The Dying Light: Beast Review

Dying Light: The Beast is hard to talk about Beast, the latest in Techland’s open-world zombie parkour action series. While living a life as a full-price retail game with a cute 20-hour campaign (and something I enjoyed for the most part), the Beast began as a planned expansion of the dying Light 2.

In an already long game (though it’s not as huge as Techland claimed before its release), Dying Light 2 has grown to something similar to the Sandbox of Live Service, highlighting Daily Quest, Fion’s reputation, MicroTransactions, new Game Plus Loops, and even the optional Roguelike mode. Gore in Dying Light 2 also grows griserie, and its parkour is more streamlined (no longer restricted by the character’s stamina gauge), and there are firearms that unlock and collect and fly, facing the game’s quirky pseudo-secular post-apocalyptic conceit.

Depending on who asks and the direction in which the wind is blowing that day, these changes redeem the game or ruin it forever, but today’s Light of Death 2 is a different creature from the one Matthew Castle that bouncing back in 2022. The concept is chucking some of the heavy loads of the original game overboard.

And we head to the scenic nature reserve of Casta Forest, featuring a densely packed old tourist town with small industrial and residential zones adjacent to it, as well as a mixture of forests and mountain paths surrounding them. If it wasn’t for the undead hordes, it would be a good place for a relaxing walk.

Thanks to some impressive lighting, it’s a snack to watch from dusk to dusk. At night, they tend to be patrol by evil “volatile” super zombies, but when they hoove into a sealed, secure room they just slept. For all the stories about scaring the night again with Beast marketing, I generally didn’t mind it, outside of some essential stealth and chase sequences.

To help you navigate the Mountain Trail, the car is a car, not seen from the Beefy expansion in Dying Light 1. It is easy to find, easily refuel, and can be taken from A to B relatively safely when there is no rooftop for the roof to run on. However, DL2’s glider (perfect for traveling between high rooftops) and Fast Travel helped us navigate the sequel’s huge urban landscape.

Oddly, I don’t think it’s a special success or Failure (refrain what you hear from me today). You have to walk around and always notice the enemy teeth Interestingly, the forests and fields outside the central town here do not require navigation as much as Wilder’s streets and skyscrapers. The car can detour this uninteresting trip, but in doing so it feels like a fix for an issue that doesn’t have to exist.

Another shift I mainly rely on is the transition to more power fantasy options in combat. Melee brawls are roughly the same as where the dying Light 2 is in today’s position, with stamina gauges being used only for combat action, previously ejected by any kind of rapid or high-recall movement. I found it to be as satisfying as ever, full of heavy impact and squatting audio feedback, reinforced by absolutely horrifying location damage in the undead.

In fact, constant combat is further encouraged by a new option to inhale for free and repair damaged melee weapons on-site. You can repair only certain melee weapons 4-5 times, but by the time you consume them completely, you will find some alternatives, meaning you will effectively create another system that you don’t need to worry about.

The big gimmick introduced here is the option to go to Beast Mode. By fighting in a brawl, you fill in your HUD’s rage measurements. When filled, activate the Hulk Hand (automatically at first, but manually, if you kill a few bosses), gain nigh in vulnerability for a few seconds, and rather tear the zombie in half with a quiet mitt.

It’s satisfying and incredible gory, but it’s also a smart bomb with closed rooms, or a way to tear a third of your boss’ health bar without retaliation. The “I don’t want to deal with today’s zombies” button in a game where it is a game that deals with zombies. Fast travel may disappear, but fast combat is a replacement and is further upgraded by killing bosses.

Still, as a pleasure to enjoy Light 2, who is dying in his current incarnation, I also enjoyed my time with the beast. Along with the fluffs of other live services that the parent game has featured over the years, multiple factions, reputation shattering, and daily quests are gone. The only number you really care about is your level (determines basic combat stats). Still, when I was told I was too weak to continue the main plot and was encouraged to raise a ton of side quests, I only had a few opportunities.

Even the dark zone, a frequently stretched urban dungeon in Dying Light 2, is trimmed into a slightly larger interior that can be washed to exclude it from the zombies and create resources. Again, there’s no need to wait to clean the night. This game doesn’t stroll around places where you’re hanging out longer than you need to. While you’re missing out on longer, more complicated dungeon delves around town, trimming fat will allow you to make a story, but there’s no denying that it flows better.

