Dying Light: The Beast | Review

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris September 18, 2025Last Updated: September 18, 2025

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Dying Light: The Beast started out life as an expansion for Dying Light 2: Stay Human. Growing into a standalone title, it may end up being my favorite in the series. It isn’t the biggest or the best; instead, it opts for a perfect length and unmatched gameplay. Kyle Crane is back and beastlier than ever in an exciting new direction for the franchise.

Xbox Review Code is hard to come by

First things first, I received my Xbox review code for Dying Light: The Beast roughly 48 hours before the embargo. After playing for an hour, the code was revoked as the online functionality was not working. In that hour, the game ran at a seemingly locked 60fps and looked fantastic. Techland PR got a Steam code for me as a replacement, with the Xbox version never coming back online until launch.

Story-wise, Kyle Crane returns from Dying Light 1, after sitting out for a new protagonist in the sequel. The entirety of the game takes place in a fictional forest called Castor Woods. This former tourist destination is now home to thousands of the undead and a massive prick named ‘The Baron’. Said Baron has been torturing and experimenting on Kyle for years.

The game begins with Kyle’s escape from a medical facility, but not before we realize he’s being let out on purpose. It’s literally the opening lines of the game; the woman who helps you escape agrees to help the baron let you out. It’s an odd conceit, giving away a potential twist like this, and it doesn’t really pay off in the game in any special way.

Once Kyle is out, he’s greatly weakened, think of Link losing all of his hearts/stamina at the start of Tears of the Kingdom. Your journey will be to help the local survivors, empower yourself by injecting ‘Chimera GSBs’ to get more beastly, and try to stop the Baron. The story is a bit scattershot, feeling stretched out from its original scope in some noticeable ways. The most important part of DL: The Beast, though, is how damned near perfect the gameplay feels.

PARKOUR!

Dying Light is famous for its focus on parkour movement systems. The first game did an admirable job of bringing fluid jumping and climbing in an urban area into FPS. The second game upped the scope, eventually letting you fly around a far bigger playground with various tools. Dying Light: The Beast focuses on Kyle’s ability to run, jump, and climb like a mf’ing gangster. He is the smoothest, most acrobatic person of all time. There is a basic experience-based leveling system in the game, and by the time you reach the upper bounds, you feel like the world’s greatest (murdering) gymnast.

I cannot overstate how good DL: The Beast feels to play. There are four leveling trees, one focused on guns and heavy combat, a second on parkour abilities, and a third on gadgets and driving. Driving is back! There are various trucks littered around the landscape with a low amount of fuel that you will rely upon, as the game lacks any form of fast travel.

Combat itself focuses on a mix of melee and ranged. The melee feels great on a controller and less so on a mouse and keyboard. The force-feedback of hits adds a lot to the immersion as zombie cheeks, asses, and titties fly apart. The gore is nearly on par with Dead Island 2’s system. It goes for a more realistic and less over-the-top, everything shatters on impact vibe that is even more disgusting in the end.

Melee weapons can be crafted if you find blueprints, as can healing items, explosives, and more gadgets. To do any of this, you’ll need to scavenge for anything and everything you can find. Most blueprints are tied to missions or clearing out Dark Zones. These are nasty areas full of the worst zombies and best loot. There is a basic mod system, weapons break, and they can only be repaired a certain number of times.

Guns are back in a big way, a welcome change from Dying Light 2’s launch version having no firearms. Nothing is as game-breaking as the Bow or Crossbow, with easy-to-craft ammo letting you stealthily dispatch zombies and humans alike without causing an alarm. For those times when stealth is not an option, you’ll have pistols, SMGs, shotguns, assault rifles, grenade launchers, flame throwers, and marksman rifles to choose from.

Human enemies are your best bet for level-appropriate, mostly broken loot. I found the best way to find new gear, which includes six different clothing options (which add stats and armor), was the world events. As you go across the map, there will be various world events that pop up with a blue circle.

