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Dying Light: The Beast is getting a new difficulty mode, and developer Techland is practically daring players to try and beat it. Among the many additions and tweaks coming to the game as part of the “Restored Land” DLC drop is a new level of immersion. In this mode, players will successfully be able to clear areas completely of the undead. Zombies won’t respawn (although neither will supplies), adding new layers to the experience as players lay the groundwork for people to come back and take back the otherwise undead city streets.
These tweaks come with other changes to the difficulty, all of which turn an already pretty hard game into something very tricky to overcome. That’s especially true for the “One Life” mode that is part of the DLC drop, which makes sure that players only get a single life for the campaign or risk having to restart with any death. It’s a fittingly brutal addition to the game, with the ensuing rewards — and bragging rights — afforded to players who can actually survive the experience making the victory all the sweeter.
Dying Light’s New “One Life” Mode Makes A Difficult Game Ridiculously Hard
Dying Light: The Beast‘s “Restored Land” DLC release includes a “One Life” mode that makes it an extra kind of hard. The horror-survival game always thrived on throwing players into the deep end, leaving them to figure out how to survive a massive landscape filled to the brim with the undead. “Restored Land” introduces a lot of engaging new tweaks, including vehicular-centric gameplay modes and a reduction of respawns for enemies and items alike. One of the more interesting additions to the game, however, is the inclusion of a new difficulty setting. The “One Life” mode effectively turns the difficulty up to full and then forces players to confront the undead-infested world with just a single life.
If the player is ever overwhelmed by the horde or caught by surprise by a mutated zombie, then that’s it for that version of Clay. The save file is lost, and the player will be forced to restart the entire experience all over again. It has a harrowing effect on the player’s approach to combat and efforts to escape enemies, as a single bad encounter could result in a new game status. That’s tricky for any game, but it is especially difficult for something like Dying Light: The Beast, where mutated bosses and upgraded zombies can chase players across the entire map until daybreak.
This sort of addition heightens the stakes in a way that feels appropriate for the game. The removal of respawning enemies and items makes each bit of momentum feel harder-earned and more rewarding as a result, especially as NPC characters begin to move back into the decimated city and bring a bit of life back to the player settings. That “One Life” difficulty setting makes establishing that safe space all the more impressive, as the player has to accomplish that with a limited number of supplies and resources under their belt. It all increases the difficulty of a game that was already pretty tough, but in a rewarding way that plays into the tension inherent to the genre.
Techland Is Practically Daring Players To Beat Dying Light: The Beast’s New Hard Mode
One of the things that makes this new difficulty setting so exciting is the way that Techland clearly doesn’t think most players will be able to overcome it. Surviving the experience actually comes with a lot of unique perks and items that can be shown off when the players return from the single-player game into the online space to show off. The fact that Techland had added those sorts of rewards and put emphasis on their unique qualities underscores just how hard the developer seems to think this mode is going to be, and how hard it’s going to be for players to overcome it. It’s a fun way for the developer to lay the gauntlet down for the players, tasking them with overcoming a single-life challenge to make any sort of real progress towards that goal.
This isn’t the only game to feature this sort of difficulty marker, either, with the likes of the “Hardcore Mode” in Diablo highlighting the kind of stakes that come with that sort of mode. Earning bragging rights over other players is always going to be a simple but effective method, adding a real-world bit of accomplishment to the mode that goes beyond the solid immersive effect that comes with that difficulty setting. Dying Light: The Beast‘s “Restored Land” mode has a lot of great additions and tweaks to the experience, but the heightened difficulty that comes with the “One Life” mode might be the best way to increase the stakes in an already pretty hardcore game.