Days Gone

Days Gone kicks off relatively simply: you play as a biker riding through an open-world zombie post-apocalypse, seeking answers around his dead wife and smashing enemy faces in with crunchy, weighty melee weapons. Sometimes, there are spectacular hordes of them. So far, so straightforward. Yet through its 60-odd-hour ride, Days Gone loses its focus with repetitive missions, a meandering and thematically unsatisfying story line, and an excess of bugs(review done in week one of release so patches maybe released to fix some of these problems) and busywork. When you slow down for a minute or two, these issues combine with a dreary, dark, uninteresting open world and add up to an uneven and mostly toothless zombie experience. Did i mention darkness ? i get it, its apocalyptic but why does it have to be so dark ?

For a tough guy in a biker gang traveling through a zombie-infested Oregon, Deacon St. John is an endearingly gentle and sweet-natured protagonist. His gruff charm and unassuming ‘I ain’t no leader’ demeanor is mostly well voiced by Sam Witwer (AKA Darth Maul on Star Wars: The Clone Wars), aside from moments where he inexplicably yells during stealth missions and an occasional tendency to over-act in more frantic sequences.

What was your horse in red dead redemption is now your bike. at first it handles a little sloppy, the controls are anything but awkward. For a PS4 game that’s so centered on riding, I truly don't believe that developer Sony Bend nailed that fundamental mechanic.

Sadly, Deacon’s charisma and bike aren't enough to carry Days Gone story, which is clumsily handled. Days Gone insists on tedious, barely interactive flashbacks of Deacon and his wife Sarah which play out like bad high school drama - her demand that he “promise to ride me as much as you ride your bike” at their wedding is a line that sticks in the mind - and repeating missions which begin and end with a stationary Deacon spouting overly-long monologues about their love.

The old classic of a man loses his wife, hates the world for it and then finds clues that she may be alive, so you set out to find her or more information..... in the dark of course.

The game takes itself more serious than i did. cinematic, revolving missions all tie you down and it feels as if nothing can save you from its clutches.

Mixed in with the crowd are some enjoyable supporting characters. Deacon’s primary relationship with his best buddy Boozer (aka “Booze-Man”), is heartfelt, and their bro dynamic is one of the more affecting in Days Gone. There’s also some flavor to the world-weariness of the older survivors Deacon encounters, particularly the former prison guard Tucker and all-around hard-ass Iron Mike.

The human antagonists, on the other hand, are as interesting as cardboard cutouts: they’re virtually all roughly sketched bad guys who are bad for bad’s sake. One, who is introduced in the later stages, feels particularly redundant, and is there purely to cause conflict rather than exist as a fully realized character in his own right

Still, human marauders and feral Freaker-wannabees, called Rippers, who occupy camps (aka outposts), are fun to rumble with, even if they present a somewhat easy challenge because of a very forgiving style of stealth game play. While long grass and plenty of cover help, run-ins with human enemies are made easier by the fact that enemy AI is rarely clustered together. Though you can’t hide bodies in Days Gone, enemies are spread out enough that you can stealth kill one and often leave a body in broad daylight without it being noticed. As long as they’re not facing you, they’ll rarely become aware of your presence. i feel like they dropped the ball with some game play towards rescuing outposts etc which i believe if implemented could of increased the feel of being connected with the game.

Even so, I found compulsory stealth-only story missions the least welcome variety in Days Gone. To unlock much of its central mystery, Deacon must snoop on the comings and goings of the National Emergency Response Organization, aka NERO, as they research the freaker outbreak. This involves a several-mission-thread of sneaking into NERO-occupied areas and eavesdropping on them from behind obstacles or within long grass as they explain world lore, which is not particularly interesting and annoyingly repetitive if you fail

If it does end up in an all-out gunfight, there’s more fun to be had. Guns and crossbows in Days Gone feel mostly good to use, and there’s a lot of satisfaction to be gained by clearing out clusters of enemies - zombies and humans alike - with giant napalm Molotovs. Deacon can also unlock a focused shot ability from his skill tree early on in the game, which allows him to slow down time in battle. It’s a somewhat inexplicable skill for a regular guy (that he served in the military but hey who hasn't in these games these days ), but it’s nice to have a way to relieve the pressure for a moment if you get overwhelmed.

Melee, in particular, is a weighty and bloody blast. The crafting system in Days Gone is based on found objects being combined with other found objects, and there’s crunchy satisfaction to be found with combining together a baseball bat with a saw blade and killing an enemy in a single hit. I found myself more invested in crafting the right weapon to swing over finding one to shoot.

Of course, Days Gone’s humans aren’t the only threat. Its world is peppered with Freakers who come in a range of sizes and speeds, but you’ll mostly encounter the garden variety zombie that can be swiftly dealt with by a head shot or thwack of an axe if split from a pack. Hordes, however, are a different story, and fighting these create most of the thrilling moments in Days Gone. Usually found in squared off, elaborate geographical areas, these huge, hundreds-strong writhing masses of gnashing teeth and grasping limbs are easily Sony Bend’s biggest technical achievement. With some pre-planning and some luck you can wipe out the swarm. but due to a glitch be careful , this player wiped a whole swarm, walked 10m and all of a sudden was surrounded by the whole swarm again .... this is when the fun is hindered by a glitch.

