Dead by Daylight Silent Hill Review

For the game’s latest expansion, Behaviour Interactive landed on Dead by Daylight Silent Hill. No, it’s not the crossover you’ve always dreamed of, and it’s certainly not the new Silent Hill game that we’ve all wanted for years. However, it is a refreshing way to experience the asymmetrical horror title. It’s also an expansion that stays true to the source material, and doesn’t take too many liberties. In a way, the DLC is better than every Silent Hill game since Homecoming.

If Looks Could Kill, This Guy Would Still Survive

The new killer with Dead by Daylight Silent Hill is of course Pyramid Head. I thought that adding this guy into another game outside of the Silent Hill franchise would cause the community to have a collective aneurysm. you see, Pyramid Head is the physical manifestation of the self-loathing that the protagonist of Silent Hill 2, James Sunderland, feels for himself.

I was surprised though. No Silent Hill fans jumped into the Dead by Daylight community to bash the game and the developers. In fact, everyone seemed on board with the crossover. That’s because ultimately the DLC does a better job of being a Silent Hill game than half the Silent Hill games do.

Pyramid Head is a colossal villain, and utterly terrifying. His stats aren’t anything to write home about, but his powers are. This killer can carve a trench in the ground as he walks, which will cause any survivors who walk through it to immediately have a powerful debuff applied to them. The survivors are also revealed when they walk through the trench, which looks like someone dug barbed wire into the ground.

Always Afflicting

The debuff is extremely powerful. If Pyramid Head manages to down an afflicted survivor, he can immediately teleport them to a Cage of Atonement. While that does come with its own challenges in terms of that survivor being rescued or breaking free, it does do away with any issues relating to flashlights or survivors struggling free. These cages are way more dangerous for survivors, and they come with some magnificent kill animations from Pyramid Head.

Survivors can avoid being afflicted by this debuff by crouching as they move over the trenches. When a survivor is sent to a Cage of Atonement, it’s always on the opposite side of the map. This means that it’s fairly easy for survivors to rescue on another if they’re quick.

Pyramid Head also has a move that casts a powerful blast in front of him through his sword. This is massively overpowered, allowing a killer to effectively down an enemy that’s at the opposite end of the corridor to them. To top things off, it can pass through obstacles.

Most of Pyramid Head’s perks are underwhelming. They’re the sort of thing you wouldn’t bother with because they’d hinder gameplay more than anything. This is really disappointing, because Behaviour Interactive could have done way more to make Pyramid Head even more unique.

Surviving Just Got More Interesting

The first new survivor perk with Dead by Daylight Silent Hill is Soul Guard. This perk is specific to Cheryl Mason, the new survivor who comes with the DLC. It’s half useful because it gives you a small boost for healing someone else, or being healed. However, the second half of the perk is sort of irrelevant, though it does open the door for a clutch heal if you’re cursed by a Hex.

The next new perk is Blood Pact. It’s slightly more useful, allowing you and the Obsession in the match to see each other when injured. This ties in with the first perk, as long as you heal one another. It also applies even more of a speed boost if you do perform healing on the Obsession, or get healed by them. Once again though, this happens very rarely in a match, if at all.

Blood Pact can also be rendered completely useless if you’re the Obsession. It seems like a small oversight on the developer’s part. Really though, if I’m equipping this perk, it’s because I have two others that decrease my chances of being the Obsession as well.

The final new perk is Repressed Alliance. It activates after you’ve been repairing a generator for 80 seconds, which isn’t totally out of the question for some matches. It gives you the power to use The Entity to block a generator from being worked on by other survivors, or damaged by the killer. This is a genuinely useful perk, and probably the one I used the most with this DLC.

Very Silent Hill

Of course, you can’t look at Dead by Daylight Silent Hill without wondering how true to the horror series it stays. Cheryl Mason is a very accurate representation of the most iconic Silent Hill protagonist. She doesn’t feel any different than other survivors to use. However, as a Silent Hill fan, it’s really satisfying to finally get to play as her in a modern game, on a modern console.

Pyramid Head is slightly less satisfying. His design resembles that of the second Silent Hill movie. In that movie he murders the evil god of Silent Hill, or something along those lines. The reason that I’m not sure about this is because no one is. That film is a mess. Back to the point though, his character design is accurate, but it’s accurate for the worst piece of media in the franchise.

Think of that what you will. Overall though, I don’t hate this design. The giant pyramid on his head is there, and really that’s what you need to instil fear in survivors all over the map.

Finally, we have the new map itself, Midwich Elementary School. This is an iconic Silent Hill location from just about every game. I love running around the corridors as Cheryl Mason, hiding from Pyramid Head. As I mentioned at the start of this review, it’s not a new Silent Hill game. However, it’s the best thing we’re going to get, considering Konami is so focused on using the franchise to push casino machines.

Verdict

It’s very hard to fault Dead by Daylight Silent Hill. Ultimately it does exactly what you want it to. There’s a new killer, new survivor, and a new map. Each of these is pleasing to the eye, and they work well in the game. The new perks are interesting, and should mix up the high-level play in the game, though I don’t think they’ll change anything in the long run for the rest of the community.

With another DLC on the way at some point (there always is with this game), I think that this one will be sadly forgotten as being pretty mediocre. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just not impressive enough to make an impact on the player base. Still, it’s the only game that will let you kill people as Pyramid Head. That has to count for a lot in my book.