Dying Light The Beast Review, Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Top Features

Dying Light The Beast from developer Techland is a good case study of how successful more of the same great recipe can be in the video game landscape. 

Originally planned as a DLC expansion for 2022’s Dying Light 2: Stay Human, The Beast lives up to its namesake and has clearly become something more expansive as a standalone effort. 

Still a first-person zombie survival experience with an emphasis on parkour, The Beast again offers up to four-player co-op in the tried-and-true gameplay loop, albeit with one beast-like big change. 

The Beast takes players to the open world of Castor Woods, a brand new space for the series that feels both distinct and very much at home for the franchise. 

Overall graphical prowess, depth to environments and catchy must-haves like physics and lighting systems, never mind the gorgeous day-night cycle and quality sound effects, again return for the series in a big way here. 

When every game looks good in almost 2026, though, what really stands apart is an experience’s ability to capture atmosphere. 

The Beast surprisingly does it in an incredibly immersive way. 

Castor Woods loops in all of the elements of the prior games, and then some. It’s a blast to hit a sprawling urban section and scamper up the manmade architecture. Even in the expansive rural areas, though, one can feel claustrophobic outside of a vehicle because an undead friend could be waiting just behind the next tree. 

Combined with some of the gameplay elements and enemy density decisions, among other factors, there’s a bigger emphasis on horror and survival than in past Dying Light games. 

Many of the standard Dying Light gameplay elements return. Melee combat is weighty, chunky and fun, while gunplay feels good enough. It’s easier to get about the slow undead hordes in the sunlight, but going out at night is a massive risk when the really dangerous enemies come out to play. Going out at night is a tough romp, though simply fantastic, tension-riddled stealth gameplay, too. 

Gunplay is very much secondary to the melee combat that is a blast, requires good timing to succeed and is scarily accurate in terms of reflecting the damage dished onto an undead enemy. 

Refreshingly, The Beast goes a little more survival horror than past outings. Some of it is because the stamina meter is more demanding, making a scrap with even one zombie a careful dance of meter management between offense and defense (or fleeing, cowards). There’s also a careful consideration players must make with weaponry, as repairs and ammo are limited. 

The Beast gets very video-gamey in a good way with its boss fights, which serve as introductions to a new type of enemy before that type starts appearing out in the wild at random. 

In addition to tried-and-true staples of the series, The Beast implements a “beast mode” mechanic (unrelated to Marshawn Lynch, of course).

And… who knew? Morphing into a first-person version of The Hulk and shouldering through an army of zombies or aggressively web-swinging via grapple or leaping over buildings is just a plain fun time. 

Players can’t just do this on a whim though, as the basic gameplay loop asks them to take and deal damage to charge the rage meter that triggers the transformation. It actually ends up more of a last-ditch, life-saving effort more often than not, but it’s a fun mechanic to have in the series either way. 

Overall, The Beast is more of the same on this front, with one smart feature added and small tweaks to add tension. Players would’ve been just fine with a copy and paste job, but this is just the right amount of tweaking to really create a fun, fresh experience. 

Kyle Crane returns after starring as the main character from the first game in the series.

Finally free after more than a decade of captivity and experimentation, Crane himself is now a Volatile and plots revenge against his captor, Baron, who has ambitions to utilize the virus to take over the globe. 

It’s all rather silly. That sounds harsh, but the narrative device of slaying enemies so that Crane can inject himself with their blood to ‘Hulk out’ even more in the name of good is, well, silly (and fun!). 

There are side quests out in the world that players can find that are certainly worth doing. Otherwise, there’s not much going on. It finds a fickle balance, though, considering, well, the backdrop narratively is a zombie apocalypse. 

Smaller skill trees this time out seem like a careful design choice, too. Not only does it trim the proverbial fat of past progression tracks, it feels like it plays nicely into the more survival aspects of the experience. There are fewer options and ways to get straight-up overpowered. 

That said, The Beast retains much of Dying Light 2’s RPG feel in terms of actions leading to experience, even when doing something as simple as scampering up a tree and swinging off a branch while the undead give chase during the day. 

Players tired of loot rarity systems won’t find any relief here. But the overall crafting system is expansive and fun, letting players indeed feel like they’re scrapping together bits and pieces just to get by at the end of the world.

For all that The Beast has going on in its open world in terms of weather, hopping in and out of vehicles, swimming, scaling vertically, NPC conversations and impressive density of enemies, never mind the sheer scale of the draw distances, it seems to run really well. 

Tack on a strong suite of options to some good technical performance and nailing the must-have features of an online co-op experience and The Beast gets high marks in this area, too. 

The Beast is, well, a beast. 

There’s something admirable about a game studio taking a planned DLC, realizing they have something much more on their hands and putting it out as a standalone. 

The Beast is very much Dying Light 2.5, but that .5 is downright fantastic design choices that lean more heavily into survival and horror, plus a fun gameplay mechanic atop an already-great package. 

Simply put, The Beast is a blast to play with some impressive verticality, variety and tension that makes it a sleeper hit of 2025.