shikamaru317 said:
Here is the Dead By Daylighty review I did recently:
Dead By Daylight Review
Dead By Daylight is an asymmetrical multiplayer game where 4 Survivors go up against 1 Killer, developed by Behaviour Interactive.
Survivor Gameplay
Your ultimate goal is to repair 5 generators in order to power the 2 gates out of the arena, while evading the killer. Survivor gameplay seems quite simplistic and kind of boring at first, but the more you play the more you realize that there is alot of nuance and skill required to survive. The key is to know when to run, when to hide, and when to continue working on your current task, which can be accomplished by listening to what is known as the killer's terror radius, a combination of your character's own heartbeat and creepy music which gets louder as the killer gets closer to you. If the killer finds you and gives chase, you can attempt to lose him by pulling down pallets around the map or jumping through windows.
The first attack you take injures you which slows your running speed slightly, leaves a temporary trail of blood, and causes you to grunt in pain, making it harder to escape and hide. If you get hit a 2nd time you will be downed and the killer can then pick you up and carry you to one of several hooks around the map, though you can attempt to wiggle free from his grasp, which will put you back into the injured state and temporarily stun the killer; the further the killer is from the nearest hook, the better your chances of wiggling free. If the killer successfully places you on a hook, there will be one of two stages. On the first stage a timer slowly ticks down, during this stage you can attempt to escape the hook by yourself (which you can attempt a max of 3 times, with a low 4% chance of success, accelerating the timer each time you fail) or you can wait for a teammate to save you. Once the timer reaches halfway you enter the second stage, where you have to mash a button in order to struggle, if you stop mashing it you will die. If you escape the hook during the first stage and are placed on a hook again you will automatically enter stage 2, if you escape the hook during stage 2 and are placed on a hook again you will instantly die.
If you manage to get away from the killer/hook and are injured you can attempt to find a teammate to heal you or heal yourself if you have the right perk. If you manage to get all 5 generators powered you then have to pull the switch on one of two gates which takes some time, but once you get it open you can run to safety. If your teammates fail to power all 5 gates and you are the last survivor alive, an escape hatch opens somewhere offering you an alternative to escape if you can find the hatch. Almost all actions performed by the survivors are made more difficult by occasional skill checks; quick time events, which if failed, slow your progress and give away your position to the killer. Thankfully these QTE's are made easier by a sound cue that plays shortly before they show up.
Survivors can find various tools in chests hidden around the map or unlock them via the game's skill tree/store, the Bloodweb. The tools are the Toolbox, the First Aid Kit, the Flash Light, the Key, and the Map, all of which have a limit number of charges or seconds of usage. The toolkit speeds up generator repair speed or alternatively allows you to sabotage the killers hook, making it harder for the killer to find a hook close enough to place a survivor on before they wiggle free. The First Aid Kit allows you to heal yourself or heal others faster. The Flashlight allows you to blind the killer to aid in your own escape, or you can blind the killer when he is carrying another survivor, causing him to drop them. The Key, the rarest of the tools, allows you to open the escape hatch early. The Map allows you to see the location of the generators. Each of the tools can be supplemented via add-ons (also unlocked through the Blood Tree), which improve their capabilities. If you manage to escape the arena you get to keep your tools, if you die you lose them.
Each of the 7 survivors currently in the console version can unlock unique skills, which cater to various playstyles and player skill sets. Dwight is all about leadership and teamwork, boosting the repair/heal/sabotage speed of other survivors when they are nearby. Claudette specializes in self-healing and healing other teammates. Jake specializes in stealth and sabotage (he can even sabotage hooks without a toolbox, though at slower speed). Ace is all about luck, increasing his chances of finding rare items in chests and boosting the chances of teammates escaping from hooks on their own. Nea, Meg, and Feng each specialize in stealth and speed, though each of them have unique skills which offer slightly different results.
Ultimately some gamers may be turned off by the survivor gameplay due to it's slower pace and QTE's, though I personally find the Survivor gameplay to be incredibly nuanced and more fun than playing as the killer.
Killer Gameplay
As previously mentioned in the Survivor section, the killer's goal is to prevent the powering of the generators and to attempt to sacrifice all 4 survivors on the hook. Every killer is faster than the fastest survivor when in the open (except for Nea, Meg, and Feng when their speed is temporarily boosted by their unique perks), though killers are slowed considerably by windows and pallets, so it is often best to find alternative routes than it is to follow survivors through obstacles. Killers can see scratch marks left by sprinting survivors, as well as pools of blood, which aids in tracking survivors if you lose them during a chase.
