Dying Light: The Beast

Written by Eric Hauter on 10/17/2025 for PS5  

It’s been three-and-a-half years since I played Dying Light 2. Though I said in that review that I planned on returning to the game many times over the years, life (and lots of other game reviews) have gotten in the way, and once I shut down Dying Light 2 after my review period, I’m afraid that I never went back. I enjoyed the game, but the duties of Gaming Nexus and the ever-swelling backlog beckon.

Sure, picking up Dying Light 2 has crossed my mind from time to time, and I’ve occasionally been tempted to dip back in to check out the new content that developer Techland has added over time, but something always got in the way. As it turns out, the perfect solution to this issue is the release of Dying Light: The Beast. Because, for better or worse, Dying Light: The Beast feels an awful lot like playing Dying Light 2, with the added bonus of superpowers.

Now, before anyone thinks that this is a Saints Row 4 situation, I ought to reel that statement back in a little bit. No one in Dying Light: The Beast is going to go swooping through the game world in a spangled purple business suit like The Boss in Saints Row. The superpowers in The Beast are much more grounded (and limited) than that. But, like Saints Row 4 (and I hate to make that comparison again, but I'm gonna), the superpowers really are the differentiating feature between this game and its predecessor.

Dying Light: The Beast catches back up with the franchise’s original protagonist, Kyle Crane. In the 13 years since we last saw him, Kyle has been strapped to a table in a top-secret laboratory while some mad scientist joker named The Baron has been injecting God-knows-what into his veins. Upon his escape at the beginning of this game, Kyle discovers that he has both an attitude and certain abilities. Those abilities make the sometimes-tiring battle against the endless onslaught of undead into something more bloody and weirdly joyful.

If there is one thing that wears me down about Dying Light games, it is just how prevalent the zombies are. I know, I know, this is a post-zombie-apocalypse world, but these things are freaking everywhere. You can barely run 10 steps without stumbling into them, no matter where you are on the map. Don’t stand still, don’t stop to look around, and for the love of God, don’t get spotted out on the streets after dark, or you will be forced to tear ass across the rooftops to the safety of the closest ultraviolet-lit safehouse.

It can be relentless. The Dying Light games unflinchingly throw zombies at the player in sometimes overwhelming numbers. In the previous games, players had to decide whether it was more prudent to stand and fight or bug out to safety—a choice that was often dictated by what time of day it was. But The Beast gives Kyle Crane a third option: Hulking the hell out.

I barely used the guns in this game at all. Ammo is never an issue with a baseball bat.

When Kyle gets surrounded by too many of the undead or he takes a certain amount of damage, he starts grunting around and seeing red. You know the drill here; you’ve seen it in a million movies. He might as well be yellow-eyed Michael Jackson shouting “Get Away!” at Ola Ray. The next thing you know, he has abandoned his weapons and is running around ripping heads and arms from zombie torsos with his bare hands like…well, like a video game boss. Though your Hulk phase only lasts 30 seconds or so, it is incredibly gratifying. It is also extremely useful for clearing out courtyards or dark spaces where you might otherwise get overwhelmed.

In addition to the game’s primary story (hunt down The Baron and get revenge), a lot of the 25-30 hour playtime of Dying Light: The Beast is spent running missions to hunt down superpowered zombies. You kill them and suck blood out of their dead zombie bodies with a little gadget, in order to inject it into yourself (as sane people do, of course). This allows you to add new abilities to your Hulk incarnation, further powering yourself into a force for undead destruction.

Before long, you gain the ability to control where and when you take on your Beast form, which allows you to save it up and deploy it when it is most needed. Does this allow you to cheese the game and complete boss fights in record time? Totally, but cheesing the game is really, really fun. I’m not sure everyone agrees with me, but the mainline Dying Light games can be kinda hard, so the ability to run around wrecking shop on 20 dudes feels like a breath of fresh air.

Speaking of fresh air, I also want to make mention of Dying Light: The Beast’s setting. The valley of Castor Woods, while not the biggest open world in gaming history, feels far less claustrophobic than the maps in previous games. There is a sizable town to explore for those jonesing for the parkour exploration of the mainline games. But there is also a very nice countryside to traverse, which opens the game up in ways that I didn’t realize I needed.

Hmmm...might be time to beast out and rip all these dudes' heads off.

Having a beautiful, wooded space in the game makes playing feel a lot less confined than previous games, despite the reality of those maps being larger than this one. It also opens up the ability to jump into vehicles and go ripping across the landscape, mowing down any unfortunate shambling fool that dares stumble into your path. The vehicles in the game are not what I would call game-changing, but they do allow you to race across the map quickly in a series that still doggedly resists fast travel.

Outside of the Beast-mode powers and the more open setting, Dying Light: The Beast feels very much like another mainline Dying Light game. The majority of your play time, you will be doing the same stuff you did in the previous entries: completing climbing puzzles, parkouring across rooftops, modding out fire axes, and running like hell to safehouses while a cadre of screaming howlers chases you through the darkness. All of the mechanics of Dying Light 2 are here, but the stakes feel a bit lower, making this game feel more like a lighter spin-off than a direct sequel. Sure, you are wandering the world of the undead, but I found myself a lot less horrified at story beats than I have been in the franchise's past. If you ever thought that Dying Light could lighten up a bit, this might be the game you've been looking for.

See? Lighter tone.

The game is also among the best-looking AAA titles I've played in a while. After a lot of ballyhoo at the release of Dying Light 2 about the game’s build being buggy (something I did not experience in my time with the game), I can report that Dying Light: The Beast is a clean experience. I played following the general release, and encountered pretty much zero bugs outside of a little bit of pop-in, which didn’t bother me in the least.

I am a fan of smaller-scoped games like this that take place in a franchise’s world but slightly off the mainline path. I’ve enjoyed side-quels like Far Cry New Dawn, Dead Island: Riptide and (dare I mention it again?) Saints Row: Gat out of Hell. Taking an existing property and putting a twist on the formula can breathe new life into a game franchise—even one that is overrun with the undead. Fans of Dying Light that haven’t yet parkoured into this new experience shouldn’t hesitate. Night is falling, and the howlers will be out and about.