Dying Light: The Beast

Platforms: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC

In a market practically flooded with zombie-filled post-apocalyptic futures, Dying Light has always struggled to find its niche. Narratively, it has never managed to deliver the pathos or heartbreak of the likes of The Last of Us, and while its speedy parkour-influenced approach to movement gave navigating its open-world settings a distinct edge, its combat and survival elements rarely rose to greatness.

Still, the series has fallen into a pattern that’s almost comfortable, if slicing through waves of flesh-hungry zombies can be considered cosy. Such is the case with Dying Light: The Beast, the latest outing from developer Techland, which serves up another familiar but mostly enjoyable journey through a world ravaged by the undead.

Mostly this is a game about a very angry man swearing, grunting, and killing his way to payback.

The Beast marks the return of Kyle Crane – protagonist of the original Dying Light – to the leading role, after having spent the last 13 in-game years imprisoned and subjected to torturous experiments by shady military operation GRE. One extremely bloody escape from an underground lab later, Crane emerges into the wilds of Castor Woods, swearing violent revenge on “The Baron”, the mysterious figure responsible for his prolonged captivity. His quest for vengeance gets slightly derailed by an encounter with local survivors and rumours of a particularly notable rampaging monster, but mostly this is a game about a very angry man swearing, grunting, and killing his way to payback.

The biggest difference since we last saw Crane is that, as a result of the experiments, he was subjected to, he can now turn into the Hulk. OK, he can turn into a legally distinct rampaging creature of superhuman size and strength, who you never really see anyway because the game is played first person, but who plays a lot like a gamma-irradiated titan might. Initially, Crane transforms when he’s most angry – or rather, he automatically goes beast mode when a gauge is charged by dealing or taking damage, or from successfully dodging attacks – but can eventually control the change, gaining access to powers such as leaping great distances, stunning enemies with ground slams, heaving massive objects around, or running through hordes of enemies like a juggernaut (but not the Juggernaut, either).

The latter becomes particularly useful at night – when regular zombies become far more hostile and even more terrifying “Volatiles” appear – or any time you trigger one of Dying Light's signature horde chases, where a swarm of undead descends on you. Being able to steamroll everything in front of you as you barrel through makes for especially gory fun. While human form Crane still levels up as “normal”, earning experience from completing missions or defeating enemies to improve his conventional combat, stealth, and exploration skills, his beast form is separately powered up by hunting down Chimeras. Putting down these mutated zombies offers some of the toughest battles in the game but rewards you with “Beast Points” to be fed into a distinct skill tree, unlocking those fun superpowers. Overall, The Beast’s combat feels far more visceral (literally) than earlier Dying Light entries, with Crane as likely to tear apart enemies with his bare hulking hands as he is to gun them down or slice them up with melee weapons.

Although we’re told Castor Woods, a new setting for the franchise, is in the Western Alps, it looks and feels more like Generic American Wilderness™. If it weren’t for the distinctly European style Old Towns scattered about its valleys, it would feel a lot like wandering around Far Cry 5​’s rural setting, a mix of campgrounds and dirt roads that would be picturesque if not for the free-roaming flesh munchers. Still, it’s a beautiful change of pace given how heavily previous games relied on more urban locations – Harran in the first game, Villedor in 2022's Dying Light 2 Stay Human – and makes The Beast by far the most beautiful entry to date. The only downside is the impact the natural splendour has on the game’s parkour elements – in the towns and settlements scattered about, Crane feels as lithe and agile as ever, scrambling around rooftops and bounding off walls, but in the wild it can be trickier to spot the best vantage points to climb, leap, and roll from in order to keep momentum going.

Perhaps forward momentum for the series as a whole was too much to hope from The Beast, though. This was originally planned as a DLC pack for Dying Light 2, and despite being expanded to main entry status – one with all the off-track diversions and side quests you’d expect from a full-size game – it still feels like a glorified expansion in places. From the return of Crane as a protagonist – a move that would have been a fun "checking in on the last guy" chapter for the previous game, but seems a little regressive here – to a lack of significant changes beyond the beast mode gimmick, it all lands as “more of the same”. For fans of the series’ now-familiar formula, that will undoubtedly be welcome, but The Beast lacks the animal magnetism to win over anyone not already subject to its charms.