These range from saving a person from zombies or evildoing humans, to fighting enemies to get a loot crate. Those loot crates often have rare or epic weaponry in them, along with the hard-to-find ammunition for your guns. Military convoys are always in the same place, destinations at which a large number of enemies will congregate.

Kill them all, loot the zombie military men around, and open up the convoys for fantastic rewards. It’s a lot of Dying Light systems from the first two games, both of which have gotten an insane amount of post-launch support, refined into a far shorter and tighter package.

Finally, you have Kyle’s infected powers. A meter will fill as you deal or take damage. Once it’s topped off, you’ll become a wild monster, swinging for massive damage and regenerating health. Killing ‘Chimeras’ allows Kyle to unlock extra abilities and even control when he transforms.

You’ve got the perfect length, honey

That’s not to say that Dying Light: The Beast is a short game. It took me over 20 hours golden-pathing the main quest to complete it. There is some heavy level gating, which made me focus on world events and side quests mid-way through and at the end of the game. I could see a full map clear taking people 35+ hours on normal difficulty.

There are three difficulties: Easy, Medium, and Hard. Easy sees less incoming damage, more outgoing damage, and you do not lose experience on death. Medium and hard up make you hit lighter and take more damage, while exacting heavy experience tolls when you croak. I mostly played on normal until it was too close to the embargo, and I had to give in on easy mode to level up, turning it back to normal when I beat the campaign.

Dying Light was a solid length, not overstaying its welcome, compared to Dying Light 2, which felt too long. DL: The Beast, on the other hand, feels perfect, despite starting development as an expansion. A roughly 20-hour or so runtime let me enjoy all of the incredible gameplay without feeling dragged down, and that’s doing it in 1 and a ½ days for this review.

As you jump from rooftop to rooftop, drop kicking suckers 100ft to their demise, it was never allowed to get old. Varied locations and problems to deal with kept me on my toes and feeling scared as shit. The game is terrifying at night when the Volatile are around. They are incredibly tough, nearly impossible to kill enemies that can see you if you make a single mistake, like using your light at night to see.

A few times in the game, especially near the end, The Beast was as scary as a game can be. Sneaking my way through a rundown facility as a dozen volatiles were flanked by hundreds of other zombies required a level of focus that few games have made me find. It was a blood-pumping nightmare that I need to force on our EIC Jon this holiday season.

Pretty (Disgusting)

All of those great gameplay systems are elevated by just how damned pretty this game is. Both on Xbox and on my PC, it looked and ran amazingly well. No UE5 stutter here, as the game once again uses Techland’s own ‘C-Engine’. While some of the world’s textures can look a little muddy, the human characters and zombies look better than ever.

I didn’t think of it until 15 hours in, but I never once had any stuttering or performance issues. While my time on Xbox was brief, it looked and felt perfect. The shift over to PC only made it a little cleaner; it wasn’t that dramatically different at 4K max settings. Using the default settings, I got roughly 90 FPS locked, and while frame-gen and FSR were available for my AMD card, I never felt compelled to use them. You can turn off chromatic aberration and film grain, and I recommend at least doing the latter.

Audio-wise, the voice acting is solid, with decent if ‘expected’ writing. I always felt like I knew where the story was going, what ‘The Beast’ was, and how things would play out. That initial decision to give away any potential (though not groundbreaking) twist was an odd one. Kyle Crane has a smooth, powerful voice, which is matched by an excellent soundtrack.

Whether running and jumping, fighting, or driving around in a truck, the music is always a vibe. The main theme comes through in various electric and guitar-laden tracks, and the music ups the feelings of chaos during combat, especially boss fights.

On both Xbox and PC, I ran into a few, if any, bugs. One time, I saw a guy who was standing in a room with his legs halfway through the ground. A quick, stealthy snap of his neck had him dug out of the earth in no time.

Wrapping Things Up

Dying Light: The Beast’s top-tier parkour-infused gameplay, solid combat, and excellent OST carry a mediocre story. Castor Woods is an excellent playground for the return of Kyle Crane in this super-power fantasy-fulfilling FPS.