Thursday 7 March 2024

Dead by Daylight - A Beginner's Guide to The Mastermind


I have now been making an effort to get into asynchronous multiplayer horror game Dead by Daylight for four months. Each month sees me randomly picking a new killer to spend the month trying to get to grips with. For February the killer chosen was The Mastermind, better known to all as Resident Evil's Albert Wesker. When I initially saw this killer was my new pick I was excited, I thought it would be cool to play as this iconic bad guy. Over the course of the month however I just never really got to grips with exactly how he controlled, leading to frustration more often than not.

The set-up for how the killer came to be in the nightmare realm of Dead by Daylight is often pretty cool, though with Wesker his introduction comes not at the end of his natural time in the Resident Evil games, but instead is made non-canonical with him weirdly getting pulled into the realm mid-way through the events of Resident Evil 5. I have a somewhat sad knowledge of the Resident Evil world and so this really is just nit-picking on my part. As for being a killer in this realm, it makes sense Wesker would relish the chance to use his powers to kill those deemed as weaker than him, I imagine it would feel like a welcome break for someone used to dealing with boulder punching action heroes and global conspiracies. He was added to the game in Chapter 25: Resident Evil: Project W, while he didn't get his own stage, he was joined by Ada Wong and Rebecca Chambers who became survivor characters.
Wesker was at the height of his coolness during the events of Resident Evil: Code Veronica, where his powers were blatantly inspired by The Matrix films. The version of the character here isn't that though, recently infected with the Uroboros biological weapon, his main form of attack is transforming his arm into a tentacle.

Being perfectly honest, I'm a little ashamed of how little I played Dead by Daylight last month. In total I only actually played three matches with Wesker, one of which was a unique limited time mode which took away the threat detection ability as well as the use of items. In that time I was met with a lot of frustration getting to grips with how Wesker's move set worked, despite him being rated as 'moderate' to use. His default weapon is a knife, perfectly fine, no trouble there. His power move sees him rush forward quickly, his arm transforming into a black tentacle to either grab survivors and hurl them against walls, or to use his dash to swiftly vault over barriers and through windows. Hitting a survivor in this way infects them, the infection eventually causing the hinderance status effect (movement speed reduced by 8%) if the survivor doesn't find and use a first aid spray. My main problem came with using his rush ability. He has the ability to rush twice in a row, but I was rarely able to get this to work. Sometimes I would see a button prompt to do the follow up dash, but other times it seemed I wasn't even being given the option to do this. It led to me charging at survivors expecting to get a second dash to actually reach them (the grab and hurl motion being automatic once contact with a survivor is reached), but never usually getting to reach them. This, coupled with a cool down for the dash move, led to me being the least effective killer I have been since I started playing Dead by Daylight again.

Wesker was fine as a killer, I left him in his default black trench coat look as I have only been purchasing alternate skins for the killers I had previously used in the past.. He is prone to saying cheesy one-liners when attacking, something that fits him perfectly as the Resident Evil games are often full of cheese like that. I did have to turn off the subtitles in the settings however as it was quite distracting having them come up on screen in large text.
The sole highlight I had playing with Wesker came right at the end of a match. Survivors like to troll killers by hanging out at the exit doing the tea-bagging motion rather than immediately going through it when it opens up. One such player was doing that, obviously forgetting that Wesker has a dash, I swiftly shot forward, grabbed this player and threw them against the exist (which then turned solid due to the killer not being able to pass through). This put the player in a downed state, so I quickly picked them up before they could crawl to freedom, put them over my shoulder and went and hooked them. I have to say that was really satisfying!
So, I have done a random killer pick for March and that killer is The Cannibal, which I recall is actually Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series of films. I will aim to play more than the paltry amount I managed for February!

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