman powers, and we help the town in their problems – find someone, turn on the power or water supply.
Then a third faction appears, living in mountain caves, and the scenario seems to gradually forget about the people in the town. The ending somewhat makes up for it, especially the visit to the psychiatric hospital, but overall you can feel the schematic nature. It lacks some epic, memorable main missions in interesting locations, like the one in the skyscraper in Stay Human. And the dialogues also disappoint. There is a frequently repeated mistake in games where characters talk to each other exclusively about missions, tasks, main goals. It doesn’t matter that they are saving their lives, spending a lot of time – there are no signs of sympathy, feelings, jokes – only conversations that sound like at work about achieving good results, while the boss is listening in.
Fortunately, there are still side quests, which were made with much more imagination and sensitivity. That’s where we experience various human stories, often moving, and they will take us to truly extraordinary, unique locations, show absolutely crazy, surreal scenes – absolutely do not miss quests from a certain hippie! They are the reason you should do the story!
Zombie Slaughterhouse Showdown
Story aside, Dying Light has always shone with its gameplay and in this regard, The Beast does not disappoint. I have the impression that another zombie game, which had its premiere between this and the second DL – Dead Island 2 – had a lot of impact on The Beast! Beating up roamers with blunt weapons in DL2: Stay Human was great – the hit impact, sound effects, and animations of swinging various sticks, machetes, or spades were all done perfectly. But then Dead Island 2 came out and raised the bar a bit – the battles were even more spectacular, more brutal, with better graphics and the option to use firearms, which were missing in Stay Human.
Dying Light: The Beast, Techland, 2025
The developers of Dying Light: The Beast seem to have taken up the challenge and the melee combat here appears to be slightly better than in Dead Island 2. In terms of animation of attacks and sound effects, there was probably little that could be improved, but the clashes have become much more brutal and bloody. There seem to be a bigger variety of reactions and effects to getting hit. You can see the inspiration from the latest installments of Doom, because zombies not only lose their heads and limbs, but also pieces of skin, revealing bones, and even the brain. Such a gradual degradation of the enemies’ bodies is similar to the demons from Eternal and The Dark Ages.
There is much less human opponents. Usually, these will be Baron’s mercenaries, because there are hardly any bandits in Castor Woods. Stay Human was probably more varied in this respect. In The Beast, human enemies are just a minor addition to the zombies. On the other hand, small details that make the open world believable are appreciated, such as sporadic clashes of mercenaries with zombies, which we can observe from a distance.
Shooting is optional
If you were missing firearms in DL2: Stay Human, now you will have access to standard set: a pistol, a machine gun, a shotgun, a carbine, a sniper rifle. However, these weapons should be treated only as extras to your melee weapons. Ammunition, after all, runs out quickly and it’s hard to stock up on it. So shooting remains as a last resort – sometimes it’s worth eliminating a problematic zombie from a distance, but a bow and various types of grenades or Molotov cocktails will work just as well. It is also noticeable that not as much effort and heart was put into firearms as into melee weapons – we have 17 different models, but without focusing heavily on exploration, we will find only a few of them, and besides, they are visually far inferior to those in Dead Island 2.
Dying Light: The Beast, Techland, 2025
I was also a bit disappointed with the beast mode, which can be activated after filling the bar using regular hits. It’s nothing else but the good old Berserk, a power up from the first Doom. For a limited time, our attacks with fists deal considerable damage. Yes, it is useful and functional – it has saved me more than once from an attack by a large group or during duels with Chimeras, but apart from the occasional animation of tearing a zombie apart with bare hands, it looks rather mediocre, it lacks that feeling of power and strength when hitting a zombie with a regular shovel. This mode needs slightly better animations and sound effects.
On the plus side, the battles with Chimeras – powerful zombies, whose blood Kyle later injects himself with to unlock subsequent perks in beast mode, deserve some credit. Although the missions with them are similar, the Chimeras are not the same. Sometimes there is a slow, huge beast, sometimes agile and fast, one disappears, another duplicates – there may not be too many variants, but at least it’s not always the same.
Dying Light: The Beast, Techland, 2025
Parkour!
