LogFAQs > #949474148

#77 Dead by Daylight (Playstation 4, 2017)

This one was a little hard to get my thoughts straight about. Dead By Daylight is an amazing concept with huge flaws, and sometimes I feel like the flaws are just too big for the game. Other times, I just don't care because the game is so damn fun.



It's a competitive multiplayer horror game that pits one player against four: a serial killer trying to sacrifice four survivors to a supernatural entity before they can escape a killing ground. The survivors are forced to work together to repair generators that power the exit gates while hiding from, distracting, or running away from the killer. The killer uses unique powers to track down and cut up the survivors with a melee weapon. Each of the over 20 different killers has different abilities that cause them to play differently, some drastically so. Both sides also select from a wide range of perks and consumable items to assist them. The maps are procedurally generated from a wide range of templates, so no two matches are ever really the same.

I'm not really a horror fan, but the large cast of characters pulls from licensed properties like Halloween, Stranger Things, Saw, Silent Hill, and others, which is neat for those who are fans. There are also a bunch of unlicensed characters based on various tropes (e.g. wraith, oni, mad doctor, clown, wimp, track star, gambler, etc.). While each killer is unique, the survivors all play basically the same, although the perks they start with are different.



Matches can be very tense. If the survivors take too long to repair the generators, the killer will have time to kill enough of them that escape becomes impossible. If the killer takes too long to find and kill the survivors, they will be able to escape. The killer cannot just kill the other players immediately; instead, survivors have to be hit until they collapse, and then placed on a sacrificial hook for two minutes. During this time, they can be rescued and continue playing.

There is a lot more to it, but that's the basic flow of the game. Having a successful game as a killer feels very empowering, as do the moments when you manage to outsmart the killer while playing the other side. And that probably sums up why I like Dead by Daylight so much; success in the game more often comes down more to mindgames and strategy than mechanical skill. At my age, it's difficult to be competitive in most games that rely too much on the latter.



I said at the beginning though that the game is flawed, and that is why you're seeing this now and not in my top 25. It's obviously difficult to balance asymmetrical games, but even considering this, the developers of Dead by Daylight seem to get things wrong so often. What balance the game has is based around the idea that the four survivors cannot communicate with each other, but the game does allows friends to team up, which can give a huge competitive advantage. And even though they have been balancing the game for years, there are still so many completely useless perks and items, while there are some rare items that are so game-breaking that you want to dodge matches where they show up. And probably the worst of all is that the strongest and most effective tactics in the game are also the least fun to play against, so it's basically down to an "honor system" for players to avoid using them because for whatever reason the developers will not do anything about it.



As you can see, the game is kind of a mess. I take breaks for weeks at a time, but keep finding myself coming back to it again. So I guess that I enjoy it a lot.


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At least your mother tipped well