Unlike world war z which was a very similar zombie like game where you could shoot down 100's if not 1000's of zombies per mission, i feel like this game went back to its roots and reminded the player that you are a human at the end of the day. whether your ex army , ex biker with some slight variants you can still be easily overwhelmed in combat. for myself i felt like that was a good thing.

This extends to the plentiful missions found in the world, as well. Tracking down NERO checkpoints in order to earn vital upgrades to your various stats - health, stamina, and focus - is laborious, as they always required power to properly infiltrate. That means scouring the area to find a gas tank to fill a generator, occasionally replace a busted fuse, then rinse and repeat. It’s never a good sign when you hear your character remark on the repetition of a game mechanic – it suggests the designers are well aware that they’ve played a card too many times – and at several points, Deacon is heard to remark: “Okay lemme guess: outta fuel, of course.” “Hilarious!” I thought, as I went through the same routine for the eighth time.

Elsewhere, dozens of Freaker nests scattered throughout Oregon, which Days Gone urges you to attack by blocking off fast travel access on certain infested routes until they’re cleared. These are satisfying at first - it’s a relief to drive down a Freaker-less highway - but eventually the sheer number of them without any real sense of variety from nest to nest made me lose interest. At a certain point it’s faster to just ride past the nests than to fight through them and then warp. the location of the nests can be quite difficult to find, deacon will talk about the smell of the rotting corpses etc when you get close but one mission in a graveyard made this poor gamer turn to google after an hour of searching for the final nest.

the utilization of damage control for your bike can be at times a little annoying at best. at first the realization of losing fuel, getting damaged parts etc gives a real life feeling to the game, but that's where the problem lies. it is just a game, so some of us (parents especially) don't have time to constantly ride around repairing our bike, searching for fuel etc. it ends up taking away the connection with the rest of the game.

There are also notable frame rate dips while playing on a PS4 Pro at 1080p, and constant instances of objects (or whole areas) popping in and out. The former issue is most troubling when you’re riding at speed on your motorcycle and Days Gone momentarily freezes as if struggling to keep up. It’s nothing game-breaking, but it was a constant reminder that things aren’t as smooth as they should be.

There are also dynamic events that play out through the world for you to discover. Though these aren’t as interesting as say, Red Dead Redemption 2’s encounters that were the basis for countless water-cooler conversations, I did appreciate the occasional unexpected hostage rescue situation or trap to escape from. You’re generally free to simply hop on your bike and ride away if you don’t want to bother with them, but they go some way to fleshing out the otherwise sterile world.

Life is a Highway

Days Gone’s world certainly needs all the character it can get. While it’s pretty enough and full of dense forest, winding roads, and snow-capped mountains, if you look closer it’s also relatively sparse, with little world-building to differentiate one area from another and not a lot of surprises to be found in its sprawling land mass. Its gutted buildings are particularly dull, shells to house resources without much sense of history. Who lived here, and what happened to them? They left no trace, save the rare collectible note here or there.

It is, in a word, dreary and dark, have i mentioned the darkness ? . A series of abandoned cars, tunnels, empty houses against a dull, slate-gray sky. I understand this is a post-apocalyptic setting and don’t expect cheeriness and rainbows, but a general lack of environmental storytelling left me wanting more out of it. This was a world that was once lived in, i understand the humans have been close to wiped out but why is the world like this ?

Even areas populated by humans, like camps, feel curiously characterless. When an NPC in a camp does utter an incidental line, it’s likely one that you’ve heard multiple times before, and though there are optional conversations to be had with a camp’s various mechanics/cooks/bounty collectors, I found very few compelling enough to stick around and listen to. Again, part of the problem here is a self-seriousness - a little humor or sense of weirdness (this is the zombie apocalypse, after all) could have gone a long way.

Its world is also inconsistent. During missions, your bike’s fuel and damage gauges - normally vital things to keep an eye on - will often disappear as if suddenly unimportant, as will NERO-soldiers in a research area you’ve just finished scouting. These are small complaints, but they break the rules of survival that Days Gone otherwise doggedly lives by, and with them the spell of a cohesive, lived-in world.

I can’t help but wish there was a more rock-focused soundtrack to really complete the biker vibe. Instead, what Deacon does have to listen to is a sort of paranoid, boot-leg radio station featuring the rants of a camp leader who has the unfortunate tendency to repeat himself, as do radio calls from your friends that often come well after you’d expect their in-game cues. In its current state, Days Gone also has a number of audio issues that range from instances like this to complete dialogue dropouts to audio syncing problems. this review was done early on in the game release so maybe some patches have been issued to rectify the problem.

The Verdict

Days Gone.... out of the Sony exclusives it had big shoes to fill. i walked in after the likes of horizon zero dawn , spider man , god of war and had high hopes. i believe this maybe why i hold it against such a high pedestal. but the game itself cant wrestle with the big boys. while it had some traits ie: story , bike , world etc that could have such potential i feel like it missed the mark on all of them. Never winning this gamer over into thinking he was a biker named deacon in a desolate world searching for a loved one. searching in darkness..... so dark....

thanks guys

Gamerz Gotta Game!

Steve