Dying Light: The Beast is like one of those “boots on the ground” first person shooter sequels, where the studio recognises that the last game maybe wasn’t quite what people wanted and tries to go back to what everyone loves the last time round. Where the original Dying Light put much of the focus on the zombies, how they were evolving, and keeping them terrifying, Dying Light 2 shifted focus to warring human factions like every other piece of zombie media you can find these days. Dying Light: The Beast seems to be a significant course correction, ensuring that the zombies are front and centre, not just on your screen, but in the narrative as well.
This also comes with a return to playing as Kyle Crane, the protagonist of the original game, as he’s being tortured and experimented on by the mysterious Baron. You quickly learn that Crane has been locked up here for 13 years before escaping out into the Swiss Alps, of all places. Specifically, Dying Light: The Beast is set in Caster Woods, which used to be a tourist hotspot before all the zombies came and ruined it. It’s still a beautiful location, but it’s one that’s filled with disused warehouses, an abandoned town, fields, and of course legions of the undead. Then, when the sun goes down and you can’t see a thing, the volatiles – extra evolved zombies that are exceptionally difficult to beat in combat – come out to play whilst you cower and weep in a bed that’s bathed in zombie-repelling UV light.
Night time is absolutely terrifying again, with volatiles roaming freely everywhere and the environment being literally pitch black without your torch. Which these super-zombies are smart enough to see and track. It’s incredibly intense at night, turning the action gameplay of daytime into a stealth sequence so intense you’ll stand still for minutes at a time in a bush trying to figure out where to go next. Of course, all the best loot is found inside dark areas, so you’ll need to brave the night to get your hands on it as they’re packed with beasties hiding from the sunlight during the day. It’s a clever dichotomy. You can do plenty of looting during the day, but those dark areas are there, just constantly tempting you until it’s been long enough since you ventured out in the dark that you can rationalise it as “surely it won’t be that bad.”
Crane’s main priority is getting revenge on the Baron. As is typical of people with names like that, he has an army of soldiers, plenty of resources, and he’s an absolute bastard. For some god forsaken reason he’s been developing increasingly more dangerous zombies. Thankfully, Kyle Crane has some zombie DNA inside him, lending him beastly abilities as he flies into a rage, zombie hulks out and starts beating up enemies with his fists, occasionally grabbing one and ripping them in two, or punching straight through their chest. This also allows him to use a pathogen in the blood of the Baron’s zombie experiments to improve his zombie hulking abilities – things like picking up large objects to throw, ground slam shockwaves, super speed, super jump, etc.
These experimental zombies are boss fights and the game is front-loaded with a few of them. Whilst a couple were pretty standard big tough bosses that summoned minions, another was a much more agile foe that can jump off of its minions at you as well as summon clouds of mist. They’re all good enough for a boss fights, but I worry that the big tough ones will get a bit repetitive if there’s many more of them.
While you’re waiting for opportunities to take out experimental zombies like a child eagerly anticipating yet another Fortnite skin to waste their parents’ money on, you’ll be doing standard Dying Light stuff. That’s looting stuff for resources, clearing new safe areas, looting stuff for more resources, activating power substations, and looting stuff for even more resources. You do a lot of looting from the environment in this game, and there’s a good reason for that; it’s because the crafting system is a bit frustrating. On normal difficulty, after about eleven to twelve hours I’ve managed to install only a few weapon mods, simply because I never have the resources after crafting invaluable consumable items like bandages, Molotov cocktails, grenades, and throwing knives. There’s just always one resource I don’t have enough of and it’s always a different resource from the last time.
You have to expect some looting in a game like this, but to return from a night of pilfering in which you successfully outran seventeen volatiles, only to realise that you need to go looting again is as frustrating as forgetting to buy Yorkshires for your Sunday roast and having to race back to the shops before they close – you’ve also run out of eggs in this scenario, so can’t make your own. At least survivor sense no longer has a cooldown on it, so you can highlight nearby loot all you like, but it would be nicer if things stayed highlighted for longer because spamming it constantly seems pointless. It doesn’t help that the weapon mods, or at least the ones I have so far, don’t feel particularly effective and only trigger on critical hits, which isn’t very often and almost makes them feel severely neutered compared to the first game. Hopefully this is just because they’re lower level mods still.
There are a few frustrations outside of the loot system. The ease and regularity with which zombies can grab you in combat is patently absurd, even more than it was in the original game, interrupting your attack and forcing you to smash buttons until you free yourself, redirect it, or waste a throwing knife on an instant kill from the grapple. It just seems to happen without any resistance even when I’m swinging with a big hammer. It also took me a little while to readjust to aiming, as sometimes you just miss when swinging at an enemy in front of you due to the path your arm takes and the zombie somehow threading the needle to avoid it with its casual zombie movements. Even after getting used to it again, it still happens sometimes. I really shouldn’t be missing a zombie that’s in front of me when I’m swinging a giant axe at it.
There are now cutscenes where you can actually see Kyle Crane, but he’s not looking good. Not in terms of all the scarring, which to be expected, but the facial animations don’t match his incredible emotive voice acting, making it look really strange as a seemingly slightly bored Kyle shouts about killing the Baron, some zombies or whatever. The facial animation on everyone is a bit weak, but it’s most noticeable on Kyle because he’s understandably rather angry all the time. Of course, outside of this the game is absolutely stunning in that dilapidated, post-apocalyptic way you’d expect, until the Sun goes down, at which point you can’t see anything because you’ve turned your torch off and are cowering in fear.
These flaws don’t have too much of an effect on the experience so far, though. It’s a return to the classic tone and style of Dying Light. This feels more like the truer sequel to Dying Light I was expecting, one that’s focused on the zombies and being terrifying instead of everything being about how humans are bad – we get enough of that in the real world these days. Dying Light: The Beast is tough and brutal whilst the suns up, and after sunset it’s just tension and terror. I’m not finished yet, but The Beast is mostly the game I wanted it to be.
Stay tuned for our updated and scored review in the next few days. Dying Light: The Beast is out now for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, and coming later this year for PS5 and Xbox One. It’s available as a standalone game release, as well as being included as part of the season pass for Dying Light 2.