Dying Light: The Beast dials up the horror and keeps the parkouring, zombie-bashing action – and it's a blast

TechRadar Verdict

Dying Light: The Beast went from potential expansion to a fully-fledged sequel, and although its origins are on full display in its narrative and protagonist, it never feels constrained by them. This is a fresh entry into the popular zombie-smashing franchise, taking the action from the city streets to a sleepy Alpine resort, but it's a welcome change of pace that opens up new and exciting ways to kill truckloads of infected Z-heads - it's just a shame that the human enemies still aren't all that interesting to fight.

Pros

• +Brutal, satisfying melee combat with impressive gore
• +Parkour remains excellent
• +Nights are even darker and more terrifying than before
• +Surprisingly pretty gameworld that benefits hugely from the new Alpine setting

Cons

• -Gunfights with human enemies feel a bit bland
• -Dialogue is cheesy and unoriginal
• -Some noticeable (though not ruinous) bugs
• -Conspicuous lack of fast travel

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Alright, I'm just gonna get straight to the point: did you love the first two Dying Light games? You did? Okay, I'll save you some time - you're definitely going to enjoy Techland's latest instalment in its survival zombie game series, Dying Light: The Beast.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PC
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Release date: September 18, 2025

There's enough to set The Beast apart from its predecessors, even if it follows the same broad gameplay template and stars returning leading man Kyle Crane, protagonist of the original game and its expansion, The Following.

Things didn't go so great for Kyle the first time around; in the (now canon) ending of The Following, he ended up betrayed, infected, captured, and used as an unwilling test subject. The viral outbreak has gone worldwide, and 90% of the global population is dead or infected.

More than a full in-universe decade later, he breaks out of a mysterious laboratory, and we’re off to the races once again: time to bash some skulls with improvised melee weapons and parkour your way across the rooftops like a bloodlusted Sébastien Foucan. Dying Light: The Beast isn't overly concerned with being serious or grounded; we're here for a little bit of the ol’ ultraviolence, and boy, is it fun.

Worlds apart

Considering that Dying Light: The Beast was purportedly originally planned as extra downloadable content (DLC) to Dying Light 2, it sure as hell has a good amount of content in it. Instead of the more urban settings of the first two games, The Beast takes place in the cozy woodland resort town of Castor Woods, nestled in a valley in an alpine landscape.

Well, I say ‘cozy’ - it's not exactly a pleasant place to be by the time Kyle breaks loose. Hordes of poor infected souls roam the cobbled streets and forest underbrush, deadly mutant variants stalk the night, and a rogue paramilitary group commanded by a villainous oligarch is attempting to seize control of the region. So far, so Dying Light.

But the shift to a more rural setting proves to be exactly the injection of freshness this series needed. The map isn't particularly large, but it's big enough to make navigating on foot take a while, and the focus on urban verticality is lessened here. Yes, there are still pylons and watchtowers for Kyle to clamber up, but also more wide-open spaces, divided by trees and thick bushes that make ambushes a constant threat to the unwary explorer. The woodland environments are also beautiful, as is the primary settlement, the Old Town, crumbling in its majesty as nature begins to reclaim it.

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