Dying Light: The Beast

The best game in the franchise, The Beast brings all the best parts of the previous two Dying Light games together into one irresistible, blood-soaked package.

Techland proves once again that they're doing a great job, and this standalone, which could almost be called Dying Light 3, does the saga proud. It's just a shame that the difficulty ruins the fun a bit at times... But in the end? The best Dying Light to date. A real beast.

While Dying Light: The Beast has some minor issues, the overall experience is fantastic and worth your time.

Much like Kyle Crane's return, the series has also returned to form with Dying Light: The Beast. Although not a true sequel, it's a meaningful entry that dials down the tone to a much more sinister and grimier one. It's a reminder from Techland of why fans love the series in the first place—a gnarly yet technical combat system, over-the-top gore, and the thrill of freerunning all composited with a decent enough story, one that's sure to invoke the hope to live and die another day. You can effortlessly mow down enemies with a barrage of new unhinged artillery or viciously tear them apart with Beast Mode—it's your playground here, and it all adds up to make it perfect for veterans to experience while offering a slice to newcomers of what makes Dying Light feel so special. The Beast is awake, and so is the franchise once again.

Dying Light: The Beast is everything I wanted from Techland’s return to the series. The combat is brutal and fun, the sandbox world is massive and rewarding to explore, and Beast Mode is an absolute highlight. I feel that this is the best entry in the franchise and a must-play for fans of Dying Light.

Dying Light: The Beast is an incredible evolution in the series by bringing back the movement and weapon feel, and evolving them to feel more brutal, which feels incredible after the overturned nature of what Dying Light 2 gave us.

With the best parkour in the series, a satisfying combat system, and an engaging story, the game more than makes up for its minor flaws. Thankfully, it feels much closer to the first game than the second.

Dying Light: The Beast is a staggering achievement, recapturing the series’ spirit and elevating it tenfold. The result is a game that, while occupying a much tighter space, manages to feel more alive than Harran or Villedor combined. Techland isn't reinventing the wheel here, but by revitalizing its own playbook, The Beast is Dying Light in its prime.

Dying Light The Beast doesn't reinvent the wheel or introduce changes that revolutionize the series, but it polishes many aspects, enriches others, and adds enough new features (new map, greater vehicle weight, etc.) to make the experience feel fresh, and it succeeds. And, most importantly, it's still as fun as it was on the first day.

Dying Light: The Beast is a triumphant return to Techland's winning formula. An excellent zombie survival game packed with fast-paced action and visceral moments of combat and survival. The return of Kyle Crane is a tremendous success and a love letter to fans of the original game. However, its lack of innovation prevents it from reaching the heights of a true revolution for the series.

A strong sequel and a quality addition to the open world action genre.

Dying Light: The Beast arrives as the long-awaited sequel after nearly a decade, bringing back the character who defined countless hours of gameplay. It feels like the most balanced entry in the franchise, blending classic elements with modern touches. The story could have been more engaging, and the visuals don’t quite reach current-gen standards, yet the engine impresses with its level of detail and the breathtaking landscapes of Castor Woods. With solid performance, extensive exploration, and the unmistakable tension of nightfall, it stands as an essential experience for fans.

While it doesn't reinvent the wheel, Dying Light: The Beast is a return to form while it makes up for anything it may lack with the glorious return of Kyle Crane.

Dying Light: The Beast is an absolute triumph for Techland and a gift for fans. It recaptures the essence of the first title, improves on what was learned in subsequent installments, and manages to balance story, gameplay, and atmosphere with a campaign that can take you up to 50 hours of gameplay depending on the difficulty (and which you can enjoy in co-op mode). It's proof that the franchise is still alive and kicking, bloodier and more exciting than ever.

Raw, dark and full of thrills, this is exactly what you would expect from the series, and more. Crane is back with a vengeance and we are along for the ride. Nighttime is truly fearful, while beastmode gives some much appreciated respite. Some technical difficulties keep the game from greatness.

Dying Light: The Beast is a smaller but enjoyable addition to the series, with the return of Kyle Crane and the new mountain setting of Castor Woods. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's a very good amalgamation of everything we've seen in previous Dying Light games.

