Technologies

Dying Light: The Beast Hands-On: Brutal Survival in a Zombie-Ridden Forest

I got to preview Techland’s next entry in its Dying Light series, which brings the parkour zombie horror to the great outdoors.

Two hours into my gaming preview of Dying Light: The Beast, I was jogging through a beautiful woodland dotted with cabins and park benches — a spot that would make for a lovely vacation, if not for the hordes of zombies wandering all over. Despite stealthily creeping around, I was spotted by a large group and frantically fended them off with a shovel, growing more desperate and overwhelmed — until my rage meter maxed out and I became a beast. I roared and tore the zombies limb from limb until the red haze lifted from my vision, leaving me human again to continue my journey through the park.

At a preview event in Los Angeles, California, Polish studio Techland set me and other media members up to play the first few hours of Dying Light: The Beast. It’s the next entry in the beloved Dying Light series of games, which combine first-person parkour movement with zombie horror action. After the long gap between the 2015 original and its 2022 sequel Dying Light 2 Stay Human, the third game is coming out just three years later, with a release date of August 22, 2025. Dying Light: The Beast is a course correction that brings back more of the horror and vulnerability that made the first game so successful, Dying Light franchise director Tymon Smektala told me.

«Wtih Dying Light: The Beast, we want to recapture that fear, that horror, that tension that the first game had,» Smektala said. «Maybe it was beginner’s luck, but we actually managed to capture the atmosphere and the feel and the balance just right.»

Part of that is bringing back the first game’s protagonist, Kyle Crane, who has been locked away for a decade while the zombie plague he once tried to contain rampages across the world. After escaping an underground lab, Crane quickly discovers that years of experiments done on him have left him with bursts of strength and bloodlust, which comes in handy when he’s beset by mutated enemies — he becomes a monster to fight monsters.

Prior Dying Light games let players explore open-world cities with free-roaming parkour movement, leaping over railings and climbing up fire escapes. The Beast expands this to a seemingly less suitable environment: Castor Woods, a sprawling forest that feels like a national park, where players have to thread their way through woodlands, rivers, mountain paths and other terrain. Techland challenged itself to see if the series’ parkour movement to evade zombies rather than fight them all would work in different biomes, Smektala said — and he believes they’ve cooked up something unique that pushes players to change how they move and deal with the living and the dead.

«So you could say, ‘okay, maybe I can hide behind trees and try to use how dense the forest is to lose the chase,’ but on the other hand, you never really know what you can find behind that tree, what hides in those forests,» Smektala said. «We like the fact that there are places on the map where you basically feel weaker, where you feel more fragile.»

Swinging between fragility and «Beast Mode» revenge

In my handful of hours with The Beast, I frequently felt that sense of vulnerability, confidently taking on a couple zombies, only to get cornered by half a dozen more shambling up behind me. Combat feels slow and weighty, relying on timing to avoid exhausting myself. I had to circle enemies carefully and slip between their attacks as my melee swings gradually took them down one by one — with guns and bullets scarce, at least early on.

But when I’d hit (or had been hit) enough to fill my rage meter, the game’s unique mechanic, Beast Mode, activated turning me into a monstrous force of nature, battering zombies and ripping off their limbs (if not worse — the game’s brutal dismemberment isn’t for the weak-stomached). Beast Mode is a deliberate counterbalance for handling hordes and turning the tides in combat — partially inspired, surprisingly, by the classic game Pac-Man.

«Pac-Man, if you think about it, is actually also a survival game where you are chased by ghosts. You are super weak, just one touch and you die — but there are those power pellet moments, you grab them and suddenly you can start chasing ghosts,» Smektala said, comparing that «cathartic overpower state» to the new Dying Light’s Beast Mode.

To make sure these moments land when they’re most needed, Techland has made under-the-hood tweaks, including filling the Beast Mode meter faster when the player is surrounded by zombies or when being chased by an undead horde at night (more on that later). The game keeps these mechanics hidden, Smektala explained, to prevent players from gaming the system. They’re designed to heighten the thrill of pursuit and reversal — fine-tuned through extensive player testing.

