Dying Light: The Beast

To fully enjoy Dying Light: The Beast, you really need to like Kyle Crane, the hero of the story.

If, like myself, you were nonplussed by the grand reveal trailer, which prominently featured Crane's return, chances are you aren't the target audience. At every turn of the campaign, Dying Light acts as if this is the great reboot to a saga that fans have been yearning after this past decade. Instead of it being a third part in a mid-budget franchise with one decent entry, a disappointing middle chapter, and now, once more, a fairly decent addition.

It's weird because Dying Light doesn't need all that. It's perfectly fine as it is. In fact, when it forgets that it's carrying a chip on its shoulder, there's a lot to love in Techland's vision of the post-apocalypse. Sure, I have plenty of gripes as well, but for the most part, this is a solid and engaging action-horror-adventure that is well worth the price.

The story picks up 13 years after the end of the original Dying Light and its expansion packs. Crane has spent the past decade plus as a guinea pig for a shady Big Pharma company, led by a hilariously named The Baron. Imagine Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons but without the personality, and you get the idea.

Anyway, Crane escapes and, with the help of both an insider and the people of the local town of Castor Woods, he sets out on a path for revenge. Only this time, he's equipped with the power of the monsters he fights. At given points, when his abilities reach their peak, Crane can transform into The Beast, giving him an opportunity to wipe out even the toughest uglies he encounters.

The plot, it has to be said, is thin and clunky. You can guess what happens within the first half hour, and it's often painfully slow in its pacing. It doesn't help that a lot of the open world structure relies on incredibly frustrating fetch quests and backtracking to speak with quest givers face to face when a radio call would have sufficed.

At one point, I had to backtrack from nearly half the world away just so the NPC could tell me I had done a good job and that they'd contact me over the radio with another gig later. This kind of mission design and drip feeding of the story was dated by the time the first Dying Light came out – today it feels downright archaic.

It doesn't help that the dialog is mostly terrible, with endless glib Whedonisms peppered throughout. Characters will talk just because they can, and there's rarely a sense that anyone is saying anything of importance. In one mission, you're tasked with restarting a power plant, which is operated by a drunken layabout who has given up on anything good ever coming their way. The entire ordeal has him and Crane trading the laziest possible barbs at each other like whining children.

Luckily, most won't play Dying Light: The Beast for the plot nor the dialog. They're here for the violence and the survivalist exploration. Both of which, for the most part, are solid. Castor Woods makes for an interesting location, a kind of weird mix between a Mid-Western American landscape glued together with a Eastern European town. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's so atmospheric and beautifully put together, you're bound to not care. I didn't.

Especially when in town, Dying Light quickly reminds us why the first one made such an impression. Free-running over rooftops and cramped alleys, ducking through windows and escaping from undead hordes by the skin of your teeth is still a thrill. Whenever I got to do just that, I had a blast with Dying Light. Some of my favorite moments are those I didn't expect. Like coming face to face with a new aggressive type of hunter in the dead of night, only for the chase to continue across rooftops to the top of a church tower, where we fought a bitter and hard fight to the death.

It's that kind of unscripted insanity that really makes Dying Light worthwhile. Especially when playing with friends. Just setting out for scavenging and hanging out in an inhospitable environment is so moody that it makes the game worth getting for those kicks alone.

Where Dying Light: The Beast stumbles, once again, is in all other locations, which are surprisingly heavily emphasized. The forests and sprawling environments around the town are far less fun to explore because they lack the urban aspect of free running entirely. Sure, you can get a car, and there's some joy in watching the fantastic animations of the undead climb over the hood to break the windshield. But it's an unnecessary diversion the game didn't need. Especially as the cars break extremely easily, leading to more frustration because you have to gingerly avoid doing anything fun with them – like ramming zombies.

Weapons still break, and you still spend endless hours gathering parts to fix them and to upgrade to new weapons with marginally better stats. This Borderlands-esque style has too run its course, and now it feels more like a chore than a fun gameplay mechanic.

On a technical and accessibility level, Techland has knocked things out of the park. Dying Light: The Beast runs extremely well and without any major bugs right on launch day. I can't stress this enough how impressive this is, especially as some other major releases in the same time frame are barely playable.

The visual fidelity settings are nice and comprehensive, too. You can basically tune the game to run on even some older hardware, which is seriously impressive at this price point for any game.

Accessibility options are a tad limited, but feature enough options that even someone like myself – autistic with ADHD and cognitive disabilities – could enjoy the experience with some tinkering. At no point did I feel like I was left behind of the experience, and that's something I don't take for granted. Techland has done stellar work on this front and deserve all the accolades they can get.

Granted, some of the fixes are answers to issues created by the gameplay mechanics (which are dated). Is there really a need to have this many button mashing prompts and forced sequences where the character can only move slowly forward through a cramped space? They were cute almost 20 years ago, but not so much anymore.

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.