Settling into my parkour sprint across the rooftops, jumping from ledge to ledge, before dropkicking an infected for a touchdown in the distance, I knew I was back with Dying Light. There’s a certain feel to Techland’s zombie series that captures a particular flow state that’s so recognisable, making it as easy for me to slip back into as a pair of bloodstained, flesh-starved slippers.

In Dying Light: The Beast, the developers have been rather open about how this beast came into existence. An idea of DLC bloomed out beyond its original ambition, morphing and mutating into its own behemoth. Was the increase in ambition justified in the final prototype? Join me as we race across the ruins of the world to find out, won’t you?

Rage Against The Dying Of The Light

Generic protagonist turned cult hero, Kyle Crane, is back. Having come through the ordeal of Haran in the first game, our gruff, no-nonsense action man finds himself captured, tortured and experimented upon by a fiend known only as The Baron. The opening of The Beast sees us escaping this hellish fate, with nothing but vengeance on the mind and bloodied machete on hand.

Dying Light: The Beast then descends into some of the most run-of-the-mill storytelling I’ve seen this year. Build up allies, kill sub-bosses known as Chimera to gain strength, go after the bad guy. Roger Craig Smith does the best with what he has, with Crane’s return being welcome. Unfortunately, the writing just isn’t of a great standard, often descending into characters talking at each other than having actual conversations.

The plot takes the backseat after the opening, and bar the odd predictable story “twist”, it’s very straightforward. Stilted and wooden delivery are abound, as has become a staple of the series, but it all leads to a forgettable and throwaway narrative arc. Crane getting increasingly incensed at stupidity was humerous for me, at the very least.

Activating Beast Mode

The biggest narrative and gameplay shift stems from Crane’s tortuous experimentation process. Having been exposed to mutations of the virus, he’ll now transform into a hulking, invincible behemoth, smashing and punching through hordes like melting steel beams through butter. In effect, it’s an R3+L3 rage mode ripped out of every action game you’ve ever played, but it’s as fun as it sounds.

Initially, we have little control over it – when the bar fills, it activates. Over time however, it becomes more controlled. I cannot tell you how infuriatingly often it would fill when I had one last shambling survivor clinging to life; after having just cleared an entire mob fighting tooth and nail. This helps form the gameplay loop, though, with Crane and the player required to fight Chimera mini-bosses to improve his beastly capabilities.

Each of these boss fights are intense and brutal, but also prone to frustration. Almost all of them rely on cheap difficulty spikes through throwing in mobs of enemies too. In the early game, they’re especially spongey, often resorting to tedious trials of fist-flinging attrition. When you’re equally matched and acquitted however, they’re a good high point of the campaign missions.

By Dawn’s Early Light

Of course, this is still a Dying Light game, so all the usual suspects are delivered via the flesh deprived masses. Parkour is still exceedingly enjoyable, except for the times the first-person view obscures your depth perception, or the grabbing doesn’t magnetise when it should. Combat is expectantly visceral and smacks harder than a falcon punch. The focus is still very much on melee, with gratifying mods welded onto all manner of close encounter weapons. However, there are some skin-shredding guns in here too.

Weapon durability is a persistent pest, for both better and worse. It’s a constant threat of your weapons breaking (with only five repairs possible before you’re forced to part with your favourite), or your guns running out of ammo, which is relatively scarce. It kept things interesting for me, but it make some of the Chimera and story encounters more tedious than they maybe should be.

Even so, Dying Light: The Beast maintains the series’ gold standard of gratifying movement and combat mechanics. Nothing here is especially new, and it’s been stripped back to the core principles compared to Dying Light 2, but I think that works in its favour given the scope of what the game is. Just don’t be surprised if it’s not as impressive or groundbreaking as what’s come before.