«You really feel like these are your last moments, the zombies are coming at you … and they’re just about to grab you and suddenly you see that meter has been charged and then you can turn 180 and get that moment of resetting the situation,» Smektala said.

Beast Mode isn’t the only escape route. Unlike the second Dying Light game where players can paraglide between buildings, The Beast’s national park areas are too broad for aerial traversal — but I could jump into abandoned vehicles and drive away from sticky situations… at least until the gas ran out. (You can refuel at select spots and unlock skills to burn less fuel.)

Whether you’re smashing zombies with improvised weapons, tearing through them in Beast Mode or mowing them down in a car, the game’s brutality is unmistakable — and it’s been dialed up since the last Dying Light, thanks to further optimizations to Techland’s in-house C-Engine. For The Beast, the studio has doubled the number of possible wounds zombies can take, so whether you strike the head or midsection, you’ll see injuries that match.

Techland also went all-in on realistic blood spatters rendered by C-Engine: Artists ordered liters of fake blood and spent days creating real-life splats to digitize for the game.

«So if you enter a room [in the game] and you see blood dragging on the floor or a blood splat on the wall, actually there was an actor in our mock-up studio that was dragging his body on the floor to leave that mark, and then we just scanned it and put it into the game,» Smektala said.

Surviving the least relaxing vacation of your life

My preview started an hour or so into Dying Light: The Beast, after Crane escapes from the underground facility. He’s woken up in the territory of The Baron, a sadistic noble ruling over the national park-like territory in an unspecified European country — one inspired by Swiss landscapes, a Techland developer told me. His small army of soldiers roam the land doing his bidding, adding another hazard standing between Crane and escape, but they’re far from the worst things in this strange land.

After escaping the facility, Crane wanders down a mountain trail to find a monastery that he clears of zombies to turn into a safe house. But his final task is to face a mutated monstrosity with a gas mask — the game’s first boss. After putting it in the ground, a scientist named Olivia introduces herself and pledges to help Crane. She takes a blood sample from the creature and convinces Crane to administer it to himself, granting him the upgrade to his Beast Mode.

These monsters, which Olivia calls Chimeras, are the faulty results of The Baron’s experiments. They roam the woodlands and she urges Crane to hunt them down to grow stronger so he can defeat the psychopathic noble. Each new kill grants a point in the Beast Mode skill tree, unlocking bonuses and new abilities like a ground slam.

After that, the game opens up, allowing players to alternate between following the main story or side quests and engaging with the game’s open world — exploring territory, gathering supplies and weapons and establishing safe houses to rest and recover. The safe houses are key to waiting out the dangerous dark hours, as the day-night cycle from Dying Light’s earlier games returns. When the sun sets, powerful nocturnal ghouls called Volatiles emerge. If alerted, they’ll unleash zombie hordes in a chase sequence that only ends with clever evasion — or reaching a safe house.

While players can simply sleep through the night, certain treasure-laden zombies only emerge after twilight, and I imagine other incentives or missions will lure players out of their safe houses.

Nighttime also becomes more manageable as players get stronger, either through acquiring equipment or leveling up — killing enemies will give Crane a bit of experience, while finishing story missions will award a lot. Every level grants a skill point to improve Crane’s stealth, parkour or combat abilities, which are important to gather to handle some of the game’s tougher enemies, from zombies in combat armor to Chimeras encountered in the wild.

As players explore and fill in the map, they’ll find some areas have level thresholds. I was driving around when I spotted an intriguing building across the river — an abandoned mental hospital likely full of loot — but it was 8 or 9 levels above me, and I didn’t want to risk it. You can offset level gaps with gear: Weapons are scattered throughout the world, with rarer loot hidden in riskier spots — like the military convoy I cleared out to score higher-level equipment.

