Daylight

(Personal Score & Reasons to buy down below)

Daylight promised a lot of things, and most of those things weren't delivered. But let's not focus on what it should have been, but on what it is. I am a huge horror fan, and I have probably played most of the horror games out there, or at least tried them.

Daylight is procedurally generated, which is a double edged sword, on one hand, you have supposedly unlimited ways to get scared, but here lies one of the biggest gripes of the game for me: there's not enough variation on the scares. 30 minutes in I had experienced most of the random scares more than once each. The same whispers play over and over, there's only a number of times that a chair moving or something falling will be scary, and then there are some very awful jump scares. So it got tiresome a bit. What kept the game very tense and kept me on edge at times was the sound design and a couple of times where the witch was chasing me. That said, the ambience is top notch, and so is the soundtrack and sound design.

Another gripe I have with the game is that the main character talks too much. Again, there's only a number of times that you can hear your character (for whom you feel nothing) comment on something or just saying "I know you're in here!" - which totally breaks immersion. That said, I liked that they added the commentary, since I felt it gave a bit of humanity to the character, but it should have been kept to a minimum.

And now this is a personal complaint: I am a fan of exploring and I like to take in the atmosphere, but in Daylight you can just turn on a glowstick and it will tell you where everything is by making it glow. I think this makes the game way too easy, since you're just wandering around and collecting remnants (more on that later) and picking up glowsticks and flares. I felt that this was too much handholding. The glowsticks even illuminate the beautiful and dreadful environments more for you, which takes a bit away from the ambience (it changes it a lot). I like the flares though, you use them to scare the witch away (even though it makes it a bit easy, although they can be a bit scarce at higher difficulties) and I really like how they light up the environments. And this brings us to the witch: I think it's awful that on easier difficulties, during the first levels she cannot kill you (false sense of security? No. Just stupid), and I felt that on later levels and higher difficulties it just became too hectic, the tension wasn't given time to grow, it was just jump scare after jump scare, and that's a smaller gripe I have with the game. I say smaller, because this made it extra difficult to explore the environments and that made me frustrated, and I say that in a good way because that actually achieved the tension that the game should achieve even for people who are not fond of exploring. It worked for me, but it won't work for everyone.

You progress through the game by repeating a simple objective: grab X amount of remnants to spawn an object that serves as a key to a door that is locked by a force field while evading the witch, whose aggressiveness goes up as you grab the remnants. The remnants are, by the way, notes that fill out the story of the game. Seems familiar? It's almost a glorified Slender clone in terms of gameplay, and although I like Slender (heck, I even developed a Slender clone as my first game with my team) it has been overused and this just feels lazy from the developers' part. They could have easily brought more variety to the gameplay to make the game feel more unique.

Now on to the story: it is GOD awful. I consider the story one of the most important elements of a horror game, it brings that extra spice to the atmosphere through context, and this game is an awful example of it. The story, albeit not horribly written is completely uninspired and cliché. They picked up every cliché from a couple of popular horror movies and built something with no heart and no soul. I saw a lot of Poltergeist there, and even a bit of Silent Hill, if we touch on horror games too. I felt nothing for the characters, because they were barely characters. I could hear Sarah breathe and comment on some situations that happened during the game, but I could not FEEL her character. Why should I care that she was brought here? Heck, why was she brought here? Who the hell is this dude talking to her through the phone, why is he talking to her, why is she not questioning that he is talking to her, why is she not questioning that she has been sent into this creepy old ass hospice and WHY WHY WHY? Etc. You get the point. And then the ending comes (no spoilers) and you're just left speechless due to probably one of the worst endings in the history of entertainment (IMO). And probably shortest too.

That said, Daylight is still entertaining and worthwhile if you're a horror fan and want to get your fix, but wait for a sale. I finished the game in 4 hours and a half, found most of the remnants (all the remnants available during the playthrough) and, to be honest, I don't really feel like playing it again so soon. I might go for another playthrough just to see how much it changes, but I will only play it again in a few months up to a year. Getting more of the story is not really an incentive to go through again since the story is not good, and the fact that the layout changes does not change much of the core gameplay since the objectives are always the same and so is the witch's behavior. Overall, Daylight is okay.

Personal Score: 5/10

You should buy it if:
- You are a horror fan
- You are able to lower your expectations
- The game is on sale
- You like Slender / are not bothered by Slender clones (which this is, almost)
- You are able to put the story aside and focus on the ambience and exploration