Quick Look: Solo: Daylight

@smcn: That's a pretty weak 'reason', you would hope every decision made about a character is in context of the story. Vulnerability should be discerned from the gameplay i.e. the tactical options that are provided to the player by the character for survival in the game world. As a kid I always felt more equipped to deal with Resi 2 when controlling Claire over Leon because of the extra inventory space and she just felt more nimble. I felt more on edge when playing as Leon, had the attributes been reversed I would have been more challenged with Claire.

Make her afraid of the dark or limp when hurt and I'll feel more susceptible to the enemies in those moments, make her a likeable character and I'll feel protective over her. Just making the character a woman on the other hand will change nothing but what I call her when I feel like blaming the controls for my bad play. For those interested I would call her a 'silly cow' and if the character were a man, a 'shit bag'.

When I see this game, I keep thinking of that Polygon Jessica Chobot interview where she did all this research and was all excited about this new challenge in life. Getting the chance to contribute creatively to the industry. A whole new era by writing for a game.

And the reaction to the finished product is "meh." Ah well.

Certainly an interesting interview, regardless.

@csl316: I think about that article too and get mega bummed.

Has anyone noticed that Patrick has a similar cadence to his speech as William Shatner?

yeah you're right. Though they're not setting a good benchmark :)

From the studio that brought you Blackwater.... that should tip people off I guess.

Had I known that ex-IGN people were involved, I wouldn't have even watched this garbage. Harsh, I know, but with how arrogant most of that site's crew (both current and former) act, this game should have changed the industry and, hell, brought dead planets back to life while it was at it.

Guess it isn't really that easy to make games huh?

Wow, this is the first Quick Look where it had to actually be fast-forwarded to get to a part where something happens. Unfortunately, when something happens in Daylight it's still super fucking boring. What a garbage game, so disappointing.

@raven10: This is true, but it was strange that @patrickklepek was using glowsticks half of the time and just kept accidentally missing that cabinent. I know it must've been frustrating in the moment but I hope Patrick realizes that he actually just got really bad luck with his playthrough, and should be using glowsticks most of the time (when not under threat of attack by a ghost).

Remember, this is a game from the same studio that made Blackwater. Yeah. THAT Blackwater - A.K.A Navarro's worst nightmare of 2011.

Zombiestudios - unintentionally horrifying gamers since 1994.

I'm surprised they went with UE4 already, I thought the engine could have used a little more optimisation, but then it seemed to be running fine so maybe they turned a few of the more demanding bells and whistles off. I can understand them using it from a tools point of view; UE4 is wonderful to work with.

As much as everyone (including Patrick) said that the game seems bland, I gatta say I was scared sh*tless watching the video. I decided not to buy the game because I don't think I could play it for more than 10mins.

P.S. Love the mini-Spookin' with Scoops

P.P.S. Needs some exploding doors.

Well that cabinet happened to be in a relatively well lit room so I think he didn't feel the need to have one lit in there. Still, I think the problem of the game is more that the core idea of finding pieces of paper in a randomly generated mental asylum just didn't end up working very well. Horror is almost all about the pacing and getting pacing correct mathematically is all but impossible. While not using glowsticks did end up making the pacing seem even worse than it really was, I don't think using glowsticks would suddenly make the game good either. Plus, while the game did say to use the glowsticks to find clues, I think this is a case where very clear and direct instructions might have been helpful. I like figuring things out on my own as much as the next guy, but when your core (and almost only) mechanic is not clearly explained then you have a problem. Combined with the button prompts not changing with his control choices it made things harder for him than they should have been. There is a reason Unreal Engine makes it so easy to display a control based on the currently assigned button.

Abraham Lincoln @ 17:41

I guess the problem with procedurally generated games akin to this is the environments hafta to be pretty bland and without much detail. Though that said, the idea behind procedurally generated enemies and supplies is much more viable I think, as then you would hopefully keep the higher quality of environmental detail, but can still run into situations with those ghost enemies appearing out of nowhere. Which is basically what Alien: Isolation is all about from what they've been saying.

It's also impossible to really judge this game for myself just via a QL, as you need to be in a particular environment and be playing it for yourself to really get the most of it. That said... even horror games can usually still portray up to a certain degree of how good they are when watching them in action, and this one doesn't look like anything special thus far. Plus, the reviews have been pretty scalding it seems... Still, I will like to one day give this a go anywhoo if only because it's a horror game available on PS4.

I had this game mixed up with Dying Light. I'm glad this wasn't that game.

So the girl who's claim to fame was licking a PSP decided she wanted to be a writer? Why?

@flacracker: She did far more than that simple stunt in her career. She was a contributor at IGN, and a talented host for years and years. Not that the game necessarily came out as well as maybe she or others had hoped, but it's her first real stint writing a game.

Also, give this a watch.

Very disappointing, played an hour last night and would definitely agree that it seems unfinished. As Patrick pointed out; the games lack of controller acknowledgement on screen is irritating, and the grammar in the "story" breadcrumbs / collectibles is embarrassing. Voice acting is hackneyed and random player comments often seem out of context. Some decent lighting in parts, but in short it sucks ass.

