When it comes to survival games, the most common trait is trying to survive a zombie outbreak. The most recent game, Dying Light: The Beast is the most recent game to follow this plot line. This game will have you scavenging for supplies, exploring a huge world, and taking down hordes of zombies with your bare hands. While this game doesn’t do anything to change up the formula in a big way, this is an example of, what isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

Dying Light: The Beast has you play as the original protagonist, Kyle Crane in a brand-new location for the series, Castor Woods, a lush nature reserve decorated with once-gorgeous villages that manage to feel both ornate and rustic at the same time, perfect for a survival game. The game is an open-world first-person game with a huge emphasis on death-defying parkour and brutal melee combat. But this game adds a few other things to make things interesting.

For example, guns are more prevalent here than in the past games, but ammo isn’t as common as before. While using guns feels reliable enough it doesn’t fill your Beast Mode meter, which you will be using a lot in combat to the point it is necessary to survive.so I usually used melee weapons like baseball bats, machetes, and loose pipes. While you might think this will make the game harder, you can fit these weapons with elemental add-ons that can light the zombies on fire, send electric shocks through the hordes, or cause them to bleed out while you are crushing the skulls of the zombies.

Stamina is harder and this can either be a pro or con, depending on how you play video games. This makes every fight feel like a fight for survival. The enemies will scale with your character and weapons, and you will have to frequently make stops at various safe houses to upgrade and change your weapons. Some weapons can only be repaired a certain amount of time before they break permanently, so you have to make sure you have  plenty of weapons and keep an eye out for supplies constantly. Also make sure you create safe houses when you are able, as these are the only places that you can safely rest and upgrade your gear. This game isn’t a game where you can just mindlessly mow down zombies, because if you’re not careful you will be lunch for zombies.

You can use skill points you get for leveling up to upgrade your skill tree. You can make it so you can sneak up on zombies easier, move faster, and do more damage with your weapons. You level up by killing enemies, so it’s essential to take down any enemies you see, even any lone zombies who are minding their business eating corpses. After all, every point counts. The beast gauge fills up when you use melee combat and when it is filled, it’s time to go beast on the enemies. You gain temporary invulnerability, allowing you to plow through zombies and rip them to pieces with your bare hands.

While you can upgrade your beast mode and gain new abilities, it’s not as simple as just gaining experience. The only way to upgrade your beast mode is to kill chimera enemies. These are specific zombies that have special abilities that other zombies don’t have and if you can kill them you get beast points which are used to upgrade your beast skills. These aren’t required to beat the game but I highly recommend going out of your way to locate all the chimera’s to become a true zombie killing monster.

The world of Dying Light: The Beast, is so beautiful and colorful that you would be forgiven if you forgot your in a post apocalyptic world. But when you’re exploring abandoned buildings or facilities, they look straight out of a horror film. When you’re exploring, looking for supplies you get the feeling that something is about to jump out and attack you, and most of the time something is.

The gameplay is different depending on the time of day. During the daytime, you’ll scale buildings, leap across gaps, and swing on tree branches. But at night, stealth is key and if you are spotted, RUN. The chase will inevitably invite more enemies to join in, and they won’t stop until your food or you make it to a safe haven, where the UV lights keep the monsters at bay.

In conclusion, this game is a great experience for anyone who likes zombie survival games. With a huge world to explore, the feel of power when ripping zombies in half. While this game is harder than other games, it’s a fun and sometimes scary experience.

Score: 8 out of 10

Reviewed on PlayStation 5