When Sony first announced Days Gone at E3 2016, many people were extremely excited for the game that promised fighting hordes of zombies and that those hordes would be intelligent and adaptive to their surroundings. When the game was delayed and eventually released in April of 2019, it was clear that those hordes weren’t as smart as they seemed. Eventually Days Gone received middling reviews and couldn’t live up to the hype.
I went into my playthrough of Days Gone with some apprehension, but as I played the game I found it an underrated gem of the year and of this generation. Some minor and major problems aside, I really have enjoyed my time stepping into the shoes of Deacon st. John. First though, in my second impression I want to talk about the bad, before I talk about the good.
THE BAD
THE ZOMBIES
Lets start with the biggest problems with the game. The zombies ( called freaks or freakers in game). Simply put they don’t pose a danger unless its a horde, and hordes are not common enough in game to be a constant pressing danger during a playthrough. Although in saying that, some smaller hordes to respawn over time and appear at random, although I have only encountered about 5 randomly spawning hordes during my playthrough.
In addition I have noticed that the hordes aren’t intelligent at all, at least not nearly as much as was assumed at the time of the E3 trailer. Hordes are just a jumbled mess of freakers chasing you with no sense of their environment. I remember a encounter I had with a horde where I was up on a slightly higher ledge, the freaks just piled on top of each other and weren’t able to reach me, so I just threw pipe bombs until they were all gone.
This lack of intelligent freaks is even more obvious in small numbers. Freakers don’t seems to have any vision of anything that isn’t right in front of them, and even then there is a significant delay. I often was able to run up to a freak and kill it with a sneak attack even though I wasn’t trying to be sneaky. This is also true for Human enemies, although it happens to a lesser extent. Freaks don’t really pose much of a threat throughout the game.
She really should have seen me by now
INVENTORY
This might not bother a lot of people, while for other it might bother them a lot. Days Gone has an inventory system, and while for some things (guns and melee weapons ) it works well and doesn’t prove to be much of an inconvenience. I really wish I could say the same for scrap and other crafting materials.
In Days Gone, scrap is used for repairing your bike and your melee weapon, as well as used in some crafting recipes, But during most of the game you are limited to just 10 scrap and low amounts of most other resources used in crafting. This would not be a problem if scrap wasn’t used so often. I often found myself out of scrap and with a weapon that was in desperate need of repair.
Later in the game this problem does get solved somewhat. If you level your survival skills, you eventually unlock the ability to double your inventory space. Although I do feel that they should have upped the base inventory and allowed those who went into the survival skill tree to expand even further.
THE PERFORMANCE
I’ve been playing Days Gone on an original ps4 with some major performance issues, fps drops are quite common and happen usually when on the bike and when entering settlements or encountering hordes. This is honestly my biggest gripe with the game as a whole, even after patches the game still has these issues, it may be that the game was optimized for the Pro over the original ps4? I’m not really sure, but I’d certainly like to know why they haven’t fixed it yet.
THE GOOD
COMBAT
Maybe I’m in the minority here, but the combat in Days gone is quite satisfying, I can’t help but get excited when engaged in combat. The way the AI moves can be a bit chaotic at time, so it forces the player to not just shoot randomly and assume they will hit with every shot, you’ll often miss and I personally don’t mind that.
Melee combat is a bit basic but does the job well enough, you can press the R1 trigger to dodge oncoming melee attacks and depending on the weapon you are using, you can take down enemies quite quickly.
Although a minor thing, seeing zombies and wolves fight without prompting is very immersive
THE STORY AND CHARACTERS
This was one of the most unexpected things to come out of my playthrough, I really fell in love with the story and the characters in the game.
It’s hard to say much without giving away the story, but I will say that when the game begins you assume a lot about Deacon. As the game and the story moves alone you are often forced to rethink your opinion of Deacon, as well as of the characters you encounter throughout the game.
This extends to the moral choices you have to make when you rescue survivors on the roads and pathways during the game, you get to choose which camp you send them to, and each camp has its advantages to you personally, but each camp is also imperfect in many ways. One camp being run like what is essentially a slave camp, to another being run by a kind, but insane man.
Although your choices don’t impact the game story, it does impact what tools and weapons you gain access to during your playthrough.
POST RELEASE CHANGES
I wanted to add this section for any of my delayed reviews due to the commonplace addition of new content and patches since release. Post-release Support is often what changes the game for the better or for the worse.
Thankfully with Days Gone post release support has been overall fairly good. Over the summer a new game + was added as well as plenty of free challenges and other minor DLC. Even though some of the previously mentioned problems still exist, I think the developers have done a great job of continuing to support Days Gone.
CONCLUSION
Its always hard to try to sum up a lot of thoughts and feelings about a game into something precise, but I don’t feel that way with Days Gone. It is a very flawed game, it has its issues and it might not completely stand out from the pack in its first impressions. Ultimately though it is a good game that I hope people will play and enjoy, if not only for the great characters and story that provokes a second look into a lot the decisions you make in game.