Dying Light: The Beast is the latest entry in the Dying Light franchise, where you play as the protagonist of the 1st game in a zombie-riddled world.
After a great 2nd game, Dying Light goes back to the protagonist where the game began, Kyle Crane. But a guy called The Barron has kidnapped you for years and has done experiments on you. If I remember right from the 1st game, you are immune to the zombies and want to make a cure or weapons. And weapons they sure did make, and they all broke out in this city, which you were kept under.
In the game, you basically hunt “The Beast”, a monster that goes after the henchman of The Barron, but he doesn’t really attack normal people or even you by the looks of it, so he runs off so that you can’t take him down. After meeting him the 1st time, I personally have not seen him again, mainly due to not being extremely far into the game yet, due to getting the game about 2 days ago and having some technical issues with it, but from what i do understand, also from the name of course, this is the beast you will be hunting througout the game.
The 2nd thing you are hunting is Chimera’s, you want their blood because it makes you stronger. After you collect the samples, you also bring some to the woman in the chair, Olivia, to test the blood and see what it does. Currently, I’ve hunted about 3 or 4 Chimera’s, and they all have their own gimmick, like being extremely strong, or have a mist attack so that it can jump out at you. These are some pretty cool and fun fights to do because they are all unique in their own way and switch up the gameplay from the normal enemies you usually take on.
You will also help out a group stuck in a town hall or church of some sort, and through them you will learn more about the world, area, and people, and will give you some side quests to do, like searching for a family member, or searching for a group of people that went out to investigate something and never returned. Of course, they will also give you some of the main quests, like turning on the power in the power plant. This is at the time of writing, the last quest I’ve finished, so sadly, I can’t really talk much more about the story, but I might update the review later today or in the upcoming days to add some more context to that.
The game can be difficult at times, especially if you are not used to this sort of gameplay. It’s very unique with how everything works, and it still feels like magic in how they made the controls work with a controller. I started out playing the game on the normal difficulty, but of course, I’m a game journalist, so I had to put the difficulty down to give myself a bit of an easier time, but for me personally, it made it a bit more enjoyable.
There is 1 moment where the game becomes really scary, and that is at night. That’s when the harder monsters come out, which will come at you even when you are on the rooftops and will just follow you until you lose them or get to the nearest UV lighting that repels them. When this happened, I was on the edge of my seat, just being scared and taking things slow, and when they do see you, because they will, just get ready to run and scream. While this is a great part of the game, it’s my personal least favorite. If you are a bit of a chicken like me, make sure to go to bed in the game on time so you don’t get stuck outside having to rush back home. Sometimes the nights are unavoidable, and you must do stuff then for the sake of the story or a side mission, like when you hunt something, but these are the moments where it didn’t feel as hard as it normally would.
You might be hunting beasts, but you can also turn into one and go absolutely WILD, taking down as many zombies as possible. The world goes a bit grey while you slash, and all you see is blood. This is such a satisfying part of the game, but it is in the beginning, a tiny bit random, and you can’t control when you do it. There is this bar that fills up when you hit the enemies, and when it’s full, it instantly pops and you go wild, but there is a skill you can unlock after taking down a few chimeras that gives you more control over it.
All the zombies in the game look absolutely amazing. There is a lot of variety in how they look and the clothes they wear. In the beginning, a lot of them felt a bit hard to take down and required actual attention, especially because they are VERY grabby, which was a bit annoying at times, but luckily when I put the difficulty down, it became a lot more manageable and fun to play around with them.
Not just the zombies look amazing, but just the world in general, I caught myself many times just looking around, taking in the gorgeous views and world they made. It really is a visual master piece that has a bit of everything in its world, but of course, the city surrounded by trees and mountains helps set the tone a lot as well.
My least favorite part of the game is actually what it’s most known for, the climbing. It just felt a bit clunky at times, but I do think it’s a me issue. I had this same issue when I played it at Gamescom, but when I was looking at George Phoenix playing, he did everything perfectly without issue, so I do think it’s me just overestimating the reach and what you can and can’t grab, which again does feel like it’s a bit on me.
One of the things I love is the variety of weapons, there are a lot of choices and customizability, which does make the game more fun. You can find a ton of mods to craft and attach to your weapons, like electricity and fire, but you can also find blueprints for other helpful tools, like exploding throwing knives. It’s such a fun world to explore, so going around finding all blueprints didn’t feel much like an annoying task but more like an exploration to improve.
The game is our RIGHT NOW, so don’t forget to get it either on PS5, Xbox One, or on PC through Steam or the Epic Game Store. I can’t recommend this game enough, and even after not having played anything Dying Light since the 1st game came out more than 10 years ago, it’s still fun to get back into the groove of things, so you don’t need to have played the 2nd game, but having played the 1st game does make it a bit more enjoyable.
As I said, I did have some minor crash issues, but this was only during 1 or 2 parts of the game early on, so i do expect it to be fixed with the day 1 patch.
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