If you manage to catch a survivor and place them on a hook, there are 3 strategies commonly employed by killers. One school of thought is to leave the area of the hook and go back to patrolling the generators to look for more survivors, though this strategy has a greatly increased risk of the survivor being freed from the hook. Another option is to camp the hook and wait for more survivors to come and rescue the hooked survivor, though this runs the risk of the others ignoring their hooked teammate and finishing multiple generators while you wait around for nothing. The 3rd and best strategy in my opinion is to patrol back and forth between the hook and the nearest generators, though this strategy works better with certain killers than it does with others.
In the current console build there are 6 killers. The Hillbilly, whose special ability is a chainsaw which allows him to charge forward at higher speeds and one shot survivors, at the cost of limited maneuverability and being stunned if the chainsaw hits something other than a survivor. The Trapper, who can place bear traps around the map which do one stage of damage to survivors who walk into them, and may hold that survivor until you can get there and grab them. The Hag, who places jump scare traps around the map which she can teleport to if triggered within a certain distance of her. The Nurse, who can teleport up to 2 times before being temporarily stunned. The Doctor, who can shock survivors to make them insane, causing them to occasionally scream, giving away their position, and making their skill checks harder. The Wraith, who can go nearly invisible when moving with increased movement speed and completely invisible when standing still, at the cost of not being able to attack enemies while invisible and a fairly slow time to become univisible again.
Killer gameplay is suitable for those who want a more active gameplay experience than playing as a survivor offers, though I also think it's harder than playing as a survivor and not quite as fun.
Story
Being a multiplayer game, Dead By Daylight doesn't have much in the way of story. Within the game's mythos, the survivors and the killer are continually placed into the arena by a being known simply as The Entity, who lives somewhere between reality and our dreams and feeds on the hope of escape that each survivor has, which must be harvested by one of the Entity's instruments, the Killers. The Entity pulls unsuspecting people into it's nightmare realm through their dreams, and once they are pulled in there is no true escape; regardless of rather they are sacrificed or escape from the arena, they are placed back into an arena again the next night. Eventually after many sacrifices a Survivor loses all hope and becomes an empty shell, which the entity then tortures into becoming one of it's killers to start the process all over again.
Graphics and Art
The graphics in Dead By Daylight are nothing to write home about. They are approximately outdated by about 5 years I'd say. Thankfully the art team has done a good job of designing visually unique maps and survivors and terrifying killers.
Performance
I haven't noticed any framerate issues, seems to run at a stable framerate. Unfortunately there are still some bugs which haven't been patched. I have once gotten stuck in a tree and several times have had up/down reversed on my analog stick after being freed from a hook for some strange reason. There are occasionally some connectivity issues with the servers as well, I'd say I've been dropped from about 1/10 games, and have ran into lag issues in approximately 1/7 games.
Audio
The audio team has done a great job on both the soundtrack and the sound effects. The music that plays when a killer is close or is chasing you is suitably scary. They have done a goob job making the game scarier through ambient noise as well; cawing crows, screams in the distance (both ambient and the screams of other survivors), etc. Certain killers special abilities such as the Hillbilly's chainsaw and the Nurse's teleport screeches can be heard anywhere on the map, adding to the scary ambiance of the game. The sound cues which precede skill checks were a really nice touch by the audio team as well.
Value
There is a good amount of content in the console version currently. 6 maps (with 18 possible variants currently), 7 survivors, and 6 killers. More content is on the way soon, including one paid update (1 killer, Michael Myers; 1 Map, Lampkin Lane; and 1 Survivor, Laurie Strode, each pulled from the 1979 Horror Movie Halloween) and 1 free update (1 killer, The Huntress; 1 Map, the Red Forest; and 1 survivor, David King).
TLDR
Dead By Daylight is one of the most addictive multiplayer games I've ever come across. It offers 2 unique gameplay options which both require a surprising amount of skill to be good at for a game with a premise that is so simple on the surface. I can't recommend Dead By Daylight enough, in spite of the bugs and connectivity issues which currently hold it back from greatness.
Final Scores Survivor Gameplay-9.5/10 Killer Gameplay- 9/10 Story- 7/10 Graphics and Art- 7/10 Performance- 7/10 Sound- 10/10 Value- 9/10 Overall Score- 85/100
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