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.
First, in 2011, we got Dead Island, Techland’s opinion-dividing, melee-focused zombie adventure, taking place on the sun-soaked island of Banoi. Three years later, Kyle Crane made his debut in Dying Light, literally dropping into the city of Harran as all hell broke loose. Now, after rescuing that city and its remaining sentient inhabitants from despicable forces (or not, if you instigated one particular ending from the expansion Dying Light: The Following), he’s back, and he’s out for revenge on the man who’s spent the last 13 years torturing him.
Playing Dying Light: The Beast, a game originally planned as an extensive expansion, it’s impossible not to feel like it’s Techland’s greatest hits. The most notable returnee is, of course, Kyle Crane, escaping from the sort of gleaming underground base epitomised by the Resident Evil series, before emerging blinking into the bright sunlight of Castor Woods, a former tourist spot situated in an unspecified European country. Soon, he’s talking to – and like, just totally trusting – Olivia, a woman with a plan to ramp up Crane’s bestial abilities by extracting the blood from a series of monstrous experiments known as Chimeras. Meanwhile, a group of survivors are holed up in the town hall located in Caster Woods’ Old Town, and this is the focus for many of Dying Light: The Beast’s missions.
A handful of other characters return, but even though Dying Light: The Beast has been out for over a week, this is a spoiler-free review, so you’ll have to resort to a two-second Google search to find out who. Otherwise, this Techland convergence is given a light The Last of Us dusting, especially in some indoor scenes, where Biters (Dying Light’s name for zombies) hang comatose while weird, clicky noises punctuate the silence. Even The Beast’s musical theme is given a minimalistic and folky overhaul, evoking the HBO show. If you’re still not wholly convinced, there’s a rare resource material called Cordyceps.
Also returning are Dead Island’s vehicles, with a handful of ranger trucks scattered throughout the environment, and The Following’s deceptively bucolic countryside, which clashes with Caster Woods’ metallic industrial district. Meanwhile, the tight lanes of the Old Town will seem familiar to anyone who’s played Dying Light. Talking of the Old Town, unlike its sequel, Dying Light 2: Stay Human, someone’s been helpfully keeping the weeds in check; this urban area looks incongruously spruce after more than a dozen years into the apocalypse.
Unleashed into Castor Woods, Crane – who’s not looking too bad considering what he’s been through – soon finds himself assisting the motley survivors from Biters, bandits and the soldier forces of chief antagonist, the Baron, the Albert Wesker clone whose nefarious plan involves another super zombie-human hybrid. Helping out sometimes entails the depressingly monotonous fetch quests, admittedly designed to get the player exploring Dying Light: The Beast’s world, discovering unlockable safe zones, stranded convoys, infested dark areas containing valuables, treasure maps and yet more quests. As in Dying Light, there’s an obsession with restoring power and water supply, with even Crane noting how much plumbing work he’s doing at one point.
Dying Light’s multiple upgrade trees are reduced to one page, with many skills automatically inherited from the earlier game. Added here are Crane’s enhancements, a literal ‘beast mode’ in which the hero transforms into a violent Hulk-like killing machine, leaping high into the air and pounding enemies with its vein-popping fists. During regular play, Crane again relies on an assortment of melee weapons, from baseball bats to hammers and machetes.
All are upgradeable using blueprints, along with the common fire, ice and poison embellishments. Surprisingly, ranged weapons are introduced early on, but their use remains hazardous, swiftly attracting dozens of the fast undead known as Virals. There’s also a greater reliance on valuables as a resource for cash, reducing the need for Crane to carry multiple weapons solely for the purpose of flogging them off at the earliest opportunity. And, of course, there’s the crafting, where the player can concoct all manner of items, including Molotov cocktails, bandages, lockpicks, and, somewhat improbably, a grenade launcher and flamethrower.
