Horror games are a big thing in the video game world. From Silent Hill to Amnesia, they’ve come in and offered us screams in both third and first-person. Daylight comes forth from the darkness and hopes to offer us some scares, but does it succeed in providing a different experience than any other title? Not at all, as a matter of fact… it’s practically a clone of the Slender Man games. You wake up inside of a dark hospital and have to search for letters.
The letters tell the history of the world and ultimately the story of Sarah who finds herself trapped inside a haunted hospital. That’s the gist of it, you wander around a haunted house and gather letters to find out why you’re there. There are a few flashing scenes that show images of what may have occurred, but you won’t glean anything new from observing these pictures. There is a third story option, but it’s mostly the ravings of a maniac who speaks to Sarah inside her head – or on her phone – it isn’t really clear.
I’m not a big first-person horror fan, so take this next part with a grain of salt. I personally don’t find wandering around through dark corridors with no defense a fun experience. Daylight feels the need to bore us with light scares that wouldn’t shiver a pirates timbers. The title will throw occasional shocking moments at the player like a rotating wheel, or an IV that moves on its own. Nothing really startles you outside of the ghostly women that are there to murder you.
The goal for each area of the game is to find a sigil and the exit, but Daylight promises that each time you beat the game these areas will change. I agree that it changes the layout of the Hospital, but the procedural generation fails to change anything about certain areas of the game. You’ll always stumble into the library, or walk out on the docks and get hit with a sense of familiarity. You are just forced to walk through a new boring maze with the same events happening over and over again, and it leaves you wondering if anything actually changed.
Daylight has a dark atmosphere as to be expected of any horror title, but it lacks a genuinely creepy environment. This could also be the fault of the procedurally generated content, but even open areas like the forest weren’t claustrophobic enough for the fear to seep in. It didn’t help that I’ve got a pretty awesome rig and the game felt the need to chug or stutter whenever it felt like it. But I’m sure the recent series of patches since release have alleviated some of that pain.
I like Horror games when they have a reasonable amount of content attached to them. Daylight is all about walking through a dull maze, finding notes, and avoiding the same enemy model in repetition. Daylight receives 2 stars out of 5 from Geek Citadel. Daylight should have tried to step out of The Slender Mans’ shoes, and tried to be something other than a randomly generated bore fest… and I’m not talking about bacon.
*This game was provided by the publisher for review*
