I’ll admit right off the bat that I was a late adopter of the Dying Light series. When everyone was conquering the Harran Slums and doing their best to avoid getting caught outside in the dead of night, I was actively trying to cleanse myself ofany zombie-related media.
Bad News For Dying Light: The Beast PS4 And Xbox One Gamers
Don’t expect it out anytime soon.
I had reached my limit, as it was everywhere you looked. But, years later, I finally opened my heart to zombie games once again, and the original Dying Light not only stole it. But also, it ripped it out of my chest, chowed down on it, and then proceeded to tear into my innards in the most gruesome way possible, and I loved every minute.
My newfound fascination coincided with the sequel’s imminent release, so I was very excited about another zombie-fueled romp, but when Dying Light 2 rolled around, I was left cold dueto the clear step away from the horror aspectsof the game that made me feel tense, and led to some of the most thrilling moments in my gaming career.
But, even with this disappointment still weighing heavily, I made the trip to Warsaw to see what Techland has been cooking up in the next Dying Light Installment. Expectations weren’t overly high, but I can happily report that I was pleasantly surprised with what was on offer. It’s a game that returns the series to its roots. The night is back, and so is our old buddy, Kyle Crane.
Hope You’ve Been Eating Your Carrots
Let’s dive right into what I consider the most exciting aspect of this Dying Light entry:the night is back, and it’s better than ever.
The night in the original Dying Light, alongside the parkour mechanics, was arguably the biggest standout feature overall, providing plenty of memorable moments as you raced away from pursuing Volatiles, desperately trying to chain intricate parkour moves on the fly. Yet, for some reason, Techland felt that omitting this horror factor would be a recipe for success in Dying Light 2.
I’m very glad that the team has done a complete 180 on this, as this additional layer of horror and intrigue does a lot to elevate the experience provided by The Beast. Not only does this offer the risk and reward of exploring the Old Town and beyond at night for potential XP and rewards, but it also allows the game to further lean into the survival horror aspect that was desperately missing from the last DL outing.
However, it’s not just a carbon copy of the old system, as Techland has actively tried to modernize exploration at night. This includes doing away with the mini-map’s cone-vision to keep an eye on Volatiles, and instead allowing players to use Survivor Sense to track Volatiles, watch their patrols, and act accordingly.
It’s still easier said than done, as the night is pitch black, but equally, using a flashlight is effectively like signing your own death warrant. So, you’ll need to know the streets and natural areas like the back of your hand to stand a chance.
Full-Time Park Rangers Wanted
Speaking of these large, rural, and natural spaces, we should probably discuss the open world of The Beast, as it’s one of the most beautiful, and equally, one of the most deadly places you’ll ever dare to call home.
We were invited to explore the game’s starting area, which consists of the tightly-packed and dense Old Town, which feels akin to the streets of Harran, albeit with a few high rises here and there for some vertical exploration. Then, we also headed out into the national park area of Castor Woods, which is like nothing the series has ever done before.
This area is largely made up of flat open space, dense woodland areas, and murky swamps and marshes. Which, in a game that dines out on its parkour mechanics, seems like a pretty bad idea. However, credit where it’s due, it works rather well and adds some variety to the action.
Not only are these areas visually awe-inspiring, but they also force players to play in a different way, carefully using decoys and the environment to their advantage, because, unlike in the Old Town, running is only going to ensure you’re killed in record time. You might find the occasional ranger station to camp out in overnight, but for the most part, you’ll be a sitting duck and will need to use the bountiful wilderness to get to safety.
I’ll concede that, if you only had the option to make your way through these areas on foot, things would become irritating fast, but the game mercifully has some vehicles dotted around the map to get from A to B faster, and to my surprise, they handle incredibly well.
I was pleasantly surprised by how well this game strikes a healthy balance between blunt force and bullets.
The navigation system to get to your next quest is excellently implemented, the car itself doesn’t handle in a boxy manner like a lot of open-world games with vehicles, and the attention to detail from a design point of view when driving in harsh weather or mowing down zombies is impressive.
At the end of the day, you’ll still come to the natural conclusion that it’s more fun to be bounding around the built-up areas, chaining slick moves to stay off the streets, but the moments when you aren’t showcasing your parkour skills are far from a chore.
Guns Don’t Kill People, Zombies Do
With the addition of guns to what was classically a melee-focused title, I was a little worried that this move would turn this game into a run-of-the-mill FPS title where out-and-out firepower trivialized the supposed danger posed by the zombie hordes. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how well this game strikes a healthy balance between blunt force and bullets.
