Dead by Daylight remains a unique and entertaining experience of hunt or be hunted, but only when the match maker decides to actually let you in to play – which is not all that often.

By Scuttle Gamez

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This is a look back review. Readers interested in learning about the base Dead by Daylight experience should check out our old review.

https://scuttlegamez.com/2017/01/01/260/

The Good:

A lot of games in the asymmetrical game genre tend to die off quick, or never manage to make an impact in the first place. The game Evolve ring any bells? I would not blame you if it didn’t, as that game went down the tubes in a right hurry.

Thankfully, Dead by Daylight seems to have found an audience and is still pumping out content, events, and even sits pretty high on Twitch viewer charts. Hell, just now when I logged on to do my review I saw that the developers are running a 1000 player beta test to study different players and their play styles to better improve the game. So it clear there is care for the game, both inside the studio and out.

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Beyond that, there are tons of characters to play as. All the Killers feel different from one another, look drastically different too, and the survivors available bring some nice flairs of personality to toy around with as well.

Since the last time I played, before my review this year, there have been five new killers and even more survivors added to the game. And, a huge amount of cosmetics to buy were I so inclined.

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I really liked some of the changes to Dead by Daylight this year. There are now dedicated servers, bringing some problems but also a clearer connection overall. The biggest change for me was the introduction of The Rift.

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The Rift is Dead by Daylight’s answer to a demand for more interesting season content. Previously, players would rank up their characters, earn blood points to gets abilities and that’s pretty much it. Now, now players have a semi-narrative driven story of challenges and levels to unlock, granting cool gear and cosmetics along the way.

A nice edition from the rift are master challenges. These challenges ask for specific action to be taken in a match. Killer challenges might require damaging the same generator twice in a match, or hooking 8 survivors over multiple games. Survivor challenges encourage healing companions, saving them from the hooks, and other such acts.

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New challenges are fun on their own, but the reward for doing them is what gets me excited to complete them. Every time you complete a master challenge you unlock a voice acted story segment. The first I found was a lore entry about the Trapper, one of my favorite characters. I’ve not unlocked nearly all of these entries yet, but it looks like there are a lot of them for multiple characters, and maybe even a cinematic upon completion of a full set.

The Mixed:

So far the developers of Dead by Daylight have gotten away with adding new characters, maps, and cosmetics to keep their game interesting. That, in my opinion, won’t last forever. Something needs to be done to drastically spice up the game itself, like new modes of play or something, and it needs to happen pretty soon for the game to stay alive.

The rift is a great start, but it only adds something new to aim for. It does nothing to change the gameplay as a whole.

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Next up is the cash shop. While not horrible, I can’t say that I’m a fan of how micro transactions are handled here. The vast majority of the ‘cool’ cosmetics are real cash only. There are some you can earn by play, but the truly epic stuff is locked behind a premium currency.

In a free to play game I would not mind this one bit. Dead by Daylight is not free to play. No, I paid for it. I brought the game, and the character packs. It’s annoying and it feels like a slap in the face that anything worth having is locked behind yet another pay well.

That being said, it looks like those items being locked are cosmetic only. So, it’s not the worst in-game store I’ve ever seen by a long shot. Still sucks though.

The Bad:

Okay, first and foremost, this needs to be said: MATCHMAKING IN DEAD BY DAYLIGHT IS AWFUL!!!

Playing as a killer at rank 20, the lowest rank, it took ages to get into games. I’d wait about 10 min to get into a match for the entire game not even take that long. I’m just straight up not going to wait that long. I would normally have left after 5 min, but I needed to write this review. This is a huge problem, and from my asking around it seems that it’s been there for a while.

High rank killers get in fast though, so hey, that’s cool. How do I get to high rank? Oh, yeah, play the game. Meaning, I need to wait a a ton in match making until I hit high rank, and then be super stressed about losing rank because I don’t want to have to get into the crap ranks and have to wait again. It’s anti-player, it’s not fun, and it needs to get fixed, ASAP!

Survivors get in fast though, so that’s neat. Oh, until they get into the high ranks. Then they hit the same issue that killers face in the low. Everybody gets screwed over! Hurray!!

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The Verdict:

I really want to be able to give this a solid recommendation in 2019. Honest, I do. I have over 400 hours of play time logged from my old days in Dead by Daylight, and for a time it was one of my favorite games. Hell, even now I have to admit that I enjoyed my time with the game when making this review.

But, I can’t steer you toward it right now. Most new players will not be willing to wait as long as needed to get into matches. If they can get that problem fixed, I’ll be very happy to update this review. For now though, stay clear.