Dead by Daylight Reviews

This is one of the games that very quickly ended up on my "Least Favorites" list. Personally, I'd avoid this game like the killers that are in it.

Note: I only played as survivors.

The key thing you do as a survivor is interact with generators. Get four of them working and you can leave and win. Unfortunately, that is where the game falls flat on its face. Interacting with the generators is a QTE minigame where you have some portion of time to hit a button or the generator malfunctions and alerts the killer. There are precious few games where QTEs are good, and this game is not one of them. QTEs and latency are never a good idea, causing you to fail the QTE before you even get the prompt to hit the button.

You also have to avoid the killer. You spam a button to get out of the various situations the killer puts you in if they catch you, except it doesn't really do much of anything. Spamming the button to get out of their arms is pointless as you really never have time before they reach the hook. Spamming the button to get off the hook didn't do anything as the killer would just stand there and put you right back on it the instant you got off. Spamming the button to avoid being stabbed by the eldritch thingy was pointless as it never seemed to work. Even if you somehow got off the hook and away from the killer, you were so injured that your movement was basically nothing and you were useless.

I got no fear or suspense or anything playing this game. All I got was frustration and boredom.

Avoid.

Dead By Daylight is a 4 vs 1 multiplayer slasher horror title from developer Behaviour Digital Inc. and publisher Starbreeze Studios. Originally released in June, 2016, my initial review said that this game would be dead in a couple of months, but boy was I wrong. Turns out, this game is alive and well nearly a year later, but it's somehow still plagued by the same problems that were present to begin with.

The general gameplay consists of 4 survivors trying to outwit 1 killer and escape into the night. On the survivor side, you can achieve your goal by fixing a set number of generators, which power the exit door, and then by opening the door itself. As the killer, well your ultimate goal is to of course stop as many survivors as possible from escaping. Each survivor and killer have various perks and skills that can be utilized, and the small maps house various helpful items. It should also be mentioned that the killer cannot die. Since there is only one method of survival in this game, it's easy to see how the gameplay itself becomes extremely tedious and repetitive, albeit addicting and even rather fun for a number of hours depending on your attention span.

With only 15 hours under my belt for Dead By Daylight, I am by no means an expert on the title, but I do know what makes this game bad and what made me stop playing and supporting it all together. Although this title has been released as a full, ready-made game, it feels Early Access at best, and the countless broken promises from the developer have completely dashed my faith that anything will get done regarding the majority of the big problems that a large portion of the community has brought to their attention. The sheer amount of bugs present in this game, that can be exploited by any given human, can become absolutely infuriating.

For instance, survivors can do an infinite hop over obstacles to completely avoid the killer, or distract them while their teammates finish opening the door; this is supposedly "fixed" now, but not really. Now, in order for the killer to eviscerate you, he captures you and hangs you on a hook. More often than not, they will camp the spot in which you're hanging so that your teammates cannot come and rescue you. It's unfair, but then again so is being able to infinitely hop over barricades and wooden pallets. Sometimes, perks will randomly go off by themselves or they'll just decide not to work at all. Many old, old, OLD bugs have not been dealt with yet. There's a lot more that I could detail here, but many can be found with a quick look-see on a search engine. Oh, and it will also take you forever to get into a lobby if you're up for joining as the killer; like, literally forever... in some cases you can wait hours with no lobby formation, this is another old bug.

Behaviour Digital Inc. have done well in capitalizing on Dead By Daylight; they put the game out at a low price point, and introduced the first in a series of chapters for free. When the Friday the 13th game was announced as officially back on the table, they were quick to unveil their Halloween counter-offer. However, their response to the community via providing appropriate bug fixes and balances is abhorrent at best. Not to mention, if you do plan on playing this game, be prepared to deal with a lot of salt; end-game salt, pre-game salt, salt that you didn't sacrifice yourself to help your teammate from a camping killer, the list goes on and on. The community is horrible, to say the least. So, Dead By Daylight is still alive and well, and so are all of the old problems that it housed a year ago.

Rating: 2.5/5.0 It's not bad, but it's not great.
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