Dying Light: The Beast review – "A playful sandbox of horror and mayhem with a surprising amount of depth"

A sense of propulsive urgency pushes me through Dying Light: The Beast, and it's not just because I'm psyched to see more Kyle Crane. When I'm not playing it, I find myself thinking about it. About the grisly flesh-lined cave pulsating with quiet, kinetic danger. About the one high-level side quest that wants me to hunt some creature called a Yaga in the dead of night. About the people and places I run into while scaling the leafy urban wasteland of Castor Woods, each with an often heart-rending story of survival to complement Kyle's own journey through hell and back (and back again).

Dying Light: The Beast is a stunningly refined action-horror experience on every level – improved nighttime terrors, traversal, and visual fidelity are a handful of noticeable evolutions since the days of Dying Light 2. But most of all, I'm hypnotized by how Techland pulls off such a rich story across 20 or so main quests and drives it towards a bombastic, immensely satisfying finale. Even the side missions feel transformative, not only to this game, but to the evolving face of Dying Light as a whole. After 52 hours in Castor Woods, I agree with franchise director Tymon Smektała on this one; The Beast really is Dying Light 3.

The boy is back

Dying Light: The Beast picks up roughly 13 years after the events of 2016's Dying Light: The Following DLC, which saw Kyle turned into a sentient Volatile. Having been captured from Harran, transported to an Alpine facility, and subjected to torturous experimentation by order of Marius Fischer – aka The Baron, a Big Pharma nepo baby tyrant, because what's a survival horror game without one of those? – Kyle escapes with the help of rogue scientist Olivia.

But they're not the only ones who made a run for it. If the standard cohort of undead masses wasn’t enough, the once-placid valley of Castor Woods is now crawling with freakish experiments called Chimeras, whose blood, when injected, enhances Kyle's own latent abilities. No more mushroom-snarfing á la Dying Light 2; the bulk of this game is spent hunting down all eight hulking monstrosities, extracting their DNA, and getting Kyle juiced up for a final confrontation with The Baron.

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It's impossible to overstate the importance of the Hero of Harran's grand return. Roger Craig Smith reprises the role to perfection, and thanks to all the third-person cinematics showcasing Kyle's rugged good looks and Action Man combat skills, the guy receives full movie star treatment.

I know fan service when I see and hear it, but in this case, it is absolutely warranted. Dying Light: The Beast feels like a love letter to fans new and old, penned by a passionate team of developers that count themselves among us.

Hearing Kyle's dry one-liners again makes me cackle with glee, his sharper, shorter temper fuelled by the waning patience I'd expect from a half human, half Volatile ex-lab experiment chomping at the bit for payback. Watching him tear Biters apart with his bare hands is a freeing joy, a power fantasy that never gets old nor negates challenges. There are no major story decisions to be made in The Beast – a smooth recovery from the unpopular choice at the end of Dying Light 2 – but getting to decide how Kyle responds to NPCs allows us to shape his personality and add a little role playing dynamic while we’re at it.

This reinforces how important Kyle’s perspective is, not only as an apocalypse-hardened symbol of resistance who also happens to be a fan favorite, but as a one-man battering ram with which to beat the badness out of the world. There's a purpose to all this carnage, however, and its veins dig deeper than you think.

Survivor guilt

What starts as a surface-level revenge mission develops into something more visceral as Kyle grapples with his newfound surroundings of Castor Woods – "I'm in Europe?" he screeches incredulously down the radio – and the survivors who still cling to life there.

These survivors and their experiences are some of my favorite things about The Beast. From a father driven mad by guilt to a brother's plight to say goodbye, an elderly woman's last wishes, and a psychedelic trip into Kyle's PTSD-addled psyche, I'd find myself halfway through a side quest wondering how on Earth something this gut-wrenching could be optional.

With gripping voice acting and animation across the board, it’s hard not to get invested in The Beast’s side narratives. Life and death exist in curious harmony here, with each story giving Kyle further reason to dismantle The Baron's chokehold over Castor Woods — reasons other than pure vengeance.

One of The Beast's greatest assets is that all of its side content is delivered at an approachable pace, progressively unlocked between key mainline chapters so none of it feels overwhelming. It's evidence of Techland's push to slim down the content bloat many of us struggled to contend with in Dying Light 2.

By narrowing its aperture considerably, every mission feels weighty, fleshed out, and integral to the overall experience. It also means that the character level cap of 15 is perfectly achievable in a single playthrough, with all skill points fully attainable without needing to clear every single power relay, dark zone, or safe zone – additional optional challenges to clear on the map that can sometimes be part of side quests.