Guns aren’t in great supply in the early-to-mid-game, meaning you’ll need to largely rely on melee weapons and silent takedowns to get by, which will feel familiar to returning fans, and very simple and accessible to newcomers also.
However, when guns do come into play, they represent the most fun you can have in this zombie sandbox, as they tear through zombies like nothing else. Bullets to the head are incredibly effective, Flamethrowers can thin a crowd of infected in seconds, and rifles are capable of taking down the biggest and baddest mutated freaks the game has on offer.
However, these opportunities to become this overpowered super-soldier are limited and often come at a cost. Not only is the game a true survival horror where ammo and munitions are scarce. It’s also a game where using this ammo will draw attention to you, and often starts an invisible timer before Volatiles swarm your location and make a hard fight even harder.
There’s always an internal pros and cons to pulling the trigger calculation running in the back of your mind, and usually, just getting a trusty lead pipe out and bashing a zombie’s skull in is the safer, more effective move.
Big Brutes, Little Innovation
I have a lot of time for the combat that Dying Light: The Beast proposes, as it strikes that balance between genuinely pulse-raising and comedically silly, depending on how you go about handling the undead before you. There’s very little I can fault when it comes to the open-world combat, as it feels akin to an immersive sim in many ways, where the player is in full control.
However, one hang-up I have with what I witnessed in this hands-on preview was the boss battles. The game makes a pretty big deal of the Chimeras dotted around the world. Big boss-like zombies that need to be killed to power up Kyle enough to feasibly conquer this strange world he finds himself in, and get his sweet revenge.
These should be where the combat shines, as the developer has the opportunity to create skill checks and opportunities to test out the most unique and destructive toys in Kyle’s arsenal. But, instead, a lot ofthese fights feel one-note and stiff.Like older iterations of the game, these enemies just feel like glorified damage sponges where you’ll need to shoot or whack them incessantly until they eventually go down, with little to no differentiation from one fight to the next.
I played the game for upwards of four hours, and I swear that ‘Okay I’ll do it’ and ‘I wanna F**king kill him’ are the only phrases in this man’s (Kyle Crane’s) lexicon.
Then, in the fights where the team has clearly tried to move away from this trend and present a new, terrifying enemy variant, it often falls flat. Take The Mist, the swamp’s first boss encounter. This boss, in theory, should be tough as nails as they move swiftly and are hard to pin down to get an attack in. Yet, even this fight fell flat.
I tossed a Molotov in the general direction of the boss, and in less than a second, their health bar melted, and the fight was done, leading to an overwhelming anticlimactic feel to the whole encounter. I can only hope that there are more varied, better-designed Chimeras wandering around the Castor Woods, because the ones I met face-to-face were not a good omen for what is to come later in the game.
You’re Angry, We Get It
Then, to cap things off, I suppose we would touch on the story, even though every Dying Light fan knows that putting the narrative of any of these games under the microscope for too long isn’t all that good of an idea.
I expect pretty much nothing from a Dying Light story as the game lives and dies based on the success of the open world you inhabit, the fluidity of the parkour and traversal, and the satisfaction that comes from bursting a zombie’s head like a balloon. However, I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed by the setup of Kyle’s return.
As a point of fan service, it’s great to have him back in the fray, and his half-zombie, half-human form lends itself brilliantly to the action when exploring the wider world. However, as a leading character, he’s about as deep as a pothole.
In each encounter with supporting characters, Kyle is either incredibly agreeable with complete strangers asking the world of him, or spouting off that he wants to tear The Baron limb from limb. I played the game for upwards of four hours, and I swear that ‘Okay I’ll do it’ and ‘I wanna F**king kill him’ are the only phrases in this man’s lexicon.
Thankfully, the world around Kyle is a little more interesting, and the side quests we played through serve as high points away from the rather paint-by-numbers revenge story, but it would have been nice to see a few more layers to Kyle than just this reluctant anti-hero type. But then again, I suppose he is basically a zombie, and they aren’t exactly known for their bubbly personalities either.
Closing Comments:
All in all, Dying Light: The Beast feels like a U-turn in the best way possible, ditching Dying Light 2’s lackluster design for one that harks back to the horror-centric brilliance of the series' original. The game looks the part, offering a gorgeous yet terrifying world to explore and conquer, and the game gives you ample destructive tools to make that a reality. Parkour remains as slick and fluid as ever, but the addition of rural areas adds an extra layer to the gameplay, and gunplay also gives you another way to get out of a bind when running isn’t an option. The story still isn’t anything to write home about, and bigger boss enemies still feel like bullet sponges, but as a sum of its parts, The Beast is shaping up nicely, and could just be the best open-world horror game to grace our screens yet.
