Dead by Daylight continues to churn out content, and as you may have read from my previous review of DbD and its Five Nights at Freddy’s chapter, I am a huge, huge fan of this franchise. I’ll do my best to set my bias aside in this review, because oh boy have we got a lot to discuss.
Let’s start with the new characters we’ve had added to the Fog in the Walking Dead chapter: Rick and Michonne Grimes. Both bring unique perks to the game, meaning a total of six new perks for survivors to chew on and experiment with. Both Rick and Michonne have had their real actors contribute both voice and face to the game, which really brings them to life inside the fog. You can even get an alternative skin for Rick, making him Darryl Dixon!
This update also critically adds a new survivor item by way of the Fog Vial. Consider this like a smoke grenade in other games, at the press of a button you deploy an intense cloud smoke that suppresses your noises and scratch marks, as well as your aura. If used correctly, these can absolutely end a chase with the killer before it even really begins.
There is also a new The Walking Dead themed map, with a unique colour palette and section, having the hospital where Rick first wakes up as a small tile in the map. Unfortunately, I could not get any good screenshots on this map as my time on it was remarkably low and I suffered crashes while exploring it.
Regrettably, this is where I have to reveal the unfortunate truth of this update at time of writing: Iit is absolutely abysmal. The Walking Dead update also brings an update to the engine, which has made so many game breaking bugs that I couldn’t possibly list them all. I’ll do my best to list the ones that have impacted me the most. First and foremost, on our loading screen there is always a piece of rebar. This isn’t an annoyance really, more something comedic that something like this passed the QA team, but the community has come together and lovingly called him Jim. We thank Jim for holding up what’s left of the servers!
Unfortunately Jim cannot save us from some of the other worse bugs. Killers are unable to start chases with Survivors, meaning that a lot of perks don’t work during the game. Next, there are some of Michonne’s voice lines where, if you listen closely, you can hear the VA team giving directions in the booth. Additionally, the new Fog Vials sometimes don’t work, not to mention the complaints about accessibility — they’re causing players to get severe migraines and cause sickness due to the disorientation they provide. On top of a myriad of others, the game is playable, but seriously broken. I gritted my teeth and kept going for my personal love of the game, but if you were to put it down until some of these bugs are fixed, nobody would blame you.
Whilst The Walking Dead is an extremely cool addition to Dead by Daylight (even if I would’ve preferred Lee and Clementine as survivors!). The bugs and server integrity is putting a real downer on the theme, and unless Behaviour can turn it around quickly, they’re going to lose a lot of players that the Five Nights at Freddy’s chapter helped pull in.
(As this review has taken a while to go live, I should add that the BHVR team has fixed quite a few of the bugs I have mentioned here. This does not excuse that they should not be releasing content in this state. I hope their next chapter is better).
The Walking Dead chapter of Dead by Daylight is currently available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PlayStation.
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