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.

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!

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

I have always loved the idea of online asynchronous multiplayer survival horror video game Dead by Daylight in theory more than action. It is constantly getting new killers added to it, many of them licenced from horror films. In execution however I have often struggled to enjoy this. As a survivor I end up getting wiped out almost immediately, and find the loop of having to fix generators a dull task to complete. As a killer I often worry about putting on a poor show, or that the survivors will run rings around me.
A few months ago I decided to once again give the game a go. Rather than randomly dipping into various killers and survivors, I decided that each month I would randomly pick a killer and only use that killer for the month, hoping to gradually get better at using them. 
I thought as some nice easy blog posts I would do a beginner's guide to each killer I come across. A beginner's guide not for beginners, but one written by a beginner. The first pick a few months back was The Trapper.

The Trapper (Evan MacMillan) was an original creation for the game (even being the cover image killer). His backstory has him in the real world working as a brutal enforcer for his rich father, with his actions resulting in the murder of over a hundred men. One day he vanishes, with his father found locked and starving in the basement of his own warehouse. Of course, Evan had been pulled into the entity's realm, a place between life and death in which poor victims are trapped in a hellish purgatory where they constantly have to escape from various killers looking to sacrifice part of their soul to the entity. He has his own level, 'The MacMillan Estate', though it is random which level you actually play on.
The Trapper is one of the larger killers to be found, and is classed as easy to use, so was a good choice for my first random pick. His special ability, as the title may suggest, is to place bear traps around the maps. Playing as him, you begin the round with a set number of traps, with others dotted around the level, either to be activated where they lay, or collected and placed elsewhere. It became clear that you have to try and place the traps at least vaguely effectively, putting them by doorways or windows, or by generators or narrow points of the path seemed to work best. What is good with him is that you can place traps and forget about them, until you get the indicator a survivors has triggered the trap. His large size meanwhile means he has a better reach than some of the other killers.

My rookie tips for playing as the killer over the course of a month (and roughly ten to fifteen matches) are as follows. I found inside levels to be better than outdoor levels. I found corridors and doorways effective places to constantly trap survivors. My worst match was thankfully also the first, in which I spent the entire round chasing one survivors without ever catching them! My best match saw me manage a squad wipe. On average I can't say I was amazing with him, but it was early days for my killer adventure.
On the cosmetic side of things, he has a great cross-over skin with Naughty Bear. This changes his appearance into that of a giant scowling teddy bear, I loved going around looking like this. This also adds some mild narration to the start of a match, much like that early 2000's video game did.
Later this week will be my second Dead by Daylight guide for the killer I used all December, The Clown.

A Plague Tale: Requiem (2022) - Horror Video Game Review (XBox-Series X)

I found 2019's A Plague Tale: Innocence to be a surprise hit with me. I loved the setting of 1300s France, and loved the concept of having to survive a plague of supernatural rats. It was obvious that game was inspired in parts by The Last of Us and so it maybe shouldn't be a surprise that this sequel, A Plague Tale: Requiem has been inspired by elements of The Last of Us: Part II. This is mainly in terms of the game trying to be as bleak and miserable as humanly possible.

The story picks up around six months after the end of Innocence, with Amicia (voiced by Charlotte McBurney in the English language version), her mother, best friend Lucas (Kit Connor), and her young brother Hugo (Logan Hannan) having travelled to the south of France. While Hugo is still afflicted with the strange supernatural curse that causes killer rats to follow him wherever he goes, this unnatural ability has been dormant, and it is hoped that the terror of the curse is far in the past. After a chance violent encounter, Hugo's powers come back, even more deadly than before. His mother had gotten in contact with an ancient secret organisation known as The Order, with the hope that the help their specialist knowledge can bring will be able to provide a cure. Hugo however has different plans, he keeps having a recurring dream about a mysterious island protected by a phoenix, and becomes convinced that this place is the answer to a cure. With Amicia's help, the two set off on their own in search of this mysterious place.

Rather than try to dramatically change up the feel, Requiem felt a lot like more of the same. The game is spit into about sixteen chapters, and is split between combat free story sections, such as when Amicia and Hugo are visiting towns and settlements, combat sections when stealth must be used to either bypass or kill human enemies, puzzle sections involving traversing literal seas of killer rats, and a mix of human enemies and the rats. For the combat you eventually gain access to all the tools of the first game, with Amicia mainly using her sling to kill guards, set flammable objects on fire, and extinguish flames. With more combat this time around she also gets a nifty crossbow, though ammo for that is scarce. There is a slight puzzle element with the combat as many enemies wear helmets, requiring you to use environmental objects to aid your fighting, such as pots of oil, and sacks of flour. Hugo also gets some abilities this time around, my favourite being him able to control rats, which you can then use to hunt down enemies. Like before, combat can be frustrating, and with a handful of wave based survival moments forced on you, I often found myself swearing a lot.
Mixed in with the stealth, puzzles and combat are thrilling moments that typically have you running away as thousands of rats swarm towards you like a wave. No matter how many of these occurred (felt it was about once an hour over the ten to fifteen hour game), these always thrilled, and rarely caused frustration.