There’s no doubt that Dying Light: The Beast is best game in the series, but that doesn’t make it the perfect zombie game. Taking the signature elements from both previous games, enhancing and wrapping them up in a much nicer package was the best decision Techland could take. The Beast Mode is a new gameplay mechanic that perfectly blends into the Dying Light formula, so that’s another positive change the series has gained with Dying Light: The Beast. The story is strong and there are no longer average or boring side-quests. Also, Kyle Crane is a more believable character than Aidan Caldwell. He perfectly fits the gritty tone of the game, and it elevates Dying Light: The Beast to the best entry in the series.

Dying Light: The Beast delivers refined parkour, intense melee combat, co-op gameplay, and a fully optimized experience with a dark, gripping story set in new regions.

Dying Light: The Beast brings back Kyle Crane, the smartass we all know and love, but this time he’s different. Having gone through 13 years of trauma, he’s got anger coursing through his veins, as well as beast blood. The gameplay elements of The Beast, while very similar to Dying Light 2, still feel enjoyable. The combat brings back the visceral dismemberment from Dying Light 1, with unique executions and awesomely high levels of gore. Parkour feels more fluid than before, with sprinting through the city and rooftop traversal feeling super smooth (as long as you don’t get grabbed by an infected). Roger Craig Smith does a stellar job once again as Crane, and it was a blast getting to see his story continue. Unfortunately, a few performance issues and audio bugs lessened the experience, but overall, this is a great new entry to the franchise, and one Dying Light fans will be glad to have waited for.

Dying Light: The Beast is a game that will resonate most with longtime fans of the franchise. Choosing to focus on targeted improvements while preserving much of what worked in previous entries is a bold move. And while this approach has backfired in many other games, here it pays off—making this the most enjoyable title in the series yet.

Dying Light: The Beast is a bloody great time. Kyle Crane's return is a highlight, and while the pieces around him don't always fit, there's enough heartfelt interactions involved to make it enjoyable. The best part is the gameplay – an astoundingly brutal and adventurous romp through a gorgeous and well crafted world. It's a beast of an effort by Techland, and it pays off handsomely.

The decision to transform Dying Light 2’s second DLC into a full game was a right one. Dying Light: The Beast is a big, new adventure that blends well all the best parts of DL, DL2 and The Following. This is a game for all the fans of the franchise, and one that has a surprisingly cool story to tell.

As a sequel, Dying Light: The Beast succeeds in expanding on the foundations laid by its predecessors in ways that feel meaningful and player-minded.

Top-tier movement and combat elevate a decent story into something worth your time.

Kyle Crane returns, the nightmarish nights return, and the sensations that Dying Light, more so than Dying Light 2, Stay Human, gave us return, albeit transposed into a very different setting design. The Beast may not be perfect and is a more contained experience than its predecessors, but it will certainly delight fans of the first installment because it recalls it where it matters most. The hunt for the Baron isn't for those looking for elaborate narratives; after all, it's just a pretext to get back out there and dance from rooftop to rooftop with Techland-style agility, among the most "beautiful" infected ever, nervously checking the clock to avoid finding hordes of horrors of the night on your heels... until the Beast makes his monstrous appearance. With this intense installment, peace is officially made between those who were disappointed by the direction the franchise has taken and Techland.

With a great scenario, spine-chilling nights, and intense battles, the parkour-heavy zombie franchise skillfully returns to its roots.

Despite outdated mission design and some technical seams, Dying Light: The Beast delivers fast and satisfying parkour, brutal combat with a beast form twist, engaging co-op, and excellent PC optimization, making it an irresistibly fun and addictive experience.

Dying Light: The Beast combines the strengths of its predecessors to create the best installment in the series to date.

Dying Light: The Beast marks the return of Kyle Crane in a thrilling sequel that breathes new life into the series. With ferocious beast powers, adrenaline-pumping Chimera boss battles, and parkour that’s as exhilarating as ever, the game delivers plenty of standout moments. The open world can feel a bit too sprawling, and the controls occasionally slip into clunky territory, but the fast-paced combat and richly designed side missions more than make up for it. This is an excellent return to form — one that blends fresh ideas with the spirit of the original in a way fans won’t want to miss.

The Beast succeeds in bringing back old mechanics of the franchise while brings some new elements to the table. Focusing in combat, the game is a natural evolution of Kyle Crane, that is as charismatic as ever.

Dying Light: The Beast strips back its setting and scale to deliver a focused story, while enhancing Techland's undead slaying. What really makes it worth playing is The Beast's brilliant co-op experience, which is equally hilarious as it is horrifying. Alongside sturdy handheld PC performance, The Beast is worth giving this franchise another chance if Stay Human left you in the cold.

