It's been a few years since the release of Dying Light 2: Stay Human, the then long-awaited sequel to the 2015 original. Although it had some issues, the RPG's zombie-wrecking, first-person parkour was highly entertaining, particularly with friends. Dying Light: The Beast ($59.99, reviewed on PC but also available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S) is the latest series entry and a return to the original title's more grounded feel. Gone are Dying Light 2's faction politics and camp building; instead, The Beast brings back the first game's first protagonist, Kyle Crane, and doesn't do much new in terms of gameplay. In fact, it's bogged down by lots of open-world busywork. Still, The Beast's movement abilities and many weapons are pretty fun, especially if you're looking for a multiplayer RPG that lets you splatter monsters.

Story: Going Beast Mode

Dying Light: The Beast is the third entry in the Dying Light series, and the second to star Kyle Crane. Set after the events of Dying Light and its DLC, Dying Light: The Following, The Beast sees Kyle taken prisoner and captured by a villain known as the Baron. He experiments on Kyle's zombie hybrid DNA until, by a stroke of luck, the hero is freed. Kyle discovers he's a long way from home and stranded in Castor Woods, a tourist destination near the Swiss Alps. 

(Credit: Techland/PCMag)

Dying Light's blend of first-person parkour and violent melee combat has defined the series since day one, and that’s still on display here. Castor Woods' European countryside provides a diverse range of urban and rural destinations to explore, and each area is immaculately crafted, detailed, and jam-packed with zombies of all shapes and sizes. You'll find many weapons for beating them to a pulp, including shovels, bats, knives, pipes, axes, and hammers. There are plenty of guns, too, but hand-to-hand combat is at the heart of the series and The Beast.

Combat is largely the same as in the previous games, though it has never been so deliciously gory. Taking a shovel, pipe, or other contraption to an enemy and watching chunks, bits, and guts fly is definitely a guilty pleasure. This is taken a step further when you become the titular beast. The transformation gives you greater strength and health, letting you plow through zombies with ease.

All this carnage is a means to an end. Although it might not seem like it at first glance, Dying Light: The Beast is an RPG first and foremost. That means the gameplay loop revolves around earning XP to level up, upgrading your skills, and finding loot. Similar to the Borderlands games, you sift through weapons and armor of different rarities and abilities. By visiting a workbench, you use materials and blueprints to build or improve weapons and imbue them with effects. In a nice touch, you can repair a broken weapon or scrap it for parts.

(Credit: Techland/PCMag)

Doing this in solo play is fun enough, but the Dying Light series is meant to be played cooperatively—and that’s still true in The Beast. Four-player co-op works flawlessly, with the option to easily drop in and out of sessions. If you're in a tight spot, you can open up your game with a distress call, similar to how the SOS beacon works in Helldivers 2. It's goofy to see you and your clones beat up on zombies together, and it makes clearing zombies and boss fights much easier. However, the game lacks crossplay, so you won't be able to join up with friends who are playing on consoles.

The Beast is a little less ambitious than Stay Human, but that's a positive considering the latter title's open-world bloat (though this game has some of that, too). You no longer have to appease different factions, and the dialogue options are vastly simplified. The story is nothing special, but Kyle Crane is played by a charismatic Roger Craig Smith, who does a great job of at least making me care about what would otherwise be a fairly trite character. 

Gameplay: Killing Momentum

What sets Dying Light apart from other co-op action-RPGs is its parkour-based movement. Like previous series entries, The Beast is at its best when it gives you space to run, swing, slide, and jump through obstacles. However, the verticality of the first two games is significantly dialed back here. Instead, much of your time spent playing The Beast involves running or driving across large areas of flat land, doing busywork for various survivors across the map.

(Credit: Techland/PCMag)

This might be a byproduct of The Beast’s origins as DLC for Stay Human. You’re either moving from point A to point B to flip a switch, connect wires, install a device, or repair something, with an occasional chase sequence thrown in for good measure. It's standard open-world fluff, with lots of towers and other discoverables between destinations.

A day-night system keeps things interesting, as zombies become more aggressive at night. Plus, stronger zombies, called Volatiles, start stalking the streets. Considering that these aggressive zombies can kill Kyle in one shot, I often found a safe house and awaited the sunrise. This is a bummer because I enjoyed Stay Human's night battles. Those chases across rooftops and through buildings felt much smoother than in this game, which I think is due to The Beast's more horizontal level layout.

(Credit: Techland/PCMag)

I wanted to run and jump from place to place, but I spent much of my game time driving, due to the game's lack of fast travel. Sometimes, it was easier to purposely let myself die so I could respawn at the nearest safe house. The grappling hook relieves some of the poor design in the game's later stages, but I missed Stay Human's paragliders.

The other half of your time is spent hunting down Chimera, special infected enemies that bless you with Beast Points each time you kill one. Unlike the skill points earned by completing missions, these are exclusively used to level up your beast transformation. These two mission types ebb and flow across the roughly 20 hours of gameplay time, though developer Techland says there’s another 20-30 hours of additional content for players to delve into. That's far less gameplay time than Stay Human, but as the saying goes, "quality over quantity."

(Credit: Techland/PCMag)

Returning fans of the first game will find much to enjoy, but The Beast plays it surprisingly safe for a game about surviving the zombie apocalypse. It's so similar to the previous Dying Light titles that it's hard to tell the difference at times. The next Dying Light should play up the environment so the game is a parkour playground. As satisfying as it is to mow down zombies in a car, I'd rather leap off ledges (and their heads).

The series has never looked better, but in going back to basics, The Beast's gameplay lacks the advancements you'd expect from what is essentially Dying Light 3. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I couldn't shake how familiar the game felt, and in some regards, felt like a step backwards. Especially considering similar games like Ghostrunner and Neon White have taken a bite out of Dying Light's parkour pie.

System Requirements

What I remember most about reviewing Stay Human on PC was the shoddy launch performance. The Beast, however, is just as gorgeous as that game but with far fewer issues. I reviewed the game in its entirety on a fully decked-out Razer Blade 18 (2024). Its Intel Core i9-14900HX CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU, and 32GB of RAM provided more than enough overhead to run the game comfortably on high settings.

The game is surprisingly light on the GPU side, but it demands quite a bit from your CPU. To match the recommended settings, your PC needs an AMD Ryzen 7 7700 or Intel i5-13400F CPU; an AMD Radeon 6750 XT, Intel ARC B580, or Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 TI GPU; 16 GB of RAM; and an SSD with 70GB of space. With it, you should play The Beast at 2,560-by-1,440p resolution at 60 frames per second. The minimum specs require an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X or Intel i5-13400F CPU; an AMD Radeon 5500 XT, Intel ARC A750, or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU; and the same RAM and storage as the recommended settings. If your rig meets those specs, you should play The Beast at 1920 by 1080p at 30fps.

My playtime was largely flawless, with the graphics settings on High and the frame rate locked to 60fps. Considering that Dying Light 2: Stay Human was a stuttery mess at launch, it's good to see that Techland got The Beast running well even when the screen is packed with zombies. If you have modern hardware (and, most importantly, a modern CPU), you shouldn't have any issues running The Beast.

There's no word on Steam Deck compatibility as of this writing, but considering the CPU requirements, it's not likely. Dying Light: The Beast also supports Steam Achievements and PlayStation and Xbox controllers. Interestingly, Techland plans to bring Dying Light: The Beast to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One by the end of the year.