Dying Light: The Beast Review – A Brutal, Familiar Sequel With Limited Surprises

Techland’s Dying Light series has long been built on a simple but effective formula: mix fluid parkour with melee-driven survival horror, then set it against a backdrop of collapsing cities and swarming undead. With Dying Light: The Beast, the studio returns to that blueprint almost unchanged, adding only a monstrous transformation system to shake things up. The result is a sequel that is often entertaining, occasionally surprising, but ultimately familiar in ways both comforting and predictable.

In his review for IGN, Travis Northup described The Beast as “a goofy, bloody sequel with a monstrous twist that doesn’t do much else to mix things up.” Across more than 40 hours of rooftop leaps, zombie brawls, and countryside scavenging, he found the game reliably fun, though its innovations were few and far between.

The story picks up once again with Kyle Crane, now mutated into a half-human, half-beast hybrid after a series of gruesome events. This setup gives him superhuman powers—leaping enormous distances, letting loose sonic roars that shred enemies, and eventually transforming into a towering Hulk-like fighter. The narrative framework is thin, centering on a revenge quest against a predictable villain, but Northup noted that the side quests and supporting characters often carried more personality than the main plot itself.

“The Beast doesn’t add a whole lot aside from its hulking out mechanics,” Northup wrote, pointing out that while the monstrous powers are satisfying, they’re restricted by a rage meter. Most of the time, players still rely on classic melee weapons and parkour to survive. The game’s main additions come through hunting Chimeras— genetically modified zombies whose blood grants Crane new abilities. These upgrades allow everything from shoulder-charging through hordes to pulling off exaggerated mid-air grappling hook maneuvers.

Boss fights serve as the showcase for these mechanics, introducing new enemy types that eventually filter into regular encounters. Early battles feature fast skeletal zombies or invisible predators that stalk players in the dark, adding fresh tension to the familiar rhythm of exploration. Later on, however, Northup observed diminishing returns, with recycled boss variants appearing to pad the campaign’s length.

Castor Woods, the new open-world setting, combines rural landscapes with a compact city zone. It is smaller than the sprawling maps of past games, which makes sense given The Beast’s origins as a planned expansion to Dying Light 2. Northup noted that the condensed environment works to the game’s advantage, eliminating empty stretches while still offering plenty of rooftops, swamps, and open roads to traverse. While not groundbreaking, the design ensures there are always opportunities for chaotic chases and tense nighttime escapes.

Technical performance marks a rare highlight for the series. Previous entries struggled with bugs and crashes, but Northup reported a stable experience on PC, with only minor issues like environmental clipping and one-off crashes. “It’s notable that aside from one crash and a bit of pop-in here and there, it was a pretty smooth ride throughout,” he explained. That reliability helps maintain the game’s fast pace, preventing frustrations that plagued earlier installments.

In the end, The Beast offers exactly what long-time fans expect. The monster transformation system is fun but limited, the story is serviceable but forgettable, and the environments are solid but rarely surprising. For those who still enjoy sprinting across rooftops, drop-kicking zombies, and plunging into the chaos of nightfall, Techland’s latest is another dependable entry in a decade-old series.

As Northup concluded, “Dying Light: The Beast is an entertaining return to the rooftops and flesh pits I’ve come to love over the past decade. The gimmick of amping yourself up into a scary monster to fight other monsters sticks the landing and mostly makes up for a generic story and a map that has few surprises in store.”

For better or worse, this is more Dying Light—only bigger, bloodier, and just monstrous enough to keep players coming back.