Speaking of the story, let’s start with the main character, Kyle Crane. It returns from the original dying light. Originally, he was originally a polite and cheerful fps fps man-voice, but he was tortured/experimented for 13 years by a willing, crazy scientist, Baron. After Crane accepts his new role as the forearm of the voice that escapes and is called out, Grimley vows to revenge, and he will not stop anything – there is nothing – To achieve that.

And he decided that the best way to get revenge is to help the locals, level up (to restore obviously lost powers), and make many friends by extracting some mutagenic power-up juices from boss monsters that he kills along the way and boosts his bar of fury.

He may look like the reverenceman of generic Grim Dark from the PS360 era, but Kyle has the personality of a golden retriever. Other than calling some women “like a boss” and asking others to get to the point, there is little indication in the dialogue that this man spent about a third of his life in a super-scientific torture dungeon. This shows the type of problem the series has always had, reaching an overabundance of both gritty personal dramas (usually quiet side quests) and comic books at the same time, but neither has achieved it. Thankfully, the villain here drags the beast into the realm of camp action horror rock.

The Baron is brilliant and gorgeous, and Techland knows that and regularly unfolds him to liven up cutscenes. The evil genius of aristocrats with access to seemingly endless resources, mountaintop villas and vast complexes of laboratory. Biting the scenery in every scene he appears to be, his only goal in life is creating a new deadly mutant. Almost all of it appears to be breaking containment at some point, massacreating dozens of soldiers who have turned their guns over, and in turn providing you with ammunition.

He looks like Albert Wesker in the brake cut. He cannot flare his wings in the face of all his homemade disasters. Even among the zombie horror villains, he appears to have a special temperament to the concept of workplace safety. I always brag about each escaped creature and that each failure is a new opportunity to field test new monsters. Even Umbrella Corp is considering calling an OSHA inspector after seeing this guy watch at work.

It is such daft energy that carries the beast. There are several moments that try to provide personal drama that resonates through side quest dialogue, but it never lands. However, the Baron is always happy to hold it and delivers another monster encounter to interrupt the campaign.

These boss fights tend to oppose the power-up versions of the various “special” zombies you encounter in the open world, and were a dramatic and fun excuse to use some of the consumable explosives and ammunition packs I was hoarding. Sadly, they are also slightly disappointed by their lack of imagination, especially in the second half of the game, with incredibly brolic giants (very large, skinless muscular monsters with Hulk-style ground pounds) being brought back many times.

Battles with the Giants avoid a well-integrated spinning of attacks until you can hack, slash or punch the muscular butt cheeks at surprisingly rounded eyes level. In the final stretch you have to fight some of them at once. The expansion has plenty of limitations, but I wanted to see a truly freaky Resident Evil-inspired mutant with too many limbs and weaknesses to shoot, but I think it’s about escaping the foundations of a dying brawler.

The problem with the beast is that the new design is completely torn, protein packed and dehydrated is great on paper, but I think some of its fat and padding served the purpose. It’s not without its flaws (the daily quests and weekly grinds were a hassle), but Dying Light 2 is an oddly cozy game, and there’s a world where you can get into that mindset living In. Without dozens of other titles that demand my attention, it might be a comfortable game for me, but the beast is all business.

Its lush lighting and dark greenery are also at a cost. Even my heavyweight PC (RTX 4090 is still a wild brut on GPU) needed a bit of help from DLSS and frame generation to hit consistently smooth frame rates on the 3440×1440 Ultra Wade. The release date patch has improved the situation a bit (it brings you closer along the dying light 2), but you’ll definitely need a lot of money to see this. probably If you lack the power, it’s not an option.

The strange position of the beast as a escaped, significantly mutated extension makes it a difficult value proposition, but it’s much easier if you happen to get the ultimate version of Light of Death 2. If you get the game like this, why are you reading this review? Go and play.

But for those who are hesitant at its £50/$60 price tag, this is a good death light game, and generally a great open world zombie game, full of crisp combat and simple but satisfying number-grap loops. Is it the best in the series? It depends on how much you disliked the slightly packed design of Dying Light 2, and whether the same mechanic sounds like jam, minus the padding. As for newcomers, I don’t know if I can really recommend it at the full price if that large, mechanically very similar parent often sells for under £15.

Although the Beast was fun to chew in a few days (about 21 hours, many side quests still remain), I feel like for now it meets a certain brand of Techland’s open world design. But if the itching of Zombie Parkour hits again, I’m probably saying that I’ll return to the vast city of dying Light 2 on another scenic alpine excursion.