Zombie action-adventure game Dying Light: The Beast has been firmly on my anticipated games of 2025 list for a while now, and each time the TechRadar Gaming team or I have seen it, our hype and excitement grow a bit more.
After going hands-on once again with Techland’s upcoming third game in the Dying Light series at Gamescom 2025 last month, and seeing a brand-new sliver of the game, my impressions have grown even more positive.
It looks like the extra time in the oven is proving worthwhile, as I saw in some smaller details, but I also had the chance to play a side quest, which revealed more layers of depth and interest to the game, too.
Great gore to the fore
The recent delay to Dying Light: The Beast was a ‘conscious decision’ to do so for polishing major features and to make the best game possible, as game director Nathan Lemaire told me at Gamescom, and that shows. Those extra four weeks of cooking time are likely going to mean an even more delicious, bloody meal come release.
From my time with the game at Gamescom, it was evident that the details were being worked on to help make the game as polished as possible. Overall, things felt smoother in the controls, and everything looked a bit better since my Summer Game Fest preview.
Parkour, for example, felt smoother with protagonist Kyle Crane seamlessly stringing together moves over cars, up the sides of buildings, and across gaps – it all felt effortlessly fluid.
The weapons felt excellent and improved, too. I also had access to new weapons, such as the fabulously ridiculous and bloody saw blade launcher, which I took great glee in using repeatedly to slice zombies up in all manner of ways. However, the action with each weapon, be it ranged or melee, felt incredibly robust, and had weight and nuance to them that came across in the controls – I can only imagine what the PS5 DualSense wireless controller’s haptic feedback might make the most of here.
It was perhaps the impact of those weapons, and the gore, which caught my eye the most, and in particular the bloody mess you can make of zombies and baddies with said weapons.
We already knew gore was a key element of The Beast’s combat and action, but I really honed in on the actual impact and gory effect of each hit of my weapons. Aim your melee instrument at a zombie’s head and make contact, and the enemy will have a gory wound mirroring the exact direction (and intensity it almost looked like) of your strike. This is similar, of course, to targeting limbs, which isn’t new, but it’s being executed here to great effect and adds another level of satisfying bloody gore to your combat – directional gore if you will.
Side quests that matter
I got to experience all this new, improved, and buffed gameplay action, blood and guts in the context of one of the game’s side quests.
It was here that I got a genuine insight into all the chat about how the game’s world will be filled with worthwhile stuff to see and do. This sidequest demonstrated that spending time off the main quest path will be worth it from an action and gear-acquisition standpoint, but also worth it to find bite-sized stories and missions that matter.
In the mission I played, I was tasked with investigating a cut-off water supply to an area. This saw me sprinting to some key areas to clear out zombies and investigate what the heck has happened, and find the source of the problem, be it mechanical, nefarious, or otherwise. This investigation took me to a location that then had a rhythmic banging sound on its pipes happening within. Spooky.
After further investigation and zombie annihilation, you find a trapped family who took drastic action to get the attention of other survivors to come rescue them. In the process, Kyle can turn on the water supply again, make safe some areas of key importance to the setting of Castor Woods, and also see a family to safety.
As a result, each part of the quest had an interesting subsequent part, which pulled me along. Then, viewing it as a complete mini story, I could see that the quest made sense as a part of the narrative, and also felt consequential and important to the whole game and story. It felt like it wasn’t filler just for the sake of it, but rather was a key story of the world worth telling that also increased immersion and a sense of place. The water supply mattered at a grander scale for the land and its survivors, but equally, it was also a quest to rescue the family, and (hopefully) make some important locations zombie-free in the process.
If the game’s sidequests are all like this, or at least to some degree, then this preview has only cemented the world of Dying Light: The Beast as one I intend to investigate every area of and fully pick clean. Combine this with the awesome combat and enhanced gore, and it’s likely going to be a bloody good time.
Dying Light: The Beast is one of the most anticipated games of the year for all of us at TechRadar Gaming, and we can’t wait to get our hands on it when it releases on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC on September 19, 2025, with last-gen releases on PS4 and Xbox One coming later.
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rob.dwiar@futurenet.com (Rob Dwiar)