Night Crawler

The day-night cycle is a massive part of the Dying Light DNA and The Beast returns to some form here compared to the sequel. Volatiles are dangerous and lethal again, evoking those terrifying moments in the original. Taking one down is a mission in and of itself, and you’ll be in for a hard fought victory if you do manage it.

Unfortunately, I never felt that Dying Light: The Beast really forced me into these tough scenarios particularly often. Bar the odd story mission finishing at night, or a rare side quest demanding it, most of your game time will be during the day, when they’re just not a factor. It feels like The Beast regenerated a limb, only to cut it off again. This’ll ease the scares for players who struggled with the first, but it leaves a bit of a void in terms of the game using the day-night cycle to its advantage, something the developers had tried to rectify after the sequel suffered with the same issue.

Luckily, on the rare occasion you are caught out past curfew and faced down with the presence of a maddened strict parent volatile, you’ll know it through the adrenaline rush. I just wish there was more emphasis and structure applied to the player to encourage these situations more often.

Crane Your Neck In

Given that Dying Light: The Beast has also been billed as too big for a DLC but not quite a full-blooded numbered entry, you may be wondering about the size of the game overall. The map itself is a self-contained region that takes place in a rural area. It’s majoritively forest, open wilderness, run-down towns and a host of interior spaces.

It’ll take anywhere between 10 and 30 hours to explore, depending if you beeline the story or complete the various side activities. Speaking of, the side content is… okay. You can explore infected filled buildings for loot, activate safe spots with a small parkour challenge, or clear substations of enemies. Side quests have some continual thread of narrative, but they’re largely bland affairs, with a couple of more interesting exceptions.

For the most part, the non-essential content is fine. It provides an excuse to do more of the parkouring and head-bashing, but there’s little meat on their bones to make them a tasty meal by themselves. That extends to the map too, where a lot of your time is spent in warehouses, underground areas or urban structures. While it makes sense, they’re not the most engaging either. When it does branch out into the wilderness a little more, Dying Light: The Beast does catch the wind in its muddied hair though.

Walk A Kyle In My Shoes

While the environments and animations for combat look wonderful, particularly the dynamic gore system that sees real-time limb severance and head explosions upon a meaty hammer blow, Dying Light: The Beast does have some rough technical performance.

I had two story quest objectives bug out on me. The first had me stuck as a quest objective refused to update, requiring a checkpoint restart. The second had an enemy soldier get stuck between the interior ceiling and the exterior roof, preventing me from progressing until he was killed. I had to re-do the entire encounter for that one, which is rather irritating.

I had other minor visual bugs too. Infected getting stuck in walls and clipping through them. A quest completion banner staying glued to my screen no matter how many menus or sleeps I forced Kyle into. His body clipping into the scene when transitioning from gameplay to cutscene where it shouldn’t. Overall, the game looks superb and like I mentioned, the brutality of combat is sensationally captured in the blood and the pounds of flesh that explode everywhere, but it is marred with issues.

All Aboard The Hype Crane

Dying Light: The Beast has left me with a strange impression as a result. I love the series, having finished both Dying Light’s 1 and 2, pouring dozens upon dozens of into each. Having more of the same, but with a return to the night-time thrills of the original, has been a welcome change in direction for me.

Having said that, The Beast struggles with being caught between two ambitions. It’s clearly an expansion in terms of lack of evolution in mechanics and a self-contained world map, but it’s got the run-time and content of a fully fledged entry, without the flair and imagination to make a step up like the sequel. I do think Techland may have been caught in no man’s land with the game’s ambition, and that does show through.

However, it’s still a fantastically engaging and thrilling gameplay experience. Smashing heads with electrified and freezing baseball bats, showering hordes in a flamethrower’s embrace, making desperate leaps across death-defying expanses is all still brilliant. I just can’t help but wonder what may have been, had Dying Light: The Beast been clearer in its ambition from the outset.

Dying Light: The Beast is available now on PlayStation 5 (review platform), PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC.

Developer: Techland
Publisher: Techland

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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