Techland has just released Dying Light: The Beast, the third installment (fourth if you count the original game's expansion pack The Following) in the first-person open world action game zombie series.
You can read our full game review here, written by David Carcasole. Here's an excerpt:
Dying Light: The Beast has two core pillars that are fairly strong, and if you are already a fan of the series, then there's sure to be plenty here for you to enjoy, even if it might not knock it out of the park in every element. If you're new to the series and have no prior attachments to it, but love a good zombie-killing game now and then, I'd push you to really consider how much you want to spend your money on this game, when there are so many better games to spend your time with in 2025.
In this article, I will concentrate exclusively on the game's technical side. The game utilizes an evolved version of Techland's proprietary C-Engine, last seen in Dying Light 2: Stay Human. As a reminder, Dying Light: The Beast was originally going to be the second DLC for Stay Human, and to be honest, it shows, at least visually.
Even though the development team stressed that there have been a number of significant technical improvements in the game to lighting, weather effects, skyboxes, materials, and foliage, to be honest, the game doesn't look that different. Furthermore, it looks pretty average for a 2025 triple-A game, even with all settings maxed out on PC. The texture work and lighting in particular stand out negatively when compared to top games in the genre.
Visuals could perhaps slightly improve post-launch. Techland had said that Dying Light: The Beast would include ray-traced global illumination and reflections, but these are nowhere to be seen in the graphics options. We reached out to ask about their inclusion, but have not received a response so far. It is possible they might be coming later with a patch.
The flip side is that the game doesn't even perform that well as is, and that is on top-of-the-line hardware. With a Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU and GeForce RTX 5090, the game averaged 236.2 frames per second with maxed settings at 4K resolution, DLSS Multi Frame Generation (x4), and DLAA. But there is a lot of variance; the 1% Low is at 129 FPS, and the 0.1% Low is at 85 FPS. What's worse, if you check the gameplay video, some stutters go down to 40-45 FPS, and in two instances (toward the end of the footage) even down to 9 or 20 FPS. Needless to say, it feels all the more jarring coming (and quickly returning to) from a very high average frame rate.
Obviously, the side effects of this stuttering can be minimized, as always, by capping your frame rate. But doing so would effectively negate the benefit of having a display with a high refresh rate. It's a trade-off that might be worth it on a case-by-case basis and one that each user will ultimately have to decide for themselves.
One clear improvement over Dying Light 2: Stay Human is that Techland has introduced native support for HDR (High Dynamic Range) displays in this new game. The HDR calibration is well-made, offering detailed sliders for Maximum Luminance, Minimum Luminance, Brightness, Shadows, and UI Brightness. I would definitely recommend turning on HDR if you have the chance, as it can help combat the otherwise bland color palette available in regular SDR.
Overall, though, it is clear to me that Techland will have to significantly step up the technical game with their next title if they want to keep up with the ever-improving visual standard. Part of the reason for the middling visuals can be attributed to having to cater to legacy platforms like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, at a time when practically every triple-A game save for annual sports titles has dropped those aging consoles. Indeed, Techland should rather look forward. Given the studio's stated goal to create games every three years or so, its next game could very well arrive alongside the next-generation consoles (such as the PlayStation 6), which will undoubtedly feature some impressive launch titles against which the next Dying Light installment would inevitably be compared.
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