Review | Days Gone

In front of us there is a new Sony exclusive developed by SIE Bend Studio and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation 4. Studio was known for Syphon Filter series and some Uncharted titles made for Sony Portable consoles. We can say that this is their biggest project so far, fully started in January 2015, got delayed in February this year and finally we can witness it from 26th April this year.

How many times did we heard the post-apocalyptic stories? Lately everything is Zombie related it is kind of overwhelming at the same time. That was my biggest fear. I never wanted the game to be just another Zombie game, even though I’m really loving the theme in general.

Boozer will be your best buddy. Looks friendly enough. 

Days Gone features many things that every other open world game already has. It’s your typical explore and kill experience, just this time it’s mashed with Zombies and infected creatures all over the world. Luckily for us, it is best there is in its own territory - single player story driven zombie games.

Our hero is Deacon St. John, weirdly named biker-former outlaw-drifter-bounty hunter-lover boy-not a priest kind of guy, surviving for 2 years after the outbreak, doing all he has to do for a living. World is not a friendly place, when there are no zombies which we will call Freakers, there is so much scum in term of humans who will kill you for cult ideology or simply to rob you. Deacon is an angry, frustrated person with not much will for living happily ever after. It’s cool how the name of the game is Days Gone which you will see that it is connected with how many days passed from the certain event. Every day that passes will add to counter of how many passed in general.  It’s a shame that it has no effect on game whatsoever.

Biker gang bang…I mean, biker gang in apocalypse. Zombies love the bang though.

It wouldn’t be a zombie apocalypse without a bike wouldn’t it? And why are we a biker if we can’t ride one. Deacon sets to explore on his bike, shoveling as he goes, running over hordes of whatever comes in his way. When you are not riding over zombies or humans, wolfs of bears, you can run with your unbreakable knife and shoot using variety of weapons. Let’s postpone details and jump into what the game really is and gradually explain things as we go.

Like having a chopper is fair. Hmm, where do they tank the chopper?

First impressions of the game was mediocre for me. I played my share of open world games and seen some good stuff. RDR2 set standards very high, Witcher 3 made story-telling at its peak and what now, how to approach this one. You will notice that graphics are not top notch and lip sync is kind of bad in scenes. They did good job on Deacon, but simply all other “important” characters are just lame. Seriously, half of characters in wilderness encampments which you will meet looks like random NPC and I just couldn’t get into them because of this poor presentation. Don’t get me wrong, they did fine job with story, just that acting is poorly done and it can lower the experience. The game will push forward the whole time, I found the story interesting enough to keep playing and listening. If they did better job with graphics, physique and what comes with that, it would be even more on spot. Voice acting is good, especially for Deacon, both in scenes and in random locations doing random stuff. You can feel his anger and frustration and you will like playing with him. He is just good protagonist done properly.

Skeptic much? I know Deacon doesn’t shower often, but man, give him some slack.

If you like story driven games, you will be happy about this one. There are many cut scenes and so much will be happening all over the place. All will lead to one goal which I will not spoil for you. It is worth just to play the game and experience only the story. I liked a lot Deacons cursing side, which adds nicely to situations he gets into.

Game will present you past events as well, learning gradually how his life went, what kind of person he is and what he becomes. You will meet his soft side and you will meet his post-apocalyptic one. In the end, Deacon is down to earth person and a good friend. When he is not crazy. Many quests involve other characters tagging along, doing coop stuff in missions. It gives more variety to the game as you learn about them and its better than just driving alone from one point to another. If that is the case, they often call you over the radio and talk which is also nice.

If only side content was decent like main story or the world itself…If only it wasn’t zombie apocalypse...If only…

I want to talk about world in Days Gone. It’s a cool nature-based world. There are few different regions which you can explore and in which you will reach and spend your time in camps where other survivors are living. Every camp is different and living differently under different leader profile. Of course, not every camp is enjoyable. It’s not a perfect world after all. Story will guide you through those regions and it is up to you to explore all the side content there is. I personally like that gloomy atmosphere, over turned vehicles, destroyed houses – some inhabited with freakers and some even used as their nests. They re-used many similar textures and objects when you explore some abandoned house and mostly you will find scrap and craftable items, which is not great benefit for you as game offers many of those during story. Rarely you will find collectables such as pieces of papers with some info, posters, certain items tied to some characters etc. Be sure not to stay long in one place as it will be crowded with freakers quite soon. Exploration is fun and gives you chills – you never know what you will find that can eat your exploring ass. Even with all this copy paste content there is as much unique places that you will notice and explore with more thrill. Mostly those ones are the ones containing some collectable. 