This game looks incredibly mediocre

At about 37:00, Patrick lights a glowstick and then immediately sprints up the stairs during the "light glowstick animation", which seemed to completely break it so that Patrick's left hand was no longer holding a glowstick, so for the entire duration, Patrick's character is magically emitting a green glow even though his left hand is clearly empty.

Not the end of the world, but "player starts sprinting in the middle of activating a glow stick" seems like a pretty common action, and how did they not find that bug during playtesting.

Patrick has a lot of great points, though at times I felt he might have been a bit harsher on the game that I would be. Concealing an item in the game's "critical path" in a cabinet seems like a misstep, and the dialogue seems a little scattered and confusingly lacking in context (though that may come together later in the game).

It looks like a pretty standard, jump-scare-driven horror game with an interesting mechanic, that being the smartphone that acts as both your minimap and flashlight, so it meets the "carry around a lantern" horror game trope while trying something creative and modern.

I don't know. I can see Daylight appealing to buffs of the genre, but I wouldn't say it's as standout as something exponentially more terrifying and gritty, like Outlast. That said, I don't think the game is poor in quality from what I've seen, and I'm not on the same level of feeling on the game as Patrick, but it does seem fairly straightforward. I'm interested to see how it does for Zombie.

Edit: Thinking back, the flares stuffed in random places almost too frequently is a bit silly, and probably could have been slightly remedied with notes of communication from the game that the hospital's inhabitants were leaving them, not just all over like developers have.

@amikron: You could be right.

@adaptor said:

Yup, Doorways springs to mind. But that game also has plenty of mazes and nearly invisible walkways (much like those in the dream sequences from Max Payne except you can hardly see them since it so dark) thrown in to add to the fun! And a torch that burns for ten seconds.

Although I agree that the story seems all over the place and not very well put together, I'm wondering why people seem "mega bummed" that this didn't blow their minds. I challenge every singe poster here to list one movie/book/videogame author who wrote a killer story the first time they ever tried, and I'll list twenty authors whose first stories all sucked horribly. ;)

My overall reaction to "Daylight" is "eh, some decent ideas here and there, better luck with the next one".

This looks pretty boring. A lot of walking around grabbing notes and not much else from what I've seen.

The idea of a horror (survival?) game which can be replayed endlessly because no two games are alike sounds interesting . But from what I can see (and the developer website gives no new insights) this game is basically a scavenger hunt in an ever changing dark maze. With only a limited number of different tools and no combat or puzzles to be solved there isn't a lot going on that would keep me interested. It's like they tried to make a game that has every trope available: dark hallways - check, limited lightsource - check, jump scares - check, burning enemies using flares - check, notes that give away plot points - check, endless backtracking - check. It's like they combined all the boring elements from games like Dead Island, Condemned and Penumbra.

I would have liked to see something like a first person version of the first "Alone in the Dark" game (or Resident Evil/Silent Hill) with clever puzzles and decent backstories. If it had randomized puzzles, weapons, unique tools and or power ups, random enemies (with different AI and behaviour) and maybe permadeath (like in the Binding of Isaac) that would be a game I'd play. Actually that sounds a lot like ZombiU for the Wii U. Since I don't have a Wii U I guess I'll just go and play Amnesia some more.

Jessica Chobot was a video host for IGN, not an editor.

Daylight looks really bad. The glowsticks look horrible, which is really distracting considering how often you use them. More importantly, though, the game looks really boring.

@patrickklepek the movies you were thinking of in the quick look were the Grave Encounters movies. I thought the first one was good and did a lot of neat tricks and the second just tried way too hard to cash in on that Marble Hornets money.

Sprinting through dark places in your mom's house, ha. That's great. I never watch horror movies or play horror games, but I'm still totally scared by these things. I run through dark scary places, too.

@dasakamov: Just because it's someone's first time doesn't excuse them. Also, you're reading too much into people's expectations. They weren't expecting to have their minds blown (at least I wasn't), but they weren't expecting Slender 2: Electric Boogaloo either.

The twist is your actually a secretary hired to file and organize all the notes people leave around this asylum.

It looks like it has the farcry 3 blood dragon filter over it. Or is that just me?

I just can't get into this. I've seen this kind? of horror game many times now.

Patrick, what program/software did you use to capture the video of Daylight? I hear it gives problems with Bandicam when you run it in full screen.

The game isn't as bad as the veritable public whipping it's being given by reviews for the most part. That said, it's certainly not good. It's unoriginal, in both gameplay and narrative, but it's at least technically competent. At the $10 PSN+ price I didn't feel ripped off, but I begrudgingly finished it and wouldn't recommend it at all, especially if you've played something like Slender: The Arrival or it's ilk before.

Horror video games have gotten so tired. Cheap jump scares and pointless exploration. I've absolutely no desire to play any of them anymore. This one certainly doesn't look like it does anything new.

Tedious is a bit of an understatement considering it too 20+ minutes andPat fast forwarding through even more time for anything meaningful to happen with the game progression. Never mind the copy/pasted artwork and rooms.