Dead by Daylight was a great slasher game.
At first.
The original Killers were already great.
Then you had famous killers from other horror franchises joining them in what was essentially an elaborate game of tag.
How could I not play it?
And the basic idea itself was brilliant.
You could become an overwhelmingly powerful killer, hunting down weaker human beings and enjoying the simple pleasure of controlling the situation.
Or you could be one of those weaker human beings, working together with other ordinary people to overcome the killer.
In a strange way, it isn't all that different from an RPG raid.
One side is the overwhelming threat.
The other side has numbers, cooperation and a shared desire not to die.
What a wonderfully simple, deeply human and entertaining game.
People all over the world became obsessed with it.
Take one of the oldest and simplest forms of play imaginable, then build an excellent horror idea around it.
I was obsessed with it too.
And whatever I think of the game today, I don't think its place in horror history should be understated.
Dead by Daylight helped bring slasher horror to an enormous global gaming audience.
For plenty of players, it may well have been their first real introduction to the genre beyond simply watching a slasher film.
That alone earns Dead by Daylight a significant place in horror-game history.
Dead by Daylight isn't a great slasher game anymore.
I'm not going to give it a negative recommendation because of that.
My favourite slasher, Ghostface, is still in the game, after all.
And to some extent, I think this is simply the fate of online games.
A game survives for more than ten years.
It grows.
It changes.
The people making it have salaries to pay, servers to maintain and an enormous live service to keep running.
Perhaps they would love nothing more than to preserve exactly what made the game special in the beginning, always put the players first and make only the game they truly want to make.
Reality doesn't always allow that.
Sometimes you compromise.
Sometimes you do something stupid because it makes money.
Sometimes you do something that arguably makes the game worse because keeping the game alive is more important than keeping it pure.
And if those compromises are what allow a game people love to remain online, many of those players may still be grateful that it exists at all.
So I'm not going to spend this review listing everything I think is wrong with modern Dead by Daylight.
I stopped playing a long time ago.
I don't particularly enjoy being someone who quit years ago, only to come back occasionally and sneer at everyone who is still having fun.
There is something rather rude about that.
Imagine you live in a country with plenty of serious problems.
You complain about it.
Of course you do.
You live there.
You deal with those problems every day.
You may even hate certain things about the place.
Then an old friend who emigrated years ago calls you and says:
"You're still living there?"
"Why?"
"You should leave too."
"Why would anyone stay in such a ridiculous place?"
I would find that rather irritating.
I may complain about the country where I was born and raised because I care about it.
There may be enormous flaws that I desperately want fixed.
That frustration can exist precisely because there is still affection underneath it.
Someone who lives there with me can understand that.
Someone who left years ago and now occasionally returns just to tell me how foolish I am for staying is doing something quite different.
Online games aren't all that different.
If you still love Dead by Daylight, you have every right to complain about Dead by Daylight.
You are the one playing it.
You are the one living with it.
You want it to improve because you still care.
But if someone like me, who already gave up on the game, keeps turning up to say:
"You're still playing that rubbish?"
"Come play Crimson Desert with me instead."
then I'm no longer criticising the game out of affection.
I'm also, whether I mean to or not, insulting the person who still loves it.
I'm treating their enjoyment as though it needs correcting.
That's crass.
And disrespectful.
Oh, and I don't have anything against Crimson Desert.
I haven't played it.
I'd actually quite like to someday if I get the chance.
I just needed the name of another successful game for the example.
Anyway.
There are plenty of mechanical and technical problems with modern Dead by Daylight that I could complain about.
I won't.
I'm an outsider now.
But as a horror game curator, there is one thing I still feel obliged to say.
Really, I should have said it five years ago.
I only started writing long reviews relatively recently, so I'm saying it now.
Why, exactly, did you make The Trickster?
No.
Seriously.
The Trickster is why I stopped playing this game.
And before anyone gets the wrong idea, I don't dislike Korea.
I love Korea.
South Korea, I mean.
Train to Busan is easily among my top ten zombie films.
I had a great time with Squid Game.
I haven't watched Season 2.
KPop Demon Hunters was fun too, although technically it isn't a Korean-produced animated film.
One of the horror games I've played recently was Honrang, an anomaly game built around Korean culture.
The Coma is an excellent Korean horror game.
D.Va is my favourite Overwatch character.
One of the few Instagram friends I still exchange messages with every now and then is a very nice Korean friend who lives on Jeju Island.
And Buldak noodles...
Well.
My boyfriend likes them.
They're not really my thing.
I prefer scones, baguettes, pasta and espresso.
Anyway.
Why would you suddenly create a K-pop idol as an original Killer in what was supposed to be a slasher game?
The official description actually calls him a "twisted K-Pop Idol" and talks about his stylish showmanship alongside his gleeful bloodlust.
What the bloody hell is that supposed to be?
It doesn't fit Dead by Daylight.
Not to me.
The problem isn't that he's Korean.
The problem isn't even K-pop.
The problem is that I don't believe him as a Dead by Daylight Killer.
It felt less like a horror character that naturally belonged in this world and more like someone looking at the enormous cultural force surrounding K-pop and BTS and wondering whether some of that attention might trickle down to Dead by Daylight too.
Whether that was actually the intention, of course, I can't know.
I can only say that this is what the character felt like to me.
And I hated it.
I was so disappointed at the time that I seriously considered changing my recommendation for the entire game to Not Recommended.
To me, adding The Trickster felt like spitting in the face of the horror fans who were there for the game's original slasher identity.
And on a broader level, I don't think it did K-pop any favours either.
Taking a cultural phenomenon that already has an enormous identity of its own and crudely dressing it up in serial-killer clothing doesn't automatically make good horror.
Of course Dead by Daylight needs new characters.
It's an online game.
Keep adding them.
Please do.
But if you're going to force something into the game this awkwardly, why not look at actual horror games instead?
Go and make a licensing agreement for the Billy's Burger mascot from Witness the Dark - Episode 1 - Bloody Burger.
There.
You have a new Killer.
For the accompanying Survivor, license the deranged girl who wants to form an emotional attachment with a hamburger.
That game is called Flaming Fried Nutrition: Daydream, by the way.
Yes.
Hamburger.
We've already been through this.
Or talk to the people behind Escape from Yandere and bring Yuki in as a Killer.
That could be great.
These are actual horror characters.
They already come from games designed around horror.
And they're right here on Steam.
Wouldn't collaborations with smaller horror games be healthier for the genre than taking something that doesn't particularly fit, putting horror clothes on it and insisting:
"Look. It's a Killer now."
A collaboration like that could introduce Dead by Daylight players to smaller horror developers.
It could give those developers an audience they might never otherwise reach.
It could give horror fans new games to discover.
And Dead by Daylight would get characters that actually grew out of horror in the first place.
That sounds considerably more interesting to me.
Of course, I don't seriously expect Behaviour Interactive to go hunting around Steam for tiny indie horror games just because I wrote this review.
Perhaps Behaviour Interactive would never bother with horror games that small.
These days, fame seems to matter rather more.