Hírek
Dying Light: The Beast dropkicked its way into my heart
B
Brian Crecente
“We really improved the physics on this, as well as the kickoff,” my guide for the demo tells me as I run toward a zombie, tap the Right Bumper to jump, and double-tap the A button to deliver a two-legged flying dropkick. The zombie soars over the banister of some nearby stairs and disappears from view.
Deep down, gripping the controller, I feel something awaken in me. In Dying Light: The Beast, you play as Kyle Crane, protagonist of the original Dying Light. After 13 years of captivity, Crane is finally free and seeking revenge on the Baron, the mad scientist who imprisoned and experimented on him during all of those years.
As a result of said experiments, Kyle now has some special abilities, and he plans on using them on the Baron when he finds him. The hands-on demo of Dying Light: The Beast at Summer Game Fest didn't show off how Kyle escapes though, instead picking up about halfway into the early portion of the game. Given it was still early on, I didn’t have all of Kyle’s abilities yet—but there was enough for me to get a taste of what he can do.
Of course, the game, its look, and the setting are all brand new as well. Dying Light: The Beast takes place in Castor Woods, a rural tourist destination that is now mostly populated by aimlessly roaming zombies.
I get a sense of the new, more detailed damage models of the zombies by making use of an axe, a two-handed axe, a crowbar, and finally a wicked-looking machete. And while deforming the ambling dead is satisfying, watching limbs pop off or layers of skin part…it’s the dropkick that really does it for me.
Is it just me, or is my demo guide starting to notice my overuse of the move?
The UI can be stripped down to nothing if a player wants, but for now I have a compass with a mark on it showing where my next objective is. I’m hurried along a bit in the demo as I have somewhere I have to get in-game, and it’s starting to get late in the afternoon (also in-game). Parkouring across Dying Light: The Beast's ledges, buildings, and vehicles is satisfying, especially when punctuated by a deftly delivered dropkick to an unsuspecting zombie.
As I leave the town's terra cotta rooftops and vegetation-choked streets behind, the landscape starts to transition into a forest. There are also swamps nearby, plus the occasional factory. The sun is going down though and outside is, in general, becoming more dangerous.
A secondary bar beneath the one displaying my health shows that I'm now able to enter Beast Mode temporarily. Once in Beast Mode, you use your hands to deliver quick, powerful attacks and can pull the Right Trigger to deliver a ground pound that sends nearby enemies flying. It’s over too soon, but I’ve managed to wreak a lot of havoc.
Soon, night is upon us and things have become much more dangerous. The most threatening addition are the Volatiles, nighttime predators in Dying Light: The Beast. While you have to occasionally worry about being pulled down by a mass of zombies in a fight, the Volatiles are a whole different breed. When they spot you, you need to run.
Kyle Crane has a survival sense that pings nearby enemies and gives you some basic information about them. This is very helpful while creeping through the dark, trying to avoid using a flashlight so as not to alert the Volatiles. In Dying Light, the night is dark, and the dark is scary.
I manage to get caught up in a frightening chase, too rushed to even look behind me. I just have to hope they’re not snapping at my heels. I finally make my way to an open window and a steel shutter I can slam closed to turn the apartment into a safe space of sorts.
First I lock the windows and doors, and then I follow the thick electrical cable running from the fuse box into the basement in an effort to turn the power back on. There is much killing of zombies (and not a few dropkicks) before I safely make it back to the apartment, where I can turn on the power, illuminate the UV lights, and find a moment of respite.
After taking a nap in a nearby bed, I wake to a new day. Pulling open the locked-down shutter I discover a storm-blasted scene rendered nearly invisible by the sheets of torrential rain coming down. Wind blasts the water sideways at times. Dying Light: The Beast features higher fidelity weather effects this time around, and this has a big impact on the look of the game—and more importantly, how it plays. For instance, you can't expect a Molotov cocktail to do much when everything is soaked in puddles of water, but electrical attacks suddenly become much more effective.
Standing out in the rain on the roof of a truck I can see the silhouette of a zombie or two in the distance, their forms obscured by the heavy downpour. As I continue to make my way toward my objective the rain lets up, but it’s still soaked outside.
Soon I come across my first run-in with humans, a set of scavengers who attack me on sight when I interrupt them looting some cases in a train. A bit more exploring and I find my first objective, a rundown warehouse teeming with soldiers, many armed with rifles. I squat down and examine them from a distance with a pair of binoculars. My survival sense notes which soldiers have weapons and which are unarmed. If I want to take the time, I can lure some zombies into the area and get them to attack the soldiers, providing a bit of a distraction…but I have a better idea.
It involves dropkicks.
After taking out a few ground troops, I make my way around a silo and find a way up it. Now crouching on the roof, I can see a handful of soldiers milling around. One of them has a rifle. I start to creep forward, slowly inching my fingers toward the Right Bumper and the A button.
The demo guide chimes in before I can do anything: “Maybe if he turns around you can grab him…don’t jump, don’t dropkick him!”
I laugh, stopping myself.
“If you dropkick him we might lose the rifle he’s holding,” he explains.
I decide to placate him, taking out the rifleman with my machete before picking up and storing the rifle, and then lining up a beautiful run towards an unaware melee soldier. Right before plowing into him I pop Crane into the air and deliver a kick to the soldier, sending him reeling back, into the railing and then flipping over, plummeting to his death below.
A nearby soldier spots me and starts throwing rocks at me. In a panic, I fumble my next dropkick, landing a mere regular kick instead. Then I keep kicking him until he stops moving.
Demo guy: “You kicked him to death.”
Me: “That’s not what I wanted to do.”
Demo guy: “What did you want to do?”
I turn Crane around and dropkick another guard free of the silo.
Me: “That’s what I wanted to do.”
Demo guy: “I see you have one favorite move.”
During all my punting and stabbing, I also managed to secure a bow and arrow, a quiet and effective weapon that can kill soldiers instantly, at least if you take care to land headshots.
Time is running short in the demo—made shorter by my penchant for kicking—and we still have much to see. At one point my demo guide points to a guy standing near a rifle he just dropped. “Maybe you can dropkick him away?” he suggests.
Yes!
I quickly make my way to the building and down into the basement where I do away with a variety of zombies using well-placed shots and kicks. In the final area I discover a flamethrower. The effects are glorious when I light it up, filling the room with billows of flame and smoke, turning everything it touches into a moving (slowly dying) weapon. The devs, I’m told, used special ray-tracing to really breathe life into Dying Light: The Beast's flames.
To get to my first boss encounter, I have to find a canister of a special gas, drop it into the bed of a nearby truck, and then speed my way to a different area. The truck can plow through enemies as you drive, but it takes damage, slowing down and eventually falling apart if you’re not careful. Another neat effect: When the windshield gets obscured with blood, the wipers automatically turn on to smear it away.
I finally make it to my last objective, a device that uses the aforementioned gas to attract a massive enemy. When it arrives, it tears through me in a second. On my second attempt I last a bit longer, but still fail miserably.
I never end up defeating the creature, but maybe that’s because I never tried a well-timed dropkick.
Dying Light: The Beast releases August 22 on the Epic Games Store.