Game Review #463: Dead by Daylight (Nintendo Switch)
Reviewer: Brad “The Waffinator” Ekstrom
Developer: Behaviour Interactive
Publisher: Behaviour Interactive
Category: Action, Multiplayer, Shooter, Horror, Survival
Release Date: 9.24.2019
Price: $39.99
Buy Dead by Daylight from the Nintendo Switch eShop here.
Wait… Where’d Everybody Go?
Dead by Daylight doesn’t need any introduction; it has been out since 2016, but finally made its way over to the Switch as of late. It is a survival game where you can either play as a survivor on a team of 4, or as a ruthless killer trying to take out the 4 survivors. This game is all online, and I will start this review off with my biggest pet peeve of the game: if you are going to make a game as cool as Dead by Daylight, you should offer an offline (solo) mode. The amount of time waiting to find a match online—if I could find one at all—has resulted in a lot of patience being lost and quitting of sessions. The closest thing to offline mode you have is the tutorial, and that's about it.
Kill, or Be Killed
Now that I've gotten that out of the way and talked about the ugly, let's talk about the beautiful upsides of the game. There are two modes you can play: Survivor and Killer. With Survivor, you are on a team of 4 trying to make it through the map without the killer getting you. To survive and escape the map, you need to restore power to 4 generators, and once they all have power, there will be an escape point. Teamwork makes the dream work. If you go in just playing for yourself, you are most likely going to end up in the killer’s hands as just another victim. I usually get stuck with the people just playing it like a free-for-all mode, and end up sacrificed.
Killer mode is the exact opposite of Survivor mode. In Killer mode, you are hunting down the survivors and trying to kill them all! This is my favorite mode, and unfortunately, this is the mode that is hardest to get when it comes to finding a match online. The wait time is brutal for match finding. For some reason, though, when it comes to survivors, there’s no issue. When playing as a killer, you need to stop the survivors from starting up the generators, and sacrifice them to get the win. Think of it as the game you may have played as a kid, Manhunt, where one person was the one that had to find the other players before they made it to the designated safe zone. That's really what this game reminds me of: a sick and twisted version of Manhunt.
Gotta Kill ‘em All?
Right off the bat you have several survivors and killers you can play as, and each character can be upgraded with the XP you gain from playing each match. What I liked is that each character has their own stats and be upgraded individually. So, basically, find a character that you really enjoy, and work with that character. You can upgrade the traits of survivors, which makes it easier to live longer and have a better chance at survival. You can upgrade how much easier it is to restore generators, or other things, like how well a health kit will work. With killers, you can upgrade their hunting traits, making it easier to find and kill the survivors.
The overall controls of the game are easy to grasp for both survivors and killers. I thought it would be more complex, since there is a lot you can do, but that wasn’t the case at all. I mostly played in handheld mode, and it played very smoothly. Using it in docked mode with a controller though, I feel plays a lot easier. I like it in docked mode vs portable when it comes to overall viewing as well. With this being a game where you need to easily see your surroundings to either survive or kill ‘em all, having a bigger screen just makes it that much better. However, handheld mode will still suffice, and either way, you will have a good time.
Wrapping Up
There are daily rituals (missions) that help you gain XP as well to level up the characters—again, assuming you are able to hop online and find a match. The best way to enjoy this game at this point, honestly, is to organize a group of people that can hop on together for a heck of a time. I had high hopes and expectations going into this game, and I feel like I have been short-changed. They should add some kind of solo player mode where you can play through maps, and each map has a different killer—like a boss or something—to give this game more replay value. That way, when you have a hard time getting an online match going, you can at least play alone, like Friday the 13th. The game offers you many characters and several maps, and overall, a good time. I would only recommend it if you know a group of people that you can play with. If you don’t, at this point, I would pass on this game.
Score: 6/10
Buy Dead by Daylight from the Nintendo Switch eShop here.
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*A game code was provided for review purposes.