Other weapons must be crafted, and there’s a cornucopia of materials scattered around, some that you’ll pick up off the ground and others scavenged from defeated zombies. You’ll need blueprints to make key weapons — I found one for a bow in the starting monastery safe house — and yes, once I built it, I needed to craft the arrows, too.

Becoming your own Beast

With a sprawling map to explore, crafting and skill trees, Dying Light: The Beast felt like a familiar yet fun mashup of Far Cry and Mirror’s Edge, all set in lovely woodland scenery (as an outdoorsy person, I’m partial to the natural setting, though there is a town in the game to provide some urban parkouring). Combined with the day-night cycle and a story pitting survivors against the vicious Baron, open-world game fans have a lot to chew on in Techland’s upcoming game — especially those who want a bit more of a challenge in their combat.

To ameliorate that difficulty, The Beast offers co-op mode, letting players team up with up to three friends. But teaming up won’t make the game instantly easier, as Techland made sure to adjust the game’s challenge accordingly, from spawning more zombies and making them stronger to giving them area-of-attack swipes to hurt multiple teammates. The Chimeras will be especially beefed up — so much so that players may not be able to take them down solo when playing with others in a game session.

A couple hours into the preview, after taking down a pair of hulking Chimeras, I was tasked with chasing down a third in a swamp. This fiend was different — a spindly blood-soaked ghoul that reminded me of the fearsome Witch special enemy from the Left 4 Dead games. She dashed in and out of the foggy marshland, and I struggled to track her and land hits while dodging her own — barely eking out a win thanks to some clutch Beast Mode transformations.

When I next took on a hefty Chimera with a concrete slab for an arm that I encountered after delving into the train tunnels, it became clear Techland had designed each of these fights as its own unique arena brawl. I was down in the depths, hunting an especially lethal monster that had been terrorizing survivors, and that Chimera wasn’t it. After chasing down the culprit, I pulled back the hood to reveal a familiar face — Crane’s own. Another failed experiment, maybe? As my preview ended, I was left wondering what The Beast truly referred to.

As I stepped away, I could feel the game’s open-world hooks sinking in — I just wanted to craft one more weapon, secure one more safe house, hunt one more Chimera and push past the edge of my map.

Dying Light: The Beast launches on August 22 for PC, PS5 and Xbox One X/S.

Technologies

Europe Is Ready to Dilute Its Tough Rules on Privacy. You Can Blame AI for That

Critics warned that proposed changes will weaken the GDPR in a way that amounts to an attack on digital rights.

Europe has long been a global leader when it comes to regulating Big Tech, but it is now considering making changes that would weaken its landmark privacy legislation, the General Data Protection Regulation, also known as GDPR.

In a move designed to unlock access to data essential to AI across the region, the European Commission on Wednesday published proposals for a «digital simplification strategy.» These proposals include rolling back some GDPR protections, including simplifying cookie permission pop-ups and delaying the introduction of AI regulation.

Europe introduced the GDPR in 2018. It was designed to give European citizens more knowledge, control and power over who was able to access and use their personal data. The regulation went on to inform the development of similar laws elsewhere in the world, including privacy legislation in California.

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The EU was ahead of the curve when it came to regulating technology, but at the same time no serious competitors have emerged from within Europe to rival the AI companies out of the US and China. The bloc has been under pressure from American technology companies and the Trump administration to lessen the regulatory burdens they face in the region.

In the US, the White House has been pushing hard for unfettered development of artificial intelligence technologies. Over the summer it unveiled a national AI Action Plan, which among other things called for the removal of red tape and «onerous regulation.»

In a press release, the executive vice president of the European Commission for technological sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen, called the proposed changes to the GDPR «a face-lift with targeted amendments…that reflect how technology has evolved.» The aim of the measures, she added, is to encourage AI development.

An «attack» on European rights?

As the Commission noted in its proposal on Wednesday, member states consider the GDPR to be an effective and balanced piece of legislation. It’s framing the proposed changes as being a way to «harmonise, clarify and simplify» the application of the regulation.

