Dying Light: The Beast opens about 13 years after the events of Dying Light: The Following. Kyle Crane, infected by a mutation of the zombie virus that has ravaged the world, has spent the last decade as a test subject for a mad baron who's been using him as a way to experiment on modifying the virus for his own needs. A chance accident allows Kyle to escape from the lab and into the postapocalyptic world. Now free, Kyle sets out to get his revenge and destroy all traces of the evil baron's malicious schemes.

It's a cool enough concept, but I don't feel like the plot goes anywhere special. It isn't terrible, and there's some fun stuff, but I couldn't help but feel like it underutilized Kyle Crane. The last time we saw him, he was turning into a Volatile monster and seemed like he was about to start to the apocalypse, but a good chunk of that is quietly written off, and he ends up on a quest that feels more like a side-story than a stand-alone tale. I left the story feeling a tad disappointed the developers didn't do more with a cool setup.

Dying Light: The Beast began as a DLC for Dying Light 2, and it often shows. The core mechanics and gameplay feel very familiar. Once again, you're in a zombie-infested hellscape, but this time, you're in the lush Castor Woods in Europe. You need to venture through the landscape, helping people and collecting supplies by day, and avoiding the super-powerful Volatile zombies by night. It's all a very familiar experience to people who've played the earlier games, and it doesn't reinvent any wheels.

That said, Dying Light: The Beast does a much better job of avoiding feeling like an expanded DLC than some other experiences I've had. For one thing, the core gameplay feels a lot smoother and better balanced than Dying Light 2 did. Rather than feeling like a recycling of the same mechanics, it genuinely feels like it's a full-fledged sequel by creators who learned from the mistakes of the previous game and are eager to not repeat them. If you liked Dying Light but were left cold by the sequel, The Beast may be exactly the game for you.

A big part of this is that the new environments are a genuine delight to explore. Paradoxically, Castor Woods is both huge and sprawling, and it's probably one of the smallest environments in the franchise to date, but that completely works in its favor. It's a constantly varied environment where you go from beautiful woods to sprawling mountains to a small but contained city environment, and it works beautifully. The smaller scope is still more than large enough to feel like an enjoyable place to explore, but it's small enough that it feels a lot less like filler and wasted time.

If anything, the small but dense scope makes the return of The Following's drivable vehicles feel a little pointless. They aren't anywhere as upgradable as they were in The Following, and it feels far less natural. I wanted to walk, run, and grappling hook everywhere, and the use of vehicles didn't feel like a necessary addition. I only used them when I really lacked a choice or it was mandatory. They don't get in the way, and mostly just feel like an additional choice in how to approach things.

Likewise, combat is somehow more action-packed and lethal. Guns are a lot more prevalent in this environment compared to the previous games, so you'll get into pitched fights against zombies and the occasional survivor, which are bloodier and more visceral than ever before. I still preferred the melee combat. The first-person combat had a sense of weight that feels right for Dying Light, but it was nice to have guns as an option.

There's even an entirely new breed of Chimera zombies that are bigger, badder and have special powers that make them harder to fight, such as shrouding the environment in mist or creating toxic clouds. These boss fights are mostly a pretty good time. Not every single one hits the mark, but more often than not, they're an exciting deviation from the normal zombies you encounter, and they really help keep the game from feeling too repetitive, which was an issue with the earlier titles.

I will say my biggest disappointment in The Beast is the titular Beast Mode. Early on in the game, Kyle gains the ability to harness his inner supermonster, which takes the form of him effectively becoming The Hulk for a bit. He gains the ability to decapitate zombies with a swipe of his hand, charge through them like a man-shaped tank, emit a paralyzing roar that freezes them in place, and generally become an absolute unstoppable force. However, this only lasts for a few precious moments and begins relatively weak, requiring you to fight the aforementioned bosses to get its true power.

The problem I have is that it's not a new and interesting part of the game but more like an emergency escape button. I never found it to be a part of the game that I thought about much. It was nice to have when the going gets tough, but the majority of my time in The Beast felt like it was returning to the same standard Dying Light gameplay I'd seen for 2.5 games. It feels like it doesn't use the concept well enough to make it anything more than an amusing extra, rather than the centerpiece of a new experience. While most of the game avoids feeling like just an expanded DLC, the Beast Mode feels like the limited addition I'd normally associate with DLC.

Dying Light: The Beast also runs much better than Dying Light 2 did. While it still has occasional hiccups and flaws, the PS5 version of The Beast feels far more polished at launch than Dying Light 2 did. The visuals are fantastic, for the most part. The gore and violence will appeal to most players, but I enjoyed the beautiful environments and wandering through the lush forests during the rare times that zombies weren't chasing me. More dynamic weather and environmental effects help a lot. The voice acting is also quite good, with Roger Craig Smith returning as Kyle Crane and adding some of that gruff Chris Redfield energy.

Dying Light: The Beast is a big improvement over Dying Light 2 and avoids feeling like an expanded piece of DLC. At its core, it has the same familiar gameplay that the franchise knows and loves, but there's a degree of polish and flavor that its predecessor was missing. Only a somewhat lackluster plot and disappointing Beast Mode drag down the game, but they won't get in the way of a fun European zombie vacation.

Score: 8.0/10