Dying Light: The Beast may have begun life as a DLC, but it's released as a full-fledged game that can proudly stand on its own.

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.

The Dying Light series has never positioned itself as a top-tier, award-winning franchise, but it consistently delivers what matters most: entertainment. The Beast builds on that legacy with a relentless mix of high-octane action, visceral violence, and a menagerie of zombies and monsters. Its immersive universe and finely tuned gameplay mechanics ensure that fans of the genre will find plenty to sink their teeth into.

Gripes aside, I mostly had fun with Dying Light: The Beast. Which sounds more of a backhanded compliment than it's meant to be. This is a fun and entirely competent action game that will find both old and new fans thanks to its dedication to getting the basics right. It's a little unfocused, a little too in love with its own ideas, and many of its mechanics are so old they could have grandkids. But no other franchise out now delivers zombie thrills on this level, and certainly not with this kind of thought to making a fun experience with a lower barrier of entry. If this is a new beginning like the game might suggest, here's hoping Techland will continue to learn and grow from here. They certainly have the capacity for it, and I'll be there for a sequel when it comes out.

The return of Crane with the new gameplay mechanic that lends its name to the game is exactly what the franchise needed. In a post-apocalyptic world full of blood and gore, the beast can finally be unleashed to do as it pleases. Techland understood its audience and delivered directly to them, with clever nods, an improved RPG system, more entertaining animations to execute, and a story that may be simple but ties the package together—making this the best Dying Light entry to date.

Dying Light: The Beast refines the best elements of Dying Light, with a more concise, frightening, immersive and challenging world, without the chaff we saw in the previous one. The combat is visceral and bloody, and even with a monster inside Kyle Crane, you never feel invincible, thus maintaining a palpable tension from start to finish.

Dying Light The Beast doesn't reinvent the series, but it does revive it with blood, tension, and an unforgettable hero.

Dying Light: The Beast is a fun and confident return to the series' roots. The new mechanic of transforming into a monster is the highlight and, together with the charisma of the protagonist Kyle Crane, elevates the story. With a more contained but dense map and exemplary technical performance, the game does not reinvent the formula, but executes it masterfully. It is a polished adventure, a treat for fans and an excellent starting point for newcomers.

I enjoyed my time as Kyle in Dying Light: The Beast and continue to regard Techland as having mastered a singular type of game experience. Some key aspects I bristled against were concerning, but the reactive gameplay, popcorn-munching plot, and mechanical depth at its heart are all fully intact. I remain eager to see where this over-the-top story goes next, but I’d rather get there by grappling hook over a cityscape.

Dying Light: The Beast delivers sequel-worthy improvements, with smoother story progression, more engaging side quests, scarier nights, and even sharper combat feedback and gore. For me, it surpasses the second game in sheer fun.

Dying Light: The Beast is a sequel that successfully captures Techland’s signature grimy and eerie hostile environment. The new gameplay systems and neatly refined narrative are satisfying, but for an open-world game, it somewhat lacks the motivation to keep players engaged over the long term.

As Kyle Crane’s story continues, action-packed hours of zombie-bashing await you. What we have here is a tight, well-crafted game.

Dying Light: The Beast isn't exactly brimming with innovation. Rather, it delivers a whole series of small improvements and expansions appropriate to the story. What ultimately sets this zombie adventure apart from Dying Light 2, however, is its straightforwardness and significantly stronger focus on the series' core strengths. Fast-paced parkour, brutal action, and, last but not least, the game world, both beautiful and dynamic, characterize the experience. While The Beast is a bit unwieldy and fiddly, overall the "little" Dying Light is convincing. Both newcomers and seasoned players will feel at home in The Beast. We definitely recommend it.

Dying Light: The Beast is an action-packed open-world game with powerful and brutal combat and a high paced parkour system allowing me to glide elegantly across rooftops. Even though quests and storylines quickly become routine, the smooth gameplay keeps me hooked with constant new challenges and noticeable improvements.

A spin-off that maintains the same quality as the two previous chapters, while refining itself to deliver a more visceral and brutal experience.

