Dying Light: The Beast Review

The gaming community is no stranger to zombie classics, from The Walking Dead to the Silent Hill series, and even the previously released Dying Light (2015). With this many hits in the genre, we can clearly see why these games are so relevant even to this date. 

With this, Techland's Dying Light: The Beast arrives in the genre to add flavor to the mix. This edition features enhanced parkour, survival, and thrilling melee combat. Taking place in the wild dystopian Castor Woods, will this edition of Dying Light live up to the expectations of its predecessors and other games of this saturated genre?

The story of Dying Light: The Beast revolves around Kyle Kern, a survivor of grueling scientific experiments that transformed him into part human and part beast, hence the name "Dying Light: The Beast." Filled with anger and vengeance, he navigates around the world where his inner humanity is constantly in a fight with his inner beast.

The idea is interesting on paper, with his transformation and goals, but the overall execution of the story is definitely a weak point, with poor dialogue and potential for character development being among the factors. Castor Woods, where the game is based, mixes it with a more intimate horror-infused experience. It's claustrophobic and Eerie outpost creates opportunities for random ambushes and scares.

From the looks of it, Dying Light: The Beast was never about the story. But to my surprise, and as the game progressed, you're often met with side stories where survivor missions are scattered throughout the woods, which often deliver more soul than the main story itself. 

But it still doesn't change the fact that, despite the competition, the whole main quest line is underutilized, especially the villain, the Baron; they are also communities that get introduced, but they end up being simply forgotten as the story progresses. It has a disjointed structure, which can result in a lackluster and incomplete experience.

Where the story fails, the gameplay shines. The gameplay is the backbone of Dying Light: The Beast, and I could see it as being a reason why someone might actually enjoy the game. Like your typical survival action RPG, you're always going to be looking around, looting, crafting, and fighting.

You get to look around farm resources, upgrade weapons, patch yourself up with healing aids, and bandages before heading out into the unforgiving, hostile world.

The combat, especially Dying Light: The Beast's melee combat, is unparalleled and can be considered its magnum opus. Every strike is perfectly timed, and with every impact being brutal. Paired with the game's stunning visuals and effects, where the ragdoll animations are the best of any game, the satisfaction is immeasurable.

You can visually see limb tear, jaw rip, and ribs crack, which I'm sure a lot of horror enthusiasts will appreciate. The game features are very fun, including a dropkick feature when in combat, where you get to launch enemies off the rooftops. It's one of the funniest built-in combat features I've ever seen in a video game, and an offer is great comedic relief as well as really good practical usage.

You're also allowed to arrange combat with a decent enough arsenal that ranged from pistols, SMGs, bows, but they weirdly feel more underpowered compared to blunt melee weapons. Functional? Yes, but also less satisfactory.

Dying Light: The Beasts' integration of parkour feels seamless, and it's an aspect of the game where it really shines. Running and leaping across roofs, jumping above various objects, is almost life-like. The game's removal of the stamina bar for movement makes the game unique in the sense that it really encourages exploration and wants you to fully utilize the parkour and have fun.

Your stamina is now bound to combat; this forces you to really think about every single battle, making decision-making a quintessential part of Dying Light: The Beast.

The game was built around Kyle's transformation, which is when Kyle unlocks his inner monster and gains strength, and where he's able to tear enemies to shreds with his bare hands. When you think about it, it sounds like a cool and fun way to add variety to the game, but practically, it just feels like a gimmick that cheapens the game.

The beast cheapens the game in the sense that it reduces the combat to spamming attacks. It significantly reduces the tension and is weak mechanics, making combat feel like a joke in the sense that it's too easy. Well, it is useful, and the boss fight takes away from many of the encounters that you face and strips away the survival essence of the game.

We can definitely see how this may have been immersion-breaking for many people. Despite a lot of his strength, especially in the gameplay department, as mentioned above, there are many notable weaknesses that will hold the franchise back. A disjointed main story is one of them; the underdeveloped, shallow characters also fail to tie it together effectively.

When paired with the lack of cohesive voice acting, poor dialogue, and a lack of emotional depth, it doesn't help. The core gameplay loop also has an issue where, eventually, the gameplay becomes repetitive; even a lot of the excellent combat can't entirely make up for the lack of content in the game, especially when the main story becomes forgettable.

The different areas in the game, such as the underground labs and various prisons, aren't very distinctive and are very forgettable, blending into the generic horror niche.

And when you mix that up with further technical issues, it just makes the entire experience messy. Dying Light: The Beast suffers from occasional crashes, quest glitches, and various animation and even parkour bugs. Oftentimes, objectives will refuse to complete until you log out and log back in. Well, these problems aren't catastrophic. It certainly does break immersion.

Visually, Dying Light: The Beast is pretty impressive. The level of detail that was put into the modelling and the gore, and when you combine that with the ragdoll physics and how everything visually integrates with each other, makes it very realistic and at the same time very grim.

Dying Light: The Beast also features co-op, something that has always been a staple of the franchise. Moving through the grounds of Castor Woods, coordinating and taking on a group of enemies, adds to the fun. But with the multiplayer, there is also a caveat; co-op tends to be buggier from my experience, and issues with quest progression and objectives tend to be more prominent.

The environmental design of Castor Woods is also excellent, with the snowy trails and the detail of the forest being very immersive. Not all of the locations are created equally; some do feel more generic and uninspiring, but when the game decides to be distinct and unique, it does look very impressive.

The sound design, especially in combat, reinforces how good the game players are in Dying Light: The Beast. The satisfying sound of the crunch of the bones and the meaty smacks, as well as the screams that the enemies make, make every encounter memorable.

The environmental audio experience is also impeccable, enhancing the overall immersion and adding to the tension of exploration. One aspect where the sound design sometimes relaxes the Voiceover is in the dialogue deliveries. Often, it can be considered flat, and it does drastically undermine the overall story.

Dying Light: The Beast is a confusing game; it possesses one of the best combat systems in any game of the horror genre, but it's also cursed with its flawed story and gameplay loop.

It does a lot of things right, like its mainly action-oriented gameplay loop, rolling parkour, and the chilling environment; it's all the best stand-out zombie titles this year. But it also does a few things quite questionably, like it's a beast mode, and its repetition.

This game feels more like a polished version of Dying Light 2 than a reinvention or something that was filled with the original Dying Light with the beast gimmick. I can still see how a lot of people will appreciate a more polished zombie horror experience. For a lot of people, the game's lack of personality doesn't quite justify its price tag.

For fans of the series, Dying Light: The Beast is undoubtedly worth buying when you consider that you're more likely to enjoy and appreciate the gameplay for how it was intended. The adrenaline rush that you get from beating up zombies and sprinting around the world doing parkour can definitely outweigh its flaws.

But for fans who want a rich narrative experience, it is more likely to disappoint. It's not that Dying Light: The Beast is a hard game to enjoy; it's more likely that it will leave you wishing it had done a bit more.