European privacy campaigners see it differently. «This is the biggest attack on European’s digital rights in years,» said Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems, who is best known for taking legal action against Meta (aka Facebook) over privacy violations. «When the Commission states that it ‘maintains the highest standards’, it clearly is incorrect. It proposes to undermine these standards.»

Some campaigners are worried that the proposed changes to GDPR are a sign that the EU is kowtowing to Big Tech. It’s unlikely that the changes would allow Europe to begin challenging the dominance of the US and China when it comes to AI, said Johnny Ryan, director of the Enforce unit at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.

«Today’s proposal from European Commission to revise the GDPR will entrench the dominance of US and Chinese digital giants, and harm European startups and [small to medium businesses],» he said. «Europe’s problem is not that it has too many rules for data and AI, but that it hypes those rules and then neglects to enforce them.»

According to Schrems, the proposed reform of the GDPR seems primarily designed to remove obstacles that could prevent AI companies from using personal data for AI.

«Artificial intelligence may be one of the most impactful and dangerous technologies for our democracy and society,» he said. «Nevertheless, the narrative of an ‘AI race’ has led politicians to even throw protections out of the window that should have exactly protected us from having all our data go into a big opaque algorithm.»

Technologies

Your DoorDash Data May Be Exposed. Here’s Everything We Know So Far

Personal information for both customers and drivers was exposed after an employee fell for a social-engineering scam.

Food delivery is becoming increasingly popular, but here’s the delivery of bad news for users of one popular company. DoorDash confirmed that it suffered a recent data breach. According to the company, the accessed information includes customer names, phone numbers, email addresses and physical addresses, but «no sensitive information» was obtained.

It’s unclear when exactly the breach occurred, but DoorDash released its statement on the incident on Nov. 13.

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How did the data breach occur?

DoorDash stated that an employee with the company «was recently targeted in a social engineering scam.» Information on delivery drivers and customers was exposed.
After discovering the scam, the company’s response team removed access from the unauthorized party and reported the incident to law enforcement. DoorDash has since «implemented additional training and awareness for our employees around various social engineering scams,» the company says.

Is my credit card information at risk?

According to DoorDash, the criminals didn’t access bank or payment card information, but they did get customer names, phone numbers, email addresses and physical addresses.

DoorDash also stated that the company improved its security systems to prevent a similar breach from occurring in the future.

I use DoorDash: What should I do?

The criminals don’t have your bank info, but might have your personal information. Be cautious of messages that may attempt to defraud you using those details.

«It is always a good idea to be cautious of unsolicited communications that ask for your personal information or refer you to a web page asking for personal information, and avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails,» DoorDash said in its post.

Watch out for social-engineering scams

There’s something else we can learn from the DoorDash breach. While we don’t have a lot of details on how the employee was approached, the company says the person was targeted with social engineering. That could mean anything from the criminal pretending to be an IT person for the company, or a coworker needing information, to someone sending a malicious link disguised as something useful.

Stay alert to these scams. Look for red flags, such as strangers who claim they need information immediately, a link that doesn’t match the expected URL and people contacting you on social media channels they don’t typically use. Choose strong passwords and never share them.

Are data breaches common?

As you probably know if you’ve ever received a breach letter from a business, they’re not uncommon in our digital world. CNET previously reported that in 2024, companies had 3,158 data compromises.

Technologies

Avengers Assemble as Marvel Cosmic Invasion Arrives Day 1 on Xbox Game Pass This December

Xbox Game Pass is adding Marvel Cosmic Invasion in December, with more titles coming in November and December.

To end the year, Microsoft assembled Earth’s mightiest heroes in a fight against Annihilus in Marvel Comic Invasion. The comic-book style beat ’em up game is a Day 1 release when it launches on Dec. 1.

Xbox Game Pass offers hundreds of games you can play on your Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV, smart TV and PC or mobile device, with prices starting at $10 a month. While all Game Pass tiers offer you a library of games, Game Pass Ultimate ($30 a month) gives you access to the most games, as well as Day 1 games, like Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, added monthly.