Dying Light: The Beast might repeat some of the mistakes of previous games, but it also brings back everything that worked and focuses on them while delivering a more interesting story set in the series’ most unique location yet. The Beast might have started as DLC for the more ambitious Dying Light 2, but its contained success ends up being closer to the sequel we all asked for than that game ever was.

Dying Light: The Beast feels pure and almost nostalgic, like a compilation that fuses together the experiences of the first two games. Even a decade later, that experience remains unique and vibrant.

Dying Light: The Beast is neither an expansion nor a sequel. However, it is another good opportunity for an extremely spectacular extermination of zombies in a beautiful, open world of reasonable size.

Dying Light: The Beast is a worthy successor to Stay Human and the most ambitious installment in the saga. Techland unleashes its bestial side in 2025 by refining the parkour and combat, and attempting to iron out several historical flaws of the franchise. The game's sense of freedom and cathartic brutality make it a perfect outlet for all fans of the genre who will take the time to contemplate a dazzlingly beautiful open world. However, The Beast is far from perfect, and suffers from certain modern ills that would have deserved to be addressed.

In the end, Dying Light: The Beast proves that Techland still knows how to craft a memorable zombie apocalypse, with visceral parkour and survival thrills to boot. Its linear revenge story is taken to greater heights by side quests that bring out Crane's humanity, its open world is breathtaking despite some repetitive activities, and Beast Mode adds a ferocity that keeps combat feeling fresh and intense. With stable performance and plenty of memorable moments, it may not reinvent the franchise, but it stands as one of its most polished and engaging Dying Light games yet.

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.

Dying Light: The Beast is a surprisingly deep, atmospheric, and mature experience. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it refines the formula with confidence—closing the gaps left by the second chapter and rediscovering what made the original so compelling. It dares where it matters, yet never strays from its core identity. Familiar gameplay returns, but it’s enhanced by thoughtful, coherent innovations and a narrative structure that’s finally both solid and engaging. It’s not perfect, but it has soul—and in today’s landscape, that’s more than enough to rank it among the standout action-survival titles of the year.

Dying Light: The Beast is a serious gore-fest that, when you dig a little deeper, turns out to be a rather silly playground teeming with ingenius ways of dispatching the undead. The fun, for me, was finding them all, and while it may not stick with me for long, this is still the best that Dying Light has ever been.

Dying Light has always been a series that does a few things very well, but would get distracted trying to be a lot more at the same time. Finally, The Beast leans into Dying Light's best parts, giving you a scarier, tougher, more immersive world to explore than anything in the series before.

Dying Light: The Beast is a successful return to the roots of the series, although it is occasionally noticeable that it is indeed an expansion pack transformed into a full-fledged game.

Dying Light: The Beast is a very fun game with a story that keeps you engaged in playing through the campaign, but it has two small issues that could be easily fixed and would make the game even better: the campaign progression that suddenly requires levels that are too high, and the artificial intelligence of the volatiles in campaign missions. Other than that, it’s a game that will greatly please those who played the original.

The Beast marks the return of Kyle Crane, now more than just a Volatile, driven by vengeance against the Baron. The story is straightforward, lacking meaningful choices, with flat supporting characters and a weak antagonist, making it feel like a missed opportunity. Where the narrative falls short, the gameplay delivers: fluid, essential parkour, weighty combat, and oppressive nights recapture the tension of the original. Solid and enjoyable, but ultimately conservative.

Dying Light: The Beast can easily be called Dying Light: The Best. Yes, it has its fair share of problems—the campaign, zero motivation for nighttime runs, the burden of leveling, and the very slow initial hours when you have practically no resources or gear—which will quickly repel those who came primarily for the campaign. However, the heart of Dying Light is a sandbox with parkour and drop-kicking zombies. And that heart is once again beating with a healthy rhythm.

Dying Light The Beast is a fun spin-off that avoids evolving the franchise.

Very enjoyable and more pleasant to play than Dying Light 2 in some respects, thanks in particular to its highly satisfying parkour and no-frills adventure, Dying Light the Beast remains a minor episode in Techland's series. Despite a smaller play area and a very short campaign, the game still ends up becoming repetitive after a few hours, due to uninteresting side activities and a poorly constructed map. The basics of the gameplay are there and they're still as good as ever, but that's not enough to make it a memorable experience.

Dying Light: The Beast delivers on nearly everything it promises. While the action can feel repetitive at times, it's still fun, and wreaking havoc with your creature powers is a distinct pleasure. The map is smaller than previous ones but still offers enough content to be satisfying and is well-designed.

