Daylight Reviews
There's not a shred of innovation or much of a concerted effort to evoke terror in players throughout the entirety of Daylight.
Daylight is clearly more of a tech demonstration than a game, but it forgot to include any interesting uses of technology that couldn't - and haven't - already been done better on older software. As a one trick pony, if Daylight fails to scare players, then the monotonous and repeated palette of the game world itself will provide no joy to explorers, and the story will fail to grip those that like to engage with the narrative. If there is still any desire to experience the game, it would be recommended to simply watch a Twitch stream rather than paying for it!
Horror games can be tricky to get right, but Daylight fails on virtually every front. It's a shame to see such a promising product slump so spectacularly, but despite being a rather short affair, this is still a pain to play through. As a result, there are far better experiences that deserve your attention ahead of this – especially with Outlast recently being offered for free on the PlayStation 4. Don't shine your torch in the direction of this one, as you'll only find bitter disappointment in its beam.
The procedurally generated stages and piped horror-movie tropes just don't work for Daylight even for one playthrough, never mind multiple visits. The frame-rate is choppy and the environments are dull rehashes of every haunted house gaming has dragged us through over the years. As a download, I can only delete it -I'd rather burn it.
Anyway, if you are a horror junkie you will probably find something to enjoy here and I would recommend it for the thrill of the initial level alone if you are a fan of the genre. Otherwise, you wouldn't be doing yourself a disservice by skipping this one. I'm not going to outright not recommend it, by all means, try it out yourself if you want.
There's simply nothing about Daylight that hasn't been done better elsewhere, leaving me with no choice but to recommend you avoid it at all costs.
The promise of Daylight—never feeling safe because random scares defy predictability—ends up seeming like the main cause of its problems instead of a genre-changing bit of design.
Daylight's claim to fame is its reported replay value; that no scare will ever be the same twice. While it is technically true that the level geometry does change from playthrough-to-playthrough, the scares certainly see some overlap, and the writing isn't worth a return visit. There are no nascent ideas in Daylight – just the desperate, flailing attempts to throw every horror cliché at the wall.
Daylight incompetently piles on the clichés and delivers an experience that is far more likely to induce boredom than anything resembling fear.
Don't be afraid of the dark in the shallow and cliched horror adventure Daylight.
The least hand-crafted horror game ever, whose legion of design missteps and tepid scares make the worst of an already clichéd set-up.
Daylight tries to offer horror fanatics a unique, dynamic experience by giving them a procedurally generated environment and an intriguing system of "social" integration. However, just about all of it falls well short of the intended goal. The gameplay is uninspired and repetitive, the story is a mess, nobody will care about the protagonist, and the challenge is minimal.
If you like Slender, play that instead and pretend you are navigating a maze of corridors. If you hate Slender, run far away from Daylight as though evil witches are chasing you.
Although notable as the first game to use Unreal Engine 4, the graphics are perfunctory and drab. If only more effort had gone into crafting an interesting environment rather than relying on the game to conjure its own random shocks.
If you scare easily, the low asking price may entice you into a purchase but, for everyone else, Daylight represents a dull and missed opportunity for effective horror.
Daylight's inherent creepiness is undone by randomly generated elements that dispel the all-important illusion of survival horror.
Daylight is capable of doling out some shocks, but it's far too reliant on a single trick and the writing covers too much well-trodden ground for players to be truly unnerved.
An elaborate version of Pac-Man that isn't anywhere near as scary as it thinks it is.
Some of the scares in Daylight are genuinely chilling, but their shock value fades quickly. And after the opening hour or so, the hospital itself seems to become a character, which adds a needed layer of interactivity and suspense to the mix. But between dull writing, last-gen graphics, and limited game mechanics, Daylight devolves into nothing more than a glorified maze simulator with mood lighting.