It took me three hours to finish Daylight’s randomly generated maze of horror. While two of those hours managed to be somewhat spooky, one was pure frustration, spent wandering aimlessly through hallways in first-person perspective, looking for a collectible item I’d missed. In that time, the well-constructed atmosphere and story drained away and revealed Daylight’s true frame: a formulaic find-the-hidden-object game padded out with some meaningless crate puzzles.

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What’s scarier than being hunted in the dark? Being hunted in the dark and lost, that’s what. Daylight’s abandoned hospital is a great horror environment, complete with powerfully unsettling creaks and whispers and groans, spontaneously moving objects, foreboding narration, and all the other trappings I expected from a quality horror game. Finding your way around by the light of a smartphone (which is also your minimap) gives it a nice contemporary touch, too, and it shows off some impressive lighting effects. The foundation is sound.

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But Daylight puts too much stock into its atmosphere, and neglects to actually do something to keep my attention and drive me forward. Because of a general lack of direction, which probably has something to do with the first half’s procedurally generated corridors, and a general lack of things to do except look for hidden items, it lost me early and never recovered.After running in circles for 20 minutes trying to figure out what I was supposed to do, the bad things were no longer scary. The enemies, called shadows, appear from nowhere and lurch toward you, mouths agape. Their design is creepy, but they don’t even pose a threat in the early hours, and when they do they soon became little more than moving obstacles, easily chased away with the large number of flares littered throughout the world. Once my tolerance to their jump scares built up, they just weren’t frightening at all for the duration.Worse, the hospital is full of tedious box-pushing puzzles. They’re so uninspired they felt like they only exist to keep you from seeing the credits roll in under two hours.To make progress in Daylight you have to find a number of “remnants,” which are well-written and sometimes genuinely creepy written tidbits or images that fill in the overall mystery. This is the main delivery method for the story, and piecing together the events that landed me here feels satisfyingly like putting together a puzzle. But they’re not enough of a reward to make the weak exploration and the frustrating search for the final pieces worthwhile. Even with the magic glow sticks that highlight interactive objects, scrounging around is a pain.It’s a shame the earlier environments become so repetitive, because the forest areas toward the end are much better and more varied, and they make more sense within Daylight’s randomized design. In a maze of poorly lit gray corridors clues can be anywhere – nailed to walls or hidden in boxes – and I had to search every uninteresting corner to make sure I hadn’t missed something. In the forest, they were generally stashed in places that made sense, generally in one of the broken-down buildings. That kept me moving at a more enjoyable pace.It moved along so fast, in fact, that when I finished I didn’t feel like I was anywhere near the ending. That’s a disappointment, because I was ready to play more once the level design opened up. The ending itself is a satisfactory horror-story twist that didn’t blow my mind, but does make sense.

That brings up a question: a big part of Daylight’s appeal was supposed to be that its procedural generation would inspire replayability, but without lasting horror or events that make use of the shifting environment in interesting ways, what’s the point in playing it again? I saw all I needed to see the first time through, and the second time didn’t even have the fear of the unknown going for it. Loading

PlayStation 4 Version

Daylight on the PS4 looks and feels nearly identical to its PC counterpart. The only noticeable difference is the slightly longer load time when entering a new area, but it's barely significant enough to mention. The nice lighting, cloth effects, and other visual bells and whistles are in full effect, and Daylight's controls transfer very well onto the DualShock 4.