Dying Light: The Beast Handheld Performance Review

Introduction

While it was originally planned as a DLC for Dying Light 2, the fellas at Techland got carried away a bit during development and decided to release Dying Light: The Beast as a standalone title. Good news since now even gamers who haven’t experienced Dying Light 2 can enjoy the game.

Mechanically, this beastly release follows the established Dying Light formula closely. It’s an open-world amalgamation of first-person action and survival horror where you play as Kyle Crane, the protagonist of the first game. The game takes place in an Alpine valley rich with picturesque vistas, but also chock-full of zombies.

The game is powered by Techland’s in-house C-Engine, custom-tailored for expansive open world environments with support for a dynamic day and night cycle. The engine features global illumination, a dynamic weather system, and support for a wide array of ray tracing features that will be patched into the game sometime after launch. You also have access to the full array of modern upscalers, including DLSS, XeSS, FSR (with support for FSR 4), and TAAU, alongside frame generation.

This handheld performance review will test how the game performs on the Steam Deck, ASUS ROG Ally X, and, for the inaugural time, an ASUS ROG Ally running SteamOS.