I've been playing horror games for 25 years, but Dying Light: The Beast's gore just out-grossed it all by getting uncomfortably realistic

Looking down at the bloody carnage I've created in Dying Light: The Beast never gets old. Techland's latest entry in one of the best zombie games ever proves protagonist Kyle Crane nothing short of a one-man weapon; he's got guns, he's got modded sabers and brass knuckles and enough giant axes to make a lumberjack green with envy, and now he's got Beast Mode.

After ripping apart my umpteenth Biter in a row, however, the sight before me is somewhat familiar. The shudderingly accurate anatomical realism at play is reminiscent of Dambuster's FLESH system, as seen in 2023's Dead Island 2, which is another zombie-bashing slaughterfest that all fans of the genre will have heard of by now. Both games put carnage front and center, with exposed brains, entrails, and all manner of garish viscera glistening brilliantly under the limelight.

This is thanks, in part, to a similar frenzied superpower the player can unleash at will in both games. But where Dead Island 2 is all overkill, all the time, The Beast's brutality feels somehow more visceral against its bleaker, hyper-realistic setting. As a result, it's the most refined and sickening depiction of first-person melee body horror I've ever experienced – and that's really saying something coming from me.

I wanna see what your insides look like

It might sound a bit daft to say that any zombie game feels inherently realistic, but hear me out. Set against the backdrop of fictional West Alpine valley Castor Woods, Dying Light: The Beast thrives in its quiet horrors – and a large part of that is because the world around you feels much as the real world might feel under these harsh circumstances.

The once-thriving streets of Old Town compete with the overgrown wilderness of the National Park, foliage winding itself through vacated spaces while trucks, stores, and shambling Infected stand frozen in time. It's a sorry sight, which makes the garish blood and guts of Beast Mode stand out in contrast. Dead Island 2, on the other hand, is set in a heavily satirized iteration of Los Angeles in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.

You see this represented in the variety of undead you fight in the game – roided-up muscle zombies roaming the beach, blonde barbie "ghouls" haunting the Hollywood hills and more, all a caricature of colorful LA-specific stereotypes. Meanwhile, The Beast's Biters are clothed in rags, tattered straightjackets (courtesy of the island-locked psychiatric hospital in the middle of the lake), and other ordinary clothing – everything a regular person could well have died in somewhere in this beautiful yet doomed town.

All of this is apparent before I even inspect the gore encircling my ankles. Dead Island 2's vibrant colors and buckets of goo are a testament to its '80s horror inspirations, with the near comedic levels of gore and violence creating an emotional detachment from the action itself. Mulching a zombie into a sizzling puddle of undead soup is as deliriously funny as it is fun, and I recall feeling nothing but glee while tearing through "Hell-A" on a constant high note.

But in Dying Light: The Beast, I find myself wincing a lot more than I giggle. The heavy, meaty combat and the amusing enemy ragdoll effects are plenty satisfying as they go flying about this decaying valley, but something about how potentially missable the gore in this game is makes it all the more disgusting. With so many Biters swarming Kyle, it would make sense to simply keep pressing through the pack and pay no mind to the mess I'm leaving in my wake.

I'd slice a Biter up like sushi, making quick work of its extremities as well as its head. Then, I'd pause for photo mode, and… oh god, I can see each twist of its intestines, matter exploding from a shattered skull, a throat torn open to expose stringy tendons. Later, I admired the sheer power of my marksman's rifle and what it did to the eyesocket of one of The Baron's men at close-range. I am here to confirm that even without Beast Mode, Dying Light: The Beast is a parade of grisly body horror nasties that never feels forced.

To my mind, that's because there's more to Dying Light than the mess you make of your friends along the way.

You have no choice but to witness and be numbed to the gore in Dead Island 2 because the garish shock factor is a pretty big part of its commercial appeal. But The Beast is, well, a different beast entirely. Dambuster and Techland deliver similar combat and visual systems that somehow feel entirely tonally discrete. Not because one is more intense than the other, but because of the way gore and violence is framed in each game.

Dead Island 2 wants us to find the fun in the frenzy, while The Beast turns Kyle's rage into more of a panic button, providing a freeing sense of power and release in line with our hero's own mental state. I think that's why I prefer Dying Light: The Beast's approach, at the end of the day – it's making me see video game gore in a whole new light, and I gotta say that I like what I'm seeing. Pass a sickbag?

Check out all the upcoming horror games waiting for you in 2025 and beyond, once you've unleashed The Beast of course...