Dead by Daylight was available for PS Plus members back in August. We finally got around to playing it (after several hours of Fortnite) and wanted to give our early impressions.
Overview
The game puts a twist on the classic survival genre. For whatever reason, a group of four people finds themselves in an eerie location being hunted by a killer. In order to escape, they must work together to repair generators which deliver power to gated exits.
I haven’t ever been into horror games in the past but had heard enough from friends to give this one a shot. Our friend Jocieburgers has put a ton of hours into the game and recorded some of her gameplay.
The first thing we did was try to assemble enough people to fill all five roles in the game. This was tougher than expected given we were starting up during the Call of Duty Blackout beta. It also didn’t help that Spiderman is stealing people’s attention.
We managed to get four of us together, which would suffice for now.
Graphics
As you could guess from the title, the maps are dimly lit, night time environments. The majority of the outdoors are dark enough that you won’t notice small details of the level (as you’d see in a game like The Last of Us), but not dark enough that it’s difficult to see where you’re going.
The small bursts of light around the map come from fires and lamps. We’re not sure what’s worse, having the killer pop up on you while you are in the will-lit area of the generators or being crept up on in the darkness, with only a rapidly growing heartbeat to indicate his presence. Either way, the developers did a great job of making the killer look scary af.
Customization
When I started looking through the customization options, I was a little overwhelmed. Each character has multiple slots that can be filled with skills and/or items.
When you highlight a perk, you’ll see a description of the boosts that your character gets. They all have very interesting names ranging from Bitter Murmur to Blood Warden to Barbecue and Chili.
You will also see a good number of cosmetic items to change up the look of your avatar. Some of us were ill-prepared for the outdoors, sporting shorts and sleeveless tops.
Of course the choice of buffs to your character are more important than your wardrobe, but our squad put more effort into the visual look of the avatars than the potential skill boosts.
Gameplay
I think it’s best to just show you the video of our first playthrough…
I was the lucky one who got to be the killer in the first game. It appears that each player has access to the entire collection of perks when you play with friends. This made the already-challenging killer even more overpowered.
Aside from the fact that I had watched gameplay beforehand, I was also in a party chat with the rest of the group! This meant that even if the survivors wanted to have a coordinated plan of attack, I would hear the entire strategy.
In our second game, we wised up and hopped into a random lobby to compete against an unknown killer. We took a little closer look at the perks and selected ones with a “very rare designation”.
I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t a good teammate in this game. I mostly did my own thing and then allowed people to sacrifice (typically, involuntarily) themselves to the killer so I could have time to finish with the generators.
Side note, apparently you can fix a bunch of generators and still not have the high score on your team. Other side note, no matter how many of the survivors get murdered, they all somehow run away together in the exit screen.
It probably goes without saying, but please look at the button mapping for the game before hopping into a match. Some of us didn’t realize that you can move faster by pressing L1. Who makes the sprint button L1 anyways?!
Verdict
There’s a high likelihood that we missed out on all kinds of things in our first hour with the game. I’d like to give it another shot, but Friday the 13th is part of the October lineup of PS plus games and it’s supposed to be a better version of DbD. The premise of the game is intriguing. I really liked that the developers opted to have the survivors in third-person view to get a better field of vision while the killer is slightly limited in first-person mode. I’m not convinced that this levels the playing field enough, but it certainly made me feel a little better when trying to sprint through the forest.
I’m glad I gave the game a shot but I can’t say I would have bought the game if it weren’t available as part of PS plus. Dead by Daylight gets a 6 outta 10 from me. I’ll probably play a couple more times and then move on…unless I get addicted, as I’m prone to do.
What do you think of the game? What would you like to see added or changed? Leave a comment below!
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