I’ve spent a good part of my life enjoying horror games. Well, at least a few of them since I have a particular taste in horror. I like games that try to create tension by delivering an engrossing environment, rather than the Resident Evil‘s and Doom‘s of the world where it’s all about finding ways to catch you off guard.
Daylight does a good job of being a horror game that provides worthwhile scares, but suffers from being one-dimensional.
In Daylight you play as Sarah, a young woman who awakes in a freakishly dark hospital unknowing of why she’s there—yes, a bit cliché. The two-hour journey boils down to you unraveling pieces of her memory while seeking an exit from the building. Escaping isn’t as simple as it sounds, though. There is a paranormal presence that you can feel bearing down on you. Stepping into the hallway quickly becomes an act of bravery.
Sarah is only equipped with a few tools. For one, she has a phone that never runs out of battery. As such, she can keep a map open showing you the layout of any rooms you’ve ventured into. She also comes across some glow sticks and flares. While the former lets you see searchable objects in the environment more clearly, the latter is your protection against the game’s frightening evils. This small but handy toolkit is enough to get you from beginning to end provided you muster the courage to find your exit.
Thankfully, Daylight hasn’t fallen victim to the recent trend of abusing scare tactics. Some recent games, most notably Outlast, were too aggressive with their attacks, numbing you in the process. Although later on it’s more predictable, early on the horror comes from simply existing in this unfamiliar, dark environment. The audio work lends itself to creating an atmosphere where the building feels alive—and unwelcoming. Creeks, movement, and shuffling can be heard. Later on there are a few jump scares—although not in the traditional sense—, but for the most part it’s smart in its execution.
Getting lost in the corridors looking for an exit, knowing that nobody in the world can help you is nightmarish. The procedurally generated levels mean that you have no one to save you but yourself. If you get lost, good luck finding a guide on the internet to show you the way when your level is constructed differently than just about anyone else’s. Also, if you perish, you’ll start at the beginning of the level with, you guessed it, a new layout. You don’t want to have to go through the torture of excavating a level more than once, so your life holds value. This integration is Daylight‘s greatest strength.
However, the dynamic map design isn’t supported by a multi-dimensional game structure. After the first level you’ll notice the game repeats itself… a lot. There are a couple of times where it tries to evolve, but doesn’t do so successfully. This comes in the form of an outdoor environment, which may become your favorite of the bunch, and some platforming. In the case of platforming, Daylight loses some of its connection with the player. Moving crates and scaling them feels awkward and out of place.
Speaking of out of place, there’s a voice Sarah listens to throughout the journey which is supposed to help guide the player through the narrative. If anything, hearing this voice kills some of the immersion. The game would have fared better if it relied on its environments to tell the story, rather than a guy constantly bombarding you with details. It feels like you’ve gone into a haunted mansion with a talkative father.
My biggest problem with the game is its presentation. You can catch the visuals on a good day, but most of the time the environments are muddy and have a strange filter that causes an unrealistic balance of color. Made worse, performance is the worst I’ve experienced on my PC which has an Ivy Bridge 3570k, 8GB of DDR3, and a GTX 570. I couldn’t even play the game on medium settings. I haven’t had a chance to play the PS4 version, but it can only be better, really.
It’s worth mentioning that Daylight has Twitch integration built-in. It’s a game that’s scary enough that watching someone play it on stream would provide a few laughs at their expense. Or, you can stream your game footage and show your friends how tough you really are.
Despite these shortcomings, Daylight is a game that succeeds in some of the most important ways. It’s frightening, and won’t be easy for you to get through if you turn the lights off and throw headphones on. However, poor design choices compromise the immersion, and its inability to evolve into something more substantial keeps it from becoming the great horror experience that it aspires to be.
PC copy provided by publisher. Daylight is available on PC and PS4.
