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

I'm back with another beginner's experience of playing as a killer in the asynchronous multiplayer game Dead by Daylight. For March, the killer I randomly chose to try was The Cannibal, better known to all as Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series of films. They kind of shot themselves in the foot regarding this type of character, as The Hillbilly was an original creation from the team behind the game who was their blatant stand-in for Leatherface and released long before this killer (before they were able to get that licence). As such, Leatherface is the second killer to rely on a chainsaw, and so he had to act differently to The Hillbilly.

I really wanted to spend more time playing as the killer this month, after only playing as Wesker three times last month. Leatherface arrived with 'Chapter 5.5: Leatherface', and consists solely of the killer himself. The lore based backstory has Leatherface entering the entities realm right at the end of the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. He goes from being scared that the escaped victim is going to call the police on him and his family, to fear at finding himself in the new realm. Determined not to fail the entity like he believes he failed his family, Leatherface realises immediately what he has to do.

I can't say I was that great at using Leatherface, but I still enjoyed playing as him better than I did Wesker. His default weapon is a sledge hammer he effortlessly wields, his special ability being of course the iconic chainsaw. When activated, Leatherface moves forward slightly faster, swinging the chainsaw side to side. If you hit an object while using the weapon, Leatherface goes into an uncontrollable tantrum where he wildly swings it around for a few seconds. What I really liked about this ability was that it is an instant down if it connects with a player. He may be slow, but there were many times I was able to easily down players trying to escape. His special perks are a mixed bag, one of them causes players to drop any items they are carrying when they are hit, another causes players to get the blindness status when hit, while the final one, 'Barbecue & Chilli' allows Leatherface to see the auras of all players for four seconds after he hooks a survivor. Many of his add-ons revolve around changing elements of the chainsaw attack slightly.

Being a licenced killer, his alternate costumes were limited. As I hadn't played as him before, I spent the month with his iconic default look (the mask made out of human flesh and the butchers apron). I only managed to play five games as him, the final one I was a bit cheeky as I had a secret perk to gain the ability to kill survivors after hooking them twice. This led to be killing three of the four survivors, each time I got a fun animation of me clubbing them to the ground with my sledge hammer, before sticking the chainsaw right the way through them and bringing it upwards.
I had fun with the killer, but all these months in and the game still hasn't really clicked with me. There is a reason I don't play it much during the month, and that is down to still not really being comfortable with how to properly play in an effective way. Next month's killer is to be The Hag, one of the original killers released for Dead by Daylight. Check back around this time next month to see how I got on using her.