26 November, 2018

Dead by Daylight review

Dead By Daylight is a bit hard to describe fully, so I'll just keep it as short as is reasonable without leaving anything out

It's a decent game of 4v1 in which four survivors try to escape a killer. The survivors use teamwork to repair generators and avoid being hit by the killer while the killer hunts for the survivors and tries to put them on hooks as a sacrifice.
A simple setup with reasonably varied killers and survivors. The maps are generally decent enough for the survivors to be able to run away or hide if they know what they're doing, and there are enough different maps to not get stale too easily

But at the same time, it gets repetitive as every game has the same objectives, and the same ways to get to those objectives. For killers, you employ your special powers and try to outsmart the survivors. For survivors, you spend a while doing QTEs on a generator while someone else runs away, or you spend your time running from the killer while the rest does QTEs. Then the exit opens and everyone tries to walk out. Or you died to the killer before you fixed enough generators. Either way, time to move on to do more of the same.
Balance wise things are a bit messy, with some perks being almost mandatory and others not worth taking in the slightest. There is a massive amount of grinding to get to the good perks and addons, and there are a lot of completely useless things you pick up along the way. Plus what you get is entirely random, so you just have to keep on grinding until it happens to give you what you wanted.
If you want to play as killer, you will have to spend between 5 and 20 minutes queuing while waiting for survivors to join you. It sucks, but it is understandable given that there have to be four of them for every killer.
The fact that it uses QTEs and button mashing as a mechanic for survivors means it's hard to really say it's a good game as well, but at least it's not all the time and you can play killer without having to do any of that.

All things said, it isn't bad. I would say it is pretty reasonable. If you can get friends to join you in it it then you will have a much better time, but even just on your own it can be enjoyable every now and then. You get good value for the price, but remember that it will have its flaws and it will proudly display those flaws as intentional design choice