2.5/5 ★ – FrickingNick's review of Dead by Daylight.

The weird thing about reviewing an always-online game is that the review is not only about the game itself, but the community that plays it and breathes life into it. Unfortunately for BHVR, both Dead by Daylight’s game quality and playerbase are in a rough state right now. I started playing Dead by Daylight in the summer of 2017 and have logged in close to 2,000 hours playing it. I think it’s fun and I still play it about one session every week or two. However, my enjoyment of the game has tanked in recent months. Despite being a full release as of nearly six years ago, it plays like an early access title. Each update brings a slew of new bugs, glitches, and exploits that continue to wear down the morale of the playerbase. Surely one of the top 50 selling games of all time would have the resources to not push out an update that makes it so equipping a specific cosmetic on a specific survivor makes it so you can no longer blind the killer with the flashlight, right? And they should definitely be able to release their first new map in a year without having to immediately disable it for weeks because it causes the game to crash on consoles, no? There are tons of other things I could talk about, from balancing issues to MMR to less-than-ideal PR with the players, but the main thing at the moment is the overall morale of the playerbase. I’ve cut back a lot on how often I play because every time I do play it seems like the people I play with and against are all like me: trying to feel a slight dopamine hit in a game that has long since gone stale. It’s frustrating to wait 8 minutes in a queue with your friends only to wind up in a game where the killer is fully content with securing one kill all game by doing absolutely nothing but camping, which has happened a lot more ever since BHVR implemented their new Skill-Based Matchmaking, which values getting kills at whatever cost over, say, ensuring survivors don’t escape quickly or juggling the many other responsibilities killers deal with. Despite the instability of game health, poor attitude of developers towards fans, and all its other flaws, DBD has been a landmark game in the asymmetrical genre, having revitalized it after the failure of games like Evolve. It also deserves its praise for being the “Super Smash Brothers of horror” and uniting a community of horror nerds. In what other game can you play as Freddy Krueger chasing down Leon Kennedy at the Myers house? As I mentioned, I still keep coming back to this game because about half the games I play are fun and it’s typically a joy to play with friends. It just would be nice if it were better odds than a coin toss to know if my next round will be enjoyable or not.