One of the cool moments which will lead to an epic fight. Beautiful scenery as well.

In each region you can take over bandit camps – most useful to do so. It will uncover part of that region map and show you some other points of interest. Alongside of that there are zones where freakers have nest and you can burn them to make area safer and more freaker-free. There are also Nero points which are locations for some useful upgrades. Other stuff is mostly collecting data which will not be of any importance to the game other than having everything collected. It would be fun to have like extended quest lines or new ones which are based on collection of certain items because they do extend the story in some manner.

Hordes are what you want avoid in the beginning. Also, you want to avoid them.

If you ever get lost, tilt your map and check where you are. It’s really good and shows good overall view of all regions and interactable events. Always be careful of amount of gas your bike has. If you deplete it completely, you will push it to near gas station or a camp. You can also run and try to find gas canisters which funny enough hold unlimited gas, so you can refill your empty bike. From time to time it gets very frustrated to do so, but as you progress you will upgrade your bike with many upgrades such as bigger gas tank or better tires or stuff like that. In the end you will have tank so big you will not worry so much. Also, if you damage you bike you will need to apply scrap to repair it or pay cash in camp to mechanic to do so. Often you will bump into snipers or other types of obstacles in world which can damage you or your ride. Good luck riding bike – I find it confusing and I collected more trees than fresh air with my face.

Plan carefully your riding – Damage bike or run out of gas and you are easy target for wilderness. 

So, camps. Each camp has side stuff for you to finish. Mostly its rescue missions or kill enemies. Nothing special, nothing worth elaborating further. You can also bring animal meat or plants you pick in wilderness to gain camp money and camp points. That part of game is mediocre. Only benefit for helping is that your reputation gains a level in camp and doing so you unlock better weapons that merchant sells or better upgrades you can buy at mechanic store for your ride. Like buying nitro is always fun thing to have. Having good weapons changes approach to the game really a lot. Automatic shotgun for close kills is best thing to have. Sniper for long shots works great. Crossbow is also good as it is silent weapon. Ok, lets go there and weaponize review a bit.

Depression reeks everywhere. Bold old man’s not so much.

2 types of attacks for you – melee and guns. You will always have knife with unlimited durability. Very weak weapon and not convenient at all when you are overrun. 1 on 1 works good though and it saves bullets. If you like sparing those bullets, you can pick up bats, axes, bats with saw, wooden boards…All good but breakable. Later on, you can learn new skills and repair damaged goods or simply craft strong weapon out of wooded board using additional resources. I prefer decapitating with axe, just my thing.

Throwable weapons – Molotov cocktails, bombs, detonators. Some crafted, some bought. Useful to burn stuff and freaker nests. Good for taking out hordes. Also, easily spendable.

Guns – few types to equip there, like having a hand gun, shotgun and special weapon which can be sniper or your bow gun. That was my equipment load at least. You can run out of bullets very fast, so be careful. It is possible to have additional bullets on your bike, but you need to upgrade it to a certain level.

I really disliked this part of the game in the beginning. It is very clunky and weird at moments, especially melee combat. Later when you buy better guns it gets very satisfying. Melee is still buggy and weird, I often found myself halfway in the ground or dodging weirdly. They need to enhance this a bit to make it more fluent and not so stiff. Critical kills are the worst when it comes to animations. So many times I stabbed someone in air and not in the neck. I guess they will polish it in time. Overall it is a decent experience when you have good equipment and when you get used to it.

They didn’t pay attention in class and they died. It happens you know.

