Dying Light: The Beast

Dying Light: The Beast is a goofy, bloody sequel with a monstrous twist, but doesn’t do much else to mix things up.

Techland's expansion turned standalone sequel winds up being the most enjoyable Dying Light so far, because it dials back the power fantasy.

Kyle Crane is back, and looking for revenge on the evil scientist who's spent 13 years experimenting on him in this enjoyable if sometimes uneven romp through Techland's greatest hits.

A more gritty survival horror experience than Stay Human, but Techland's new first-person parkour game still stumbles a bit.

The amount of disgusting gore is an absolute delight.

Dying Light: The Beast can feel a touch safe at times with a serviceable story, but the high-flying parkour and gorgeous graphics are top-notch. Castor Woods makes for the perfect zombie-slaying playground for you to enjoy. It’s pure adrenaline packed into its 20 hours, continuing to carve out its own corner of the crowded zombie space.

A lot of the fun you can have with Dying Light: The Beast is what you make of it yourself. Exploring the world, unlocking the safe houses, finding cool new weapon modifications and crafting recipes, and generally getting lost. Nothing about the experience was groundbreaking, nor was it as enthralling or immersive as other open-world games. Instead, it was good fun you can enjoy in short or long bursts, whether you want to sink your teeth into zombie hunting or chilling as you wander the wilds and urban spaces of Castor Hills.

Dying Light: The Beast's parkour mechanics and crunchy melee combat are the two load-bearing pillars that make it a game worth leaping into, with support from a beautiful world to explore (minus the infected) and a tense day and night cycle that greatly raises the stakes on its survival elements. Beyond that, the mechanical and narrative pacing, inconsistent writing and narrative tone, and world design choices that feel antithetical to the series in the first place all bring it to a fairly uninteresting experience that is only worth it for however long you want to turn your brain off and enjoy watching digital infected brains go *splat.*

Dying Light: The Beast promises a full Dying Light experience, but can it capture the magic and horror of its predecessors as a standalone title?

Dying Light: The Beast blends a vicious revenge tale, breathtaking vistas, and feral new powers into one of Techland's most polished nightmares yet.