At the core of Dying Light: The Beast is its constant day-night cycle, with the night segment even more perilous than in its predecessor. The arrival of the dark brings the fast and aggressive Volatiles, and Techland has cannily dropped the mini-map that enabled the player to dodge these vicious creatures in Dying Light easily. When added to the Volatile’s tenacious pursuit, it’s a stressful time, heightened by the plink of strings when Crane is inevitably spotted. Unlocking the various safe houses and towers remains an important endeavour, and like many aspects of Dying Light: The Beast, often requires Crane’s uncanny athletic abilities.
Ah, yes, parkour. As Dan Whitehead noted in his Dying Light review, even as far back as 2014, parkour had lost its novelty. But here we still are, jumping over rooftops, grabbing onto impossibly thin ledges and leaping between conveniently structured sets of mountain rocks. In small (and voluntary) doses, it’s still a weirdly pleasurable activity; when forced into vertigo-inducing climbs to the top of a church or electricity pylon, not so much. In fact, as pointed out by Eurogamer’s Matt Wales earlier this week, Dying Light: The Beast is sometimes a hard game to like. Its vehicle use typifies this. The undead appear attracted to roads and tracks, making vehicular travel an unnecessary chore – bump into too many shambling Biters, and your truck conks out, often becoming a Viral-attracting bomb. I also keep getting into the passenger seat by mistake, but I can’t really blame Techland for that one.
If it all sounds a bit meh, it’s not, because Dying Light: The Beast pulls it back, consistently throwing in an exhilarating set piece or another one of those beautiful yet foreboding sunsets. There’s a tense, nerve-wracking trip to a mental asylum (complete with disturbing notes from doctors who, as in Resident Evil, are dabbling in things they really shouldn’t be) and several fascinating, if not horrific, side quests. The former includes a heartfelt mission to locate two lovestruck survivors called A Sign Of Love, while the latter is encapsulated by a ghastly mission into an underground rail tunnel, For Your Mind Only. Like a comfy pair of slippers, the familiar gameplay and controls are reassuring, and there are plenty of collectables for anyone who enjoys that sort of thing. You certainly get plenty to swing, and targets to aim at: according to Techland, there are 140 melee weapons, 17 ranged weapons and dozens of Viral and Biter variants alongside the diverse Chimeras and human enemies.
Dying Light: The Beast features three difficulty modes: Story, Survival, and Brutal, although I personally found Survival to be quite brutal enough, thank you. There’s a wealth of accessibility and control options, plus a drop-in/out co-op mode which works efficiently enough, teaming players up to take on the undead and the Baron’s soldiers together.
Unfortunately, bugs and glitches afflicted my playthrough. Graphical malfunctions such as juddering images and floating objects are one thing; the broken day/night cycle really threw me. While blissfully strolling around in the bright sunshine, I was moderately flabbergasted when set upon by a cluster of raging Volatiles, seemingly unconcerned with the harsh light. Once I’d reached a safe zone, I checked the time: it was just gone midnight. Given that the mechanic is the major driving force behind Dying Light, this isn’t ideal, although Techland’s latest patch appears to have addressed the issue. What hasn’t been fixed (at least for me on Xbox Series X) is the enemy glitching. Too often, I’ve eliminated all the necessary enemies only for the game to fail to trigger the next action, leaving quitting and restarting as my only option. It’s not a gamebreaker – I’ve always restarted at the start of the current encounter – but it’s a frustrating fault nonetheless.
Ultimately, as with Dead Island and Dying Light, The Beast is best appreciated as a gory B-movie, with the mayhem of oversized monster zombies, explosions, and general pandemonium forming a gloriously over-the-top world. Running around slaughtering the undead with an epic flame-fuelled baseball bat, leaping over buildings and occasionally switching into Beast mode when things get too hot is genuinely satisfying, and Dying Light: The Beast looks gorgeous too, with variety in its landscapes and characters. Like Kyle Crane himself, Dying Light: The Beast is sometimes a discordant mix, albeit one that just about stays on the right side of coherent – and entertaining – throughout.
A copy of Dying Light: The Beast was provided for this review by Techland.