All of the said above you can combine with Stamina and Health. You can run from everything. If you have enough stamina. You can survive a lot of stuff. If you have enough Health. By doing missions and killing stuff Deacon gets experience and levels up. Use those levels to learn skills in 3 branches. Each for its own. Some are very useful, like doubling your melee attack or reducing recoil. Spend where you want to be better terminator.

There is a focus period which you can use to slow time and be more precise with guns. Most useful thing in the game. In beginning it’s a short period, later on it increase with some items which we will cover shortly. It will turn you into a real killing machine.

Combat and AI are not the best thing. Focus skill on the other hand is very cool. 

Shortly back to collectables, there are Nero points in the game. Nero is organization above military and have big impact on the story. Across the world there are Nero checkpoints and bunkers which have sort of stuff like stim pack to enhance your Health, Stamina or Focus. First you need to fuel up checkpoints to access locked containers, cut all speakers not to attract hordes when you power up Nero checkpoint and so on. More or less same stuff, nothing spectacular but rewards are great. Often, they come with additional Nero entry like voice recording which will tell more about story and Nero employees.

You will appreciate the weather. One day it’s snowing, the other it’s melting. Hot stuff.

Thing that looks and feels great are weather changes. They are so cool. Snow, rain, day and night, severe weather…I liked it. Also, during the day freakers stay in caves – great opportunity to use your bombs on them when they sit all together and wait for the night. All weather effects enemies which is cool.

I’m kind of sad that there is not much variety in enemies. Freakers are your base zombies, you have newts which are baby zombies. Later on you will meet 2 more types and that is it. Humans comes with armors later on and with better weapons. And that is it. There are like 2 good boss fights in the game. I seriously miss that stuff. It would be more epic having some 4 headed zombies and like zombie dinosaurs and what not.

Oh yeah, there are infected crows, regular and infected wolfs and bears. I hate wolfs, they can run faster than you can ride and pull you to the ground.

I don't remember when it wasn't cool having epic boss fights and many different types of ugly enemies to kill. 

Like I mentioned, side content is mediocre. Random stuff like meeting prisoners in wild, rescuing them is very poor and boring. I rescued same guy 5 times, same hat, same text line, same bad lip sync. Post-game content is just grinding hordes and finishing stuff if you didn’t. And that is the stuff that is mediocre which you probably left for the end. Or for never. DLC is what I smell. Which would not be a bad thing, if they can continue story in a good manner it could be interesting to play further.

If you liked World War Z and zombies stomping on each other, this can be another plus for you. Certain places hide hordes of zombies. It’s also a part of the story to take out a few. They stack like lego bricks when you climb to higher places and they are feisty as hell. They will rape you in a second. I liked this for some time, then it just became repetitive. There is just nothing more panicking than seeing a horde running towards you. You run of stamina…Or bullets, bombs…You die.

 
And they say apocalypses are not fun. Or they are laughing how poorly they act in so many scenes.

Last thing I want to mention is game’s technical side. In this stage it still shows poor results. Frame drops will happen very often and you will notice them. Many times when you travel grass will appear in front of you in the road. I know there are many details and its not easy to be fluent, but it just gets in your eyes. That happens on PS4 Pro so I guess it can get worse on regular version. All of enemies are very poor and clunky, try playing on highest difficulty if you want some challenge, but even then it feels easy. They will for sure solve all mentioned issues, but in this stage, even with retail patch, it’s just not there.

Ultimate destruction – what else do you expect when all goes to shit.

Overall, game is good. If it was out 2 years ago, it would be even better. Now it just feels a bit outdated, but at the same time it really feels that they’ve done a lot of effort and love in making Days Gone. Story is quite long actually, I heard about 30 hours of content but somehow I ended up spending much more. It’s a good 30 hours run from beginning to the end. This studio needs more people and more projects, they are obviously capable of doing something great, just seems they need more people and more polishing. If you are a zombie lover and can’t wait for this kind of games, simply add few more points to the game and there is your final grade. For me, I liked it, would recommend it, but only if you are interested in what you read. It is close of being a breathtaking experience, but it needs more to be that. Even though, you will for sure like Deacon and feel many things he feels. That they did well. Maybe after some days gone, I will consider playing this game again.