Villedor in Stay Human was a large, modern metropolis. Castor Woods is totally different in this respect. Rural landscapes dominate everywhere, often the only obstacles to overcome will be bales of straw in the grain fields, strangely lushly sown despite the ongoing apocalypse, or a fence separating the farms. The town is small, very atmospheric, with buildings in a historical style and a large number of abandoned apartments full of details you can explore. The buildings are spaced closely enough that you can move across the rooftops. Various platforms, street lamps, wrecks, and sheds help in parkour. Kyle skillfully grabs onto all kinds of cornices, windowsills, and shutters. Parkour is generally as good and smooth as before, only the heights we move at have been significantly reduced and probably for this reason there is no longer an option to use a paraglider.
However, we can do rock climbing similar to Uncharted 4. The stamina bar disappeared while doing parkour – a change that is definitely a plus. There are also various standard observation towers where you can unlock hideouts, and reaching the top is an environmental puzzle in itself – sometimes the starting point is significantly distant and you need to use a zip line or other method. As for environmental puzzles, there aren’t enough of them here. We only have the hidden safe codes and the cables known from the second game.
Instead of a paraglider, we can drive a car, added a bit on the same principle as the firearms. It is useful and significantly shortens the time it takes to traverse the terrain between the monastery, the town hall, the people in the caves, and mission locations. It is also a great battering ram for groups of zombies, but it quickly deteriorates and consumes fuel even faster – everything is designed so that the car has to be used sparingly, not all the time. In addition, there is only one model of a drivable car, and it is probably available in only two colors – more variety would be appreciated.
Dying Light: The Beast, Techland, 2025
Zombies are like mosquitoes
The game is again more challenging at night when Volatiles roam. Fighting with them is practically a suicide and the best way to act is to escape pursuits similar to GTA. Escapes are quite demanding and success often depends not only on efficient movement in the dark, but also on the number of hiding places we have unlocked in the open world – it is worth unlocking as many of them as you can to create the largest network in various places on the map. The game can get scary, the nights are really dark and you can see little without a flashlight, however, thanks to the system of beds and sleeping until morning, you can plan your trips so that you will always operate during the day.
The very enjoyable exploration of a really interesting map is ruined mostly by… zombies! Seriously, their density per square meter is worse than mosquitoes on a summer evening, and the frequency of attacks surpasses the aggressive wolverines from Far Cry 5. There is no moment of peace to look at something, explore, because something is constantly attacking us. And even if we manage to defeat a group of 20 zombies so that we are safe within a radius of 10-15 meters, this state is only temporary. Something will start attacking us soon anyway. At some point, I just lost the desire to explore and search for crafting materials, I just ran around avoiding fights and got into every available car. I understand that gameplay can’t become boring or dull, but with such a well-made map and exploration, it would be great to have at least a longer moment of respite after wiping out a group of enemies. Something like this happens in closed spaces of shops and apartments – but not in the open.
The bar just went up again
Besides these cons, Dying Light: The Beast has quite good graphics, wonderful music, which plays far too rarely, and a well-thought-out character development tree with a small number of, but very specific, perks. These additional abilities give us a sense of character leveling, not the ever-increasing numbers in equipment statistics. It is also necessary to praise the technical state and optimization. Compared to the bug-ridden Stay Human, this time my playthrough The Beast was not only without major, but also minor problems.
The new production from Techland is not only a must-have for fans of the Dying Light series or zombie games, but also for anyone who likes open-world games. Castor Woods is a place worth visiting, especially since the size of the area and the number of activities are quite well balanced. Although the main missions lack the magic, but the side quests make up for it. Currently, there probably isn’t a game with better zombie combat, and after all, gameplay is ultimately what matters most, especially since the game can be played in co-op. In this regard, Dying Light has once again set a high bar for the competition and I have no idea how they will improve it in potential sequels.
PROS:
excellent, spectacular, even more improved system of extremely brutal melee combat with zombies;
multitude of different zombie animations and reactions to attacks, impact effects;
firearms and cars are useful additions to combat and exploration;
parkour system allowing for smooth and intuitive movement and climbing;
atmospheric, reasonable sized open world full of details and easter eggs;
rural landscapes of Castor Woods delight the eye and encourage exploration;
a few really memorable side missions;
various minor Quality of Life improvements compared to DL2: Stay Human.
CONS:
less than thrilling plot with mediocre dialogues and a predictable pattern of main missions, which lacked a bit of magic;
beast mode is a typical Berserk, less spectacular than fighting with a shovel;
the number of zombies in the open world and endless attacks can discourage exploration;
only one type of a drivable car, despite a large number of wrecks of other models.
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