DYING LIGHT: THE BEAST

The protagonist of the first Dying Light returns in a new adventure that Techland considers as not a standalone expansion but a full sequel. With a new setting, a new/old protagonist and several improvements over Dying Light 2: Stay Human, The Beast continues and evolves the familiar formula of the series in a very convincing way and proves that the developers still have fresh ideas in mind for the future of the franchise.

Whatever became of Kyle Crane? This question was left unanswered at the end of Dying Light: The Following and we finally get an answer several years later. The intro sequence of The Beast reveals that Kyle had fallen into the hands of a paranoid dictator/mad scientist named The Baron who used him as a guinea pig in his attempt to unlock the secrets of the zombie virus and exploit it for his own evil purposes. Hope for escape seemed futile until an unexpected event in the Baron's underground laboratory gives our protagonist the opportunity to break free and flee. Seeing the outside world for the first time after his long captivity, Kyle feels the burn for revenge and, with the help of the survivors of the area who are suffering under the rule of The Baron, sets out to make him pay for the torture he subjected him to.

The narrative style in Dying Light: The Beast and the development of the plot are more reminiscent of the first game in the series than the sequel, Stay Human, as this time the element of choices and consequences gives way to a more straightforward story of revenge. Depending on how you felt about this feature in Stay Human you may see The Beast as either a return to form or a step backwards. In any case, the quality of the writing in both the main plot and the side quests remains quite high. The same applies to the voice acting, the design of the open world and the environmental storytelling. All of the above contribute in building the coveted immersion, the feeling of the player that they are inside the game world and not just looking at a screen. Wandering around the valley and the now-destroyed human civilization evokes feelings of melancholy, and if you don't make it back to a safe zone before nightfall you'll experience intense moments of terror with death lurking around every corner.

I was equally satisfied with the gameplay, with one small exception that I will mention below. The regular zombies retain the characteristics we saw in previous games in the series, not particularly threatening in small numbers but absolutely deadly if they manage to corner you, but the various categories of special volatiles and multiple bosses will really test your skills. It should be noted that Dying Light: The Beast supports full co-op in the campaign so if you feel afraid of being alone in the dark you can always recruit friends or acquaintances to lend a hand. Melee weapons continue to cause glorious brutality, with each blow leaving visible marks on the zombies' bodies and the more powerful weapons literally destroying them, and now there are increased options for ranged combat with firearms, bows, crossbows, and other fun things that I'll let you discover for yourselves.

My only minor complaint about the gameplay concerns the series' trademark feature, exploring the open world and performing parkour on walls and rooftops. Before I get into that, I should mention that the new Castor Woods setting is really cool and the map, even though it seems smaller than Dying Light 2: Stay Human's, has a bunch of cool spots to explore and loot. However, I was left with the impression that the parkour element could have been tweaked a bit as in some cases I was unable to climb to places that looked accessible to the eye. For example, a stone wall that visually appeared to have large recesses that one could easily grab onto was, for the purposes of the game, a straight wall that I couldn't climb. I think that in the first Dying Light, it was somewhat easier to build up speed and perform continuous parkour without losing momentum due to a spot that ultimately proved to be unclimbable. An idea for Dying Light 3, perhaps a system that would allow free climbing almost everywhere using the stamina bar for balancing purposes.

On a more technical note, I would like to make special mention of the game's graphics engine and, in particular, its performance even on relatively low-end machines. I played Dying Light: The Beast on a laptop with an AMD processor, 16 GB of RAM, and an RTX 3060 graphics card with 6 GB of VRAM. At 1080p resolution and with slight upscaling, I had quite stable 60 fps with most settings on high. At a time when many games strain our PCs without delivering the corresponding visual results (I'm looking at you, Unreal Engine 5), I was delighted to see a game depict an expansive open world and battles with many characters without serious performance issues. Well done, Techland, but here's a small caveat: If you have a graphics card with limited VRAM like me, you may experience progressively reduced performance as you play if you set the textures to High, as there seems to be some kind of memory leak that gradually fills up the VRAM and needs to be fixed. Setting the textures to Medium or going to the main menu and reloading the save solves the problem, but a permanent solution is needed because you may be in the middle of a boss fight or unable to load without losing in-game progress.

My overall impression of Dying Light: The Beast is that it is a quality sequel that may not innovate with major new features but it improves many small aspects of the overall experience resulting in a superior end product. It may seem "smaller" than Dying Light 2 due to its smaller map and less ambitious storytelling but honestly I think this fact works largely to its advantage as it limits potential fatigue from open world bloat and consequently gives it an extra air of freshness. I think it's a very good potential purchase for fans of the series, for players who appreciate open world action and definitely for those who want to celebrate Halloween with a quality zombie horror game.

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