Dying Light: The Beast

I have a rule when reviewing action-RPGs: the first two hours tell you almost nothing. Dying Light: The Beast proves that rule hard. The opening is sluggish by design - Kyle Crane crawls out of captivity with heavy limbs, dragging stamina, and movement that feels deliberately labored. Techland has baked his thirteen years of torture right into the physics of his parkour. Stick with it, because once the skill tree opens up and Beast Mode starts charging in earnest, the whole thing clicks into something genuinely exciting. Castor Woods is the best open world the series has produced. After Dying Light 2's dense urban sprawl, a rural national park sounds like a downgrade - it is not. The woodland cabins, marsh edges, and scattered village ruins force you to rethink traversal constantly. Parkour now shares space with off-road vehicles and careful ground movement through bush-heavy terrain. Verticality is preserved through rock walls, electricity towers, and tree clusters, so the series' signature fluid movement never fully disappears. The day-night cycle is also the sharpest it has been since the original game - Volatiles stalk the darkness with genuine menace, and every after-dark run carries real tension rather than the watered-down threat that Dying Light 2 settled for. Beast Mode itself is the mechanical centrepiece. You charge a rage meter by both dealing and absorbing damage, which means it functions less like a god-mode power fantasy and more like an emergency release valve. When a horde corners you in a dark zone and your flaming sword is one hit from breaking, popping Beast Mode - complete with black veins crawling up Crane's first-person hands and a savage high leap - feels earned rather than cheap. It is satisfying without trivialising the survival loop, which is the right call. Stealth has also been quietly improved: takedowns no longer require skill-tree unlocks or level matching, making it a genuinely viable option rather than a checkbox feature. Combat against human enemies remains the weakest link; it feels clunky relative to the fluid zombie encounters, and that has been true of every game in the series. The story is where your expectations need calibrating. Crane's return is genuinely felt - Techland put real work into aging him, scarring his hands, slowing his animations early on, and building his arc around a man reassembling himself after being broken. The problem is everything around him. The Baron leans into cartoonish villainy, and supporting characters like Olivia and the Sheriff exist mainly to hand Crane his next objective. The revenge plot resolves in ways that feel more generic B-horror than the payoff a decade of fan anticipation deserved. For a game so emotionally anchored to its protagonist, the surrounding cast is a clear missed opportunity. Side quests are functional but rarely surprising - no Disco Elysium-level detours here, just solid content that does not waste too much of your time. A full map clear sits around 35 hours, with the main campaign landing closer to 20, which is the right length for this kind of experience. Some quality-of-life rough edges are worth flagging: the shared button for healing and looting will cost you bandages at the worst moments, loot detection goes haywire when enemies die in bushes, and there are reports of occasional softlocks. Nothing that breaks the game, but enough friction to remind you this is not a polished-to-glass AAA release. Up to four-player co-op is present and works well if you have friends who want in. On Steam, the game sits at 88 percent positive across a substantial sample, which tracks with a title that delivers on its core loop even when the narrative stumbles. If you bounced off Dying Light 2's bloat and wanted the first game's atmosphere back, The Beast is the clearest answer Techland has given. Monika, Scout Team