Dying Light: The Beast review for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

It’s been more than a decade since we met Kyle Crane in the fictional city of Harran in the original Dying Light. While there was nothing new about a survival horror game featuring zombies and crafting, adding parkour to the mix gave players even more ways to survive, especially at night. Dying Light 2: Stay Human was then released in 2022, featuring a different hero, Aiden Caldwell, in another unique survival adventure. Now in 2025 we return to Kyle Crane in Dying Light: The Beast, and thanksfully Crane can still run with the best of them.

Dying Light: The Beast takes place thirteen years after the events of the first game. If you haven’t played the first game, no need to worry, there is a “Previously On Dying Light” option in the menu that goes through the story to this point.

The world has basically been overrun by zombie-like monsters called volatiles and pockets of survivors fight to survive the hordes of these unending creatures. Crane was captured after the events of Dying Light and its DLC, The Following and experimented on by an unknown group lead by an evil scientist named “The Baron”. Finally, after thirteen years, he manages to escape the torturous facility. When exiting the lab, he finds out that he has been transported to a rural tourist town called Castor Woods. Far from any major metropolis, this small sleepy town is still full of parkour opportunities.

During the escape, Crane seems to go berserk, and when he does he immediately regenerates his health. He also gets enhanced strength and speed, allowing him to run faster, but also rip zombies apart with his bare hands. At the start of the game, Crane’s beast mode is activated by a rage bar which is filled up by taking damage and dodging. Eventually, he will be able to activate beast mode at will.

At the very beginning of the escape, a woman named Olivia helps Crane over the radio. As you move through the lab, Olivia starts dropping hints that she is inside the lab, being able to watch your progress through the security system. Eventually she has to run before your escape is complete and leaves you to fend for yourself. Once out of the lab, the two meet up and Crane convinces Olivia to go after The Baron instead of running.

Much like previous games, Dying Light: The Beast is open world and there isn’t much of a restriction on where you can go. As you explore the area of Castor Woods, you find safe areas that can be unlocked, usually by clearing an area of zombies and activating the UV lights. Activating the UV lights come in a variety of flavors — from repairing the electrical line to having to run the line the shortest distance possible between the power and the lights. Each location you unlock serves as a respawn point, and a place to rest up until morning or, if you are really brave, nightfall.

Nightfall is particularly dangerous. Like the original game, the faster and stronger infected come out to play when the sun goes down. If you are spotted, you are chased and the infected at night are very, very fast. The easiest way to deal with them is to run, especially to a safehouse.

Level progression in the game is different from the original Dying Light. In the first game you got experience for doing different things. As you did those things, such as parkour or fighting monsters, you received different types of experience that could go to leveling up those aspects. In The Beast, you have a single experience bar and you gain experience by taking out creatures and completing missions. Killing nets you double digit experience during the day, and you get more at night if you want to risk it, but when it takes around 30,000 XP to ascend a level, even at lower levels, your best choice is to go complete missions.

When you level up you gain skill points, which can be used on three out of four skill trees: survival, power, and agility. The skills in each tree are straightforward, with the fourth known as the beast tree. You can only use the skills in the beast tree when you are in beast mode and the only way to level up your beast skill tree is by killing chimeras. These are genetically modified monsters from The Baron’s lab that when killed, allow to you extract a substance called GHB which gives you points to use in the beast skill tree.

Much like its predecessors, Dying Light: The Beast also features multiplayer co-op and you and three friends can join in the zombie killing fun. Unfortunately, the title is not cross play compatible, so if you and your friends want to play it has to be on the same platform, PC, Xbox or PlayStation. Multiplayer is a lot of fun, having a friend around to help with the hordes of zombies makes for a great time. While playing multiplayer we did run into one glitch, while fighting zombies on a bridge, several of them came out of the ground. The way that it was described made it sound like that wasn’t supposed to happen, though it seemed to be an isolated problem.

Graphically Dying Light: The Beast looks very good. I’m running the game on a GTX3070 and had no visual problems at all. For a game based on bad things happening when the lights go out, the lighting is done well too. Character models are well done and the animations on them are fine. When your friends parkour is where the illusion breaks a little bit. I’m not sure how you can do it, but I noticed a few times where the people I was playing with were floating in mid air instead of clinging to the side of a building or a wall.

Voice acting is hit or miss for me. A couple of characters in the town hall have some strange cadence to their voice acting and it sounds forced or overdone. Kyle’s voice acting is done well, and so is Olivia’s. The noises coming from the creatures and zombies, especially at night, do a pretty good job of being pretty creepy.

Overall Dying Light: The Beast is a fun foray back into a world of survival horror. It is a little disappointing that there is only one way to gain XP in the game, and though going out at night is very risky, it is high risk/high reward. If you enjoyed the previous titles in the series, Dying Light: The Beast is a fun time, especially with friends.

Note: Techland provided us with a Dying Light: The Beast code for review purposes.