Dead By Daylight has dominated multiplayer horror for the last five years with a dedicated community, numerous expansions, and multiple IP crossovers. Now the popular game has made its way to the Nintendo Switch. It’s also available on PC, PS4, PS5, X-Box One, X-Box Series X/S, and Mobile.
PLOT:
Like many online multiplayer games, there is no real plot in Dead By Daylight. The original characters in the game, killer and survivor alike, have their own limited lore but their stories don’t develop or play out. Increasingly, Dead By Daylight relies on outside horror IPs like Nigthmare on Elm Street, and Scream, adapting their lore into game mechanics rather than expanding their own original story pieces.
GAMEPLAY:
Dead By Daylight has always been a mechanics first game, featuring a unique asymmetrical multiplayer experience. Each game has two teams a four-person survivor team against a single killer. The killer’s task is to sacrifice each survivor by placing them on meathooks scattered throughout the map. The survivors have to repair enough generators to open large escape gates and then make it out. Complicating this killers and survivors can be customized with different abilities and equipment resulting in a robust meta-game as there are numerous ways to build your characters. It’s an engaging game, with a good amount of depth.
Dead By Daylight is at its best during chases, with survivors trying to use the map to escape while the killer tries to hunt and kill them. Unfortunately, that’s where the Switch starts to struggle. The Switch version of the game stuttered and dropped frames often enough that it impeded nearly every chase I experienced. These performance issues were particularly frustrating in comparison to past experiences on other platforms.
PROS:
Dead By Daylight manages to combine its actiony gameplay with a surprising amount of strategic depth in its character building. Experimenting with different builds is a fun process and rewards are plentiful enough that there’s almost always something new to try out.
It’s also something of a fan-service buffet for horror fans. There are characters from beloved horror movies like Saw, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween as well as games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. It’s fun to see how these characters are implemented into the game and it insures just about any horror fan will have characters to be excited about. However, it is worth noting that these characters exist as paid DLC.
CONS:
There are a few issues with the game regardless of the platform. Perhaps its biggest weakness is that it’s a very limited experience. With only a single game mode and no plot to fall back on, it lives or dies by its gameplay. The other major issue is its inaccessibility to new players. The amount of depth in character building can be intimidating, especially in a competitive multiplayer environment. The fact that making these builds requires significant game-time to unlock adds an additional hurdle. A new player can’t simply look up the best abilities for their build, they have to earn them from the Blood Web system.
The Switch port, in particular, also has some major problems. The performance issues already mentioned are by the far the most concerning, as they significantly impact gameplay, but it’s not the only issue. The in-game textures are also lacking compared to other versions of the game. This is particularly noticeable with survivors, whose faces are made nearly indistinguishable by the lack of detail. There were also multiple instances where environmental textures failed to load, giving the maps a distractingly barren look.
VERDICT:
The fact that Dead By Daylight remains so popular half a decade into its lifespan is a sign that its core mechanics and strategic depth are incredibly strong. Games are fairly quick and fun, and the experimentation of crafting a new build is the sort of addictive fun an online multiplayer game needs. Unfortunately, the Switch port doesn’t quite deliver the experience it should. While the weaker graphics could be overlooked, the constant game stutters are a major problem for a game like Dead By Daylight where an ill-timed stutter can snowball into losing a match. If the Switch is your only console, Dead By Daylight is serviceable, but if you can play it on PC or another console instead you should. Fortunately, it’s available just about everywhere: PC, PS4, PS5, X-Box One, X-Box Series X/S, and even mobile.