It's impossible to be bored in a place like Castor Woods. If I’m not exploring old ruins, driving a truck through zombies, or once again saving the ever-imperilled survivor who seems to be haunting my every footstep by way of random open world encounters, I’m picking apart the world around me.

Environmental storytelling is a huge deal in Dying Light: The Beast, as are the many types of hard-to-spot collectibles found throughout. Audio tapes give context to The Baron's experiments, while newspaper clippings, podcast episodes, and recipes written on crumpled bits of paper furnish the day-to-day of life in Castor Woods before the pandemic. Each collectible paints a greater picture of the town's complicated and fascinating history.

Creeping through an abandoned asylum and snatching a file from behind a sleeping Biter is a heart-pounding thrill, but it's worth it to read about the horrific treatment of the mentally ill behind these walls. Hidden Truths with Spark is a podcast that unveils the local supernatural history, including the witch trials that swept Castor Woods in the 1600s. Again, all of this is very much optional worldbuilding content, but I found it incredibly worth the extra time spent poring over each and every artefact.

Agile masculinity

To find all of these side quests, lore tapes, and tasty local recipes, I have to fight an awful lot of undead. It's just as well that Dying Light: The Beast sports the most brilliant combat in the series' 10 year history.

Much like in the last two games, weapons can be looted or crafted if you have the correct blueprint. There's an array of weapon mods at your fingertips too, as long as you have crafting components to hand. It's easy to find a weapon you like and stick to it, but the beauty of the combat system here is how you're never locked into a particular playstyle.

I keep a diverse loadout handy – one gun, one bow, my trusty knuckle dusters, and a more heavy duty two-handed option like an axe or giant sledgehammer covers all my usual bases. But thanks to Kyle's ample pockets, you can carry about 10 alternatives at a given time. Then there’s Kyle's Beast Mode ability, which builds up as he takes and deals damage, and is an excellent way to clear hordes or take a nasty chunk out of a Chimera in a pinch.

When I say "take a chunk," I do mean it literally. The amount of disgusting gore is an absolute delight, but for a different reason to something like Dead Island 2. The Beast's gore isn't theatrical – it's a work of painstaking anatomical realism that you'd miss if you didn't stop to admire Kyle's handiwork.

Intestines spill out of putrefying carcasses as they flop to the ground. Eyeballs pop out of mulched skulls after being battered with baseball bats. One marksman bullet through the eye of a soldier just about makes it explode. It’s not necessarily overkill — it’s just incredibly icky, and I love it.

Photo mode is capable of capturing these moments in all their gory glory, and with a free cam option already implemented, I spent an unspeakably long time snapping action shots of Kyle Crane bringing the pain to undead denizens (and hostile militias) of Castor Woods. There's even a nice little skill upgrade that makes your weapons a little hardier, meaning I get to spend more time eviscerating zombies and less time tinkering.

Techland brings its A-game when it comes to crafting a densely interactive, photorealistic world that frequently takes my breath away. From glistening guts to ice cream sunsets along the snow-capped vista, every detail looks and feels brilliant even on my rapidly ageing HP Pavilion gaming laptop. I love knowing that I can climb and interact with almost anything the eye can see.

The only snag is that, while I find The Beast's parkour to be beautifully fluid and intuitive most of the time (fear not, yellow paint haters; a faint chalky-white residue is the most you'll see while scaling cliffs and the like) I throw my hands up in defeat when faced with the grappling hook.

Unless you're a top-tier platformer with stellar depth perception – aka, not me – you're likely to have a bit of an odd time with it. You can't climb the rope, a function that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has drilled into my brain as an expectation. Instead, it functions more like Peter's web in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 or Harley's traversal in Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, in that you're meant to chain-swing across gaps, attaching and detaching the hook as you go. This take a lot of timing and dexterity. Two things I pitifully lack.

The upside here is that I counted specifically one safe spot and power relay apiece that required it as a must. That's because, from combat to traversal, stealth, and beyond, Dying Light: The Beast is a playful sandbox of horror and mayhem with a surprising amount of depth to each and every situation. Even if, personally, a lot of those horrors were in flinging myself around on a bit of rope.

It might have started life as a DLC, but as I climb the tallest structure in Castor Woods and look out across the valley, I'm grateful that Dying Light: The Beast exists as a discrete experience – grappling hook woes and all. Few studios are able to pull off a return to form with as much integrity and ingenuity as Techland has here.

Not only does The Beast stand confidently as a beautifully written and paced action-adventure with the perfect blend of thrills, chills, and gruesome kills alike, it sends a clear message to its fans: "we hear you, we understand you, and we're not done with you yet."