Here are all the games subscribers can play on Game Pass soon. You can also check out other games the company added to the service in November, including The Outer Worlds 2.

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Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault (game preview)

Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers can start playing on Nov. 19.

The Moonlighter series returns, letting players go on an adventure while also tending to their own stores. Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is a roguelike action RPG, and players step into the role of Will, an adventurer who splits his time exploring different dimensions to find rare loot that he can sell in his shop.

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo

Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers can start playing on Nov. 19.

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo casts you as Kulebra, a dead but kindhearted snake who wakes up in a dreamy, Latin-flavored afterlife where souls are trapped in a never-ending day. You’ll sleuth and sneak your way through Limbo, talking to each quirky spirit, scouring for clues and using a trusty notebook to piece together their stories.

Revenge of the Savage Planet

Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium and PC Game Pass subscribers can start playing on Nov. 19.

In Revenge of the Savage Planet, you’re dumped on the fringes of space after being one of the first to get laid off by your ridiculous, profit-obsessed employer. The mission is to explore alien worlds, poke at every weird rock and grab every upgrade you can to survive. Do all that right, and you can get your revenge on the former employer who abandoned you and head back to Earth.

Monsters are Coming! Rock and Road

Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers can start playing on Nov. 20.

Monsters Are Coming! Rock and Road puts you in charge of a mobile city that travels across dangerous terrain while monsters close in. You collect materials, set up defenses and upgrade your skills to keep the convoy moving in this tower-survivor rogue-lite on wheels. Constant movement and steady enemy waves collide, forcing careful upgrades and defense planning to keep the convoy moving toward the Ark.

The Crew Motorfest

Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers can start playing on Nov. 20.

The Crew Motorfest is a massive car culture festival spanning the Hawaiian islands, featuring races, stunts and open-world driving challenges. The game features more than 700 vehicles, including cars, bikes, boats and planes, letting you pick how you want to explore the islands. Now in its third year of free updates, Motorfest adds new locations, customization options, a race creator tool and NASCAR content.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium and PC Game Pass subscribers can start playing on Nov. 25.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is an action RPG that pulls players into a dark, immersive world where life and death collide. Players navigate intense combat, explore mysterious environments and uncover a story filled with love, loss, and difficult choices. Every decision shapes the journey, forcing you to weigh sacrifices against survival as you uncover the truth behind the ghostly threats.

Kill It With Fire 2

Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium and PC Game Pass subscribers can start playing on Nov. 25.

Kill It With Fire 2 expands the bug-busting chaos with a full co-op campaign where players track spiders through different eras and strange worlds. The game adds new tools, new settings and plenty of destruction as you hunt down every last arachnid in the multiverse. It also introduces a Spider Hunt mode that lets players switch sides and play as the creature they once chased.

Marvel Comic Invasion

Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers can start playing on Dec. 1.

The Annihilation Wave threatens the galaxy, and the world’s great heroes need to work together to stop Annihilation. The arcade-style brawler features 15 Marvel Comics heroes, including Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain America and Venom. Play solo or play with friends online or locally with couch co-op.

Lost Records: Bloom and Rage

Game Pass Ultimate, Game Pass Premium and PC Game Pass subscribers can start playing on Dec. 2

Lost Records: Bloom and Rage follows a group of friends during the summer of 1995 as they film their adventures and build a bond that seems unbreakable. Those memories resurface nearly three decades later when they reunite to face the secret that ended their friendship. The story blends nostalgia with mystery as the group works through what happened and why it changed everything.

Games leaving Game Pass on Nov. 30

While Microsoft is adding those games to Game Pass, it’s also removing three others from the service on Nov. 30. So you still have some time to finish your campaign and any side quests before you have to buy these games separately.

Barbie Project Friendship

For more on Xbox, discover other games available on Game Pass now and check out our hands-on review of the gaming service. You can also learn about recent changes to the Game Pass service.