Dead By Daylight and patch 1.5, or how I ruin your gaming experience
"Death is not an escape route." Read the tagline on Steam.
Ragequit, on the other hand, does.
Dead By Daylight, horror title based on the online cooperative clearly inspired by a certain cinema of great vogue in the late 70s and throughout the 80s, came out on June 14 last year practically from nothing. It is developed by Behavior Interactive, a Canadian team known mainly for tie-in titles of films and TV series and for having developed the exclusive WET console, as well as Fallout Shelter, both for Bethesda. Distributed by Starbreeze Studios, it aimed to be a new asymmetrical approach to video games with online coop, all seasoned in a survival horror slasher sauce with very clear references to the cornerstones of the genre.
And it works, as a formula. The game itself is extremely simple: a killer, controlled by a player who acts as the host of the game, tries to kill four boys, the survivors, who must cooperate to turn on five generators and thus give electricity to the door that locks the way. out of the nightmare. The killers must search for the survivors and hang them on hooks from which they then come out like spider legs that trap the character and, if no one comes to free him, he is as if swallowed and in fact killed, and the game at that point for that player it's over. A very simple and intuitive gameplay, balanced if we want, as it is about escaping, hiding and trying to repair these generators if you play the survivors, and hunt them down to sacrifice them on these altars to an undefined evil entity if you impersonate the killer.
The prerequisites for a good co-op game were all there, especially if you are a fan of horror movies!
The areas in which the matches take place have been well cared for, with particular characteristics and dark, gloomy and disturbing atmospheres, and also the maps while maintaining certain fixed characteristics change every match, within the limit of certain templates preloaded in the game.
For example, it changes the position of the generators, the sacrificial altars, the escape routes and the points to hide and the exit, as well as the elusive trap door, often the last way to safety when only one player remains to face the killer, and not all generators have been activated.
Even the audio sector does its duty by always keeping the voltage high. The shivers down your spine when you hear the killer approaching are also real thanks to the musical commentary that dresses the game in a creepy suit that fits perfectly.
In practice, at the release Dead By Daylight had the formula in hand to become a reference in the cooperative survival horror field, with the project to also arrive on consoles.
The games vary in difficulty not based on pre-packaged algorithms that move an AI to guide NPCs ready to shoot at us with millimeter precision if we select the difficult difficulty level or with the same care of the imperial Stormtroopers if instead we play easy, but it is dictated solely the skill of the players in our lobby. The very balanced gameplay, based on stealth phases followed by frantic chases to avoid getting killed, is very pleasant and winning a game is very satisfying, on both fronts. While not without its problems, Dead By Daylight offered a solid foundation on which to work to file down those defects that immediately made it a pleasant experience, albeit not very fluid.
And it is here, unfortunately, that things get unpleasant. Not complicated, not necessarily ugly, but unpleasant.
While originally it was difficult to find matches because there were few people who were available to play as the killer, in fact much more difficult than playing as a survivor but also more satisfying, with the flow of updates and DLCs it has become difficult to find a lobby. why ... eh, precisely, why?
There was a moment, shortly after last year's Halloween period, that something started to go wrong. There have been several consistent updates and hotfixes, so much so that opening Steam it was easier to see the name of the game highlighted in blue with brackets written "update in the queue" than in white and ready to be played. And even when you were on par with the updates, playing was a disaster, a process that made you want to drop everything, let it go and uninstall the game. Finding a lobby was a matter of even tens of minutes spent waiting and clicking on the match search command, disconnections and desktop crashes were normal administration and above all there was always the specter of lag that ruined an indefinite number of games , at which point the ragequit became almost mandatory, given the circumstances.
But did the updates do anything to fix these problems?
No.
Or rather, maybe they were fixed, but by introducing new features and characters, with their own peculiar areas as for the Halloween-themed DLC that introduces Michael Myers as a killer and Laurie Strode as a survivor, the bugs multiplied. New actions were added that could be done to make the game difficult for the killer or the survivors, depending on which side we play, and with each new feature new bugs came.
Especially as regards the quick time events, at the base of the gameplay. Every action that the Survivors try to take, whether it be repairing one of the generators or sabotaging one of the sacrificial altars at the Killer's disposal, requires them to overcome a random number of QTEs whose appearance is announced by a sound. If this sound usually preceded the QTE command on the screen by a good second, these days the audio cue often sounds at the same time as the command appears, and the command itself suffers from a fairly sharp delay between the 'input from the space bar and the actual receipt of the command by the game, which makes the game significantly more difficult and less enjoyable to play.
A new patch was recently released. Fix any bugs? According to the changelog yes, but the delay in quicktime events remains. And, sadly, it introduces certain anti-frustration features that lower the difficulty level for the killer, making him run faster during chases, spawning altar hooks that are sabotaged by survivors after a few minutes, and other elements that make it certain. actions and certain useless loot.
Does it make sense to keep playing Dead By Daylight then?
Yes why not? If you like it, certainly, it's not a bad game, it never was, but it remains a bitter taste to see how a well-made and overall balanced game has been modified so much that it breaks a balance that is rarely achieved. in multiplayer games. But it is also true that we have now reached a moment in videogame history in which we try to expand our share of the market as much as possible by attracting even those who do not play habitually, and what better way to attract perhaps a simple fan of horror films than that. to cut the difficulty, penalizing that precarious balance that made the games difficult but satisfying?
What is certain is that a game that at the start screen asks you to press Spacebar to continue and does not load the main menu when you press it, makes you think that perhaps the imminent release of Friday, 13th maybe that's not such a bad thing.