Dying Light: The Beast marks a return to simplicity and straightforwardness for Techland’s series, a shift that also comes through in the comeback of the original protagonist. Angrier than ever and literally able to turn into a beast, Kyle Crane will lead us through a somewhat clichéd and predictable revenge story, fortunately enriched by a host of side missions, characters, puzzles to solve, and secrets to uncover within a map that alternates between urban settlements, forests, and mountains, all in an effort to best express the formula that made this franchise so successful.

Dying Light: The Beast provides highly entertaining and engaging gameplay elements, but falters with its lackluster narrative and mundane visuals.

Dying Light: The Beast is a ghost of a great franchise, competently executed but lacking the spark that once made it special. The game lacks the pioneering audacity of the original, and lacks the narrative ambition of the sequel. It's a grind that, despite its apparent dynamism, leads nowhere. On top of all this, the game was extremely rough at release, and some of its bugs remain unfixed.

Like an electrified baseball bat, The Beast is silly and perhaps disposable, but you can still have a great time swinging it. [Issue#416, p.110]

Dying Light: The Beast may not be groundbreaking, but with Beast Mode, Castor Woods, and a few surprisingly fun side quests, it delivers enough chaos and enjoyment to have you grinning as you tear through hordes of zombies.

Melee combat and parkour remain an entertaining pairing, but Dying Light is beginning to feel like it's just going through the motions.

Dying Light: The Beast attempts to reconnect with the original DNA that many players believed was altered by the second instalment. It features violent and impactful fights, an oppressive soundscape enhanced by Olivier Derivière's compositions, and stressful day/night cycles. This new Dying Light game defies convention to create an even stronger sense of immersion.

A lot of the fun you can have with Dying Light: The Beast is what you make of it yourself. Exploring the world, unlocking the safe houses, finding cool new weapon modifications and crafting recipes, and generally getting lost. Nothing about the experience was groundbreaking, nor was it as enthralling or immersive as other open-world games. Instead, it was good fun you can enjoy in short or long bursts, whether you want to sink your teeth into zombie hunting or chilling as you wander the wilds and urban spaces of Castor Hills.

A more gritty survival horror experience than Stay Human, but Techland's new first-person parkour game still stumbles a bit.

Dying Light: The Beast is an entertaining return to the rooftops and flesh pits I’ve come to love over the past decade. The gimmick of amping yourself up into a scary monster to fight other monsters sticks the landing and mostly makes up for a generic story and a map that has few surprises in store. However, aside from your new rampaging abilities and some freaky new boss fights, The Beast does stick pretty close to what worked in the last two games, so it may feel a bit rote to those who have played those recently. Its signature blend of parkour and melee-focused combat remains largely the same, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with having more Dying Light.

Is it a massive improvement on the Dying Light formula or a step up on what Dying Light 2: Stay Human recently offered? No, not at all. But is it still a blast to play, a simple, easy to pick-up title that has enough depth to make you want to return and continue playing. Yes, without question. The Dying Light formula remains a highlight, even if it is getting closer and closer to requiring big innovation.

Dying Light: The Beast is a return to form for the RPG series, but its exciting action and parkour are stymied by a ho-hum open-world design.

Dying Light: The Beast's parkour mechanics and crunchy melee combat are the two load-bearing pillars that make it a game worth leaping into, with support from a beautiful world to explore (minus the infected) and a tense day and night cycle that greatly raises the stakes on its survival elements. Beyond that, the mechanical and narrative pacing, inconsistent writing and narrative tone, and world design choices that feel antithetical to the series in the first place all bring it to a fairly uninteresting experience that is only worth it for however long you want to turn your brain off and enjoy watching digital infected brains go *splat.*

Dying Light The Beast brings back Kyle Crane, now with human and zombie DNA, to explore a new region. It retains the elements that have marked the series, parkour, intense combat, and exploration, and adds Beast Mode and mutations. The result is a fun, adrenaline-fueled game, perfect for fans, even if it doesn't offer any big surprises.

Dying Light: The Beast has great parkour and melee combat, but a bland story and an uninteresting Beast Mode mechanic leave it fun, but ultimately forgettable.

Techland’s latest dive into zombie parkour chaos is at times pure gold and at others wearying routine, a tightrope walk between adrenaline rush and monotony.