Dying Light: The Beast brings to mind that old debate about surviving in the zombie apocalypse. Personally, I’m always reminded of a scene from Stephen King’s The Stand, where upon the fall of the world, a man attempts to start his backup generator and is immediately fried. That’d be me. I’d spend years building the perfect underground zombie bunker, only to start Z-day by slipping on the ladder rungs and cracking my head open on the floor. Given that I’m also not very good at parkour and don’t have many heavy implements to hand, I’d say my prospects aren’t great.
Certainly couldn’t hold a candle to Kyle Crane, returning Dying Light protagonist. Kyle caused a bit of musing for me. My only previous experience with the series is the original Dying Light, and the question that hung over my time with Dying Light: The Beast was: how were they going to make it stand out? I was waiting throughout for the shoe to drop; for something big to happen to make The Beast feel original. It didn’t really come. The result being that while Dying Light: The Beast is fun, it’s much the same fun that we’ve all had before.
Run, Jump & Punch
I’m going to flip my usual review script with Dying Light: The Beast, and talk about the gameplay first before I dig into the plot. If you’ve played the original Dying Light, you’ll know what to expect. Things are roughly split between combat and parkour. Melee combat remains excellent, with blows landing with satisfying weight. There’s a big range of melee weapons of different sizes. I spent a long time using big axes, as they could satisfyingly cleave zombies in twain. Even the kicks feel powerful. You can tell Techland have had three games to refine this.
Zombies do feel a bit grabbier than before, though. I barely used the power attacks of the bigger weapons, as I’d get pulled into a toothy cuddle before Kyle had finished winding up. Still, the frantic feeling of the combat suggests that you’re mostly supposed to run away. Hence the parkour, which remains fun, and feels fluid to control. Jumping across rooftops is an absolute joy. Especially at night, where the big scary zombies come out. Flinging yourself off rooftops in the dark, while hearing zombies scrabbling after you, is exhilarating. Though I like it a lot less when the city spills out into The Beast‘s open world of forests and fields, where it dissolves into following a series of white-painted ledges.
The main addition to this gameplay is the titular beast mode. Kyle Crane’s been through some serious stuff. As a result, when a meter fills he can go nuts for a minute, massively increasing his damage. It is quite entertaining to go crazy on a horde of annoying zombies, though it does rather dent the ‘horror’ aspect of things. Another, smaller, addition I liked are the ‘Dark Zones’. Shops and other buildings that have been shuttered off, leaving them as gathering points for special zombies. They contain great loot, however, so they become mini stealth challenges, that only occasionally ended in me throwing Molotov cocktails at everything.
Built To A Blueprint
So, Dying Light: The Beast is alright. It’s good. But so are cheese sandwiches, and I don’t wake up thinking about them. By which I mean, Dying Light: The Beast is fundamentally uninteresting. Take the plot. Kyle Crane is captured and taken to Castor Woods, where he’s experimented on for years. Eventually, he breaks free and vows revenge on his captor, the Baron. The Baron is a nutcase, trying to mutate a race of super zombies. Guess what he does to himself at the end of the game? Oh, and his motivation? ‘Power’. 99% of the human race is dead, and the other 1% is hiding in cupboards eating old tins of spam, so I’m not sure what he’s trying to gain here.
It’s a tired and formulaic plot. Formulaic’s a good word, actually. The Beast doesn’t seem to want to try anything original. Take the boss fights. To power himself up, Kyle hunts out a succession of mutated zombie bosses. Three of these turn out to be big, muscly dudes who charge at you. One of which becomes a recurring enemy. Two more are nearly identical screaming women who jump at you. It’s like it’s reading straight from a ‘Zombie Game For Dummies’ book. Then the game dissolves slowly into an FPS as more of the Baron’s troops take over the land, de-emphasising the excellent melee combat.
It’s extra frustrating as there are occasional sparks of good ideas, that are quickly swept away. Kyle is said to be part zombie, and I assumed the plot would be about him wrestling with his identity, or his inner urge to act infected. But no, he feels like classic Kyle, if a little angrier. There’s even a group of people keeping the infection at bay with mushrooms, but they look (aside from spooky eyes) and act just like regular people. Except with telepathy, I guess. There are even hints of real creativity. There’s one off-hand remark about how the virus is mutating, and infecting non-human hosts. With the example being a tree. That’s fascinating, and so is quickly glossed over.
Dying Light: The Beast – Fun, But Formulaic
This formulaic feeling saturates the entirety of Dying Light: The Beast. Most sidequests, despite their potentially interesting premises, are just retrieving items from set locations, or climbing a specific thing. And, of course, we need to collect a ton of generic crafting materials to keep our gear at a high enough level. It’s at such a level that when I saw that cars were commonplace (which is used as an excuse to remove fast travel), I knew immediately that I’d be getting a racing sidequest coming in. And lo was it so.
The end result is a game that was entertaining at the time, but is already slipping out of my memory even as I go over my notes. I do like it a bit more than its contemporary, Dead Island, because the excellent melee and parkour remains fun. But it doesn’t really feel like an evolution over the first Dying Light. There are better places that the series could have gone than this, is my point. It even takes the sting out of its own scary night sections by placing a safe zone every ten feet. I don’t want Dying Light as a series to stop, as it’s still fun, but if it wants to remain in the zeitgeist then it needs to freshen up, before it rots away for good.
(Dying Light: The Beast‘s Steam Page)
