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REVIEW: DAYS GONE (PS4)

29/4/2019

9 Comments

 
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You enter the shimmering receiving chamber of Captain Beebledeeble, architect of all reality.

"I am the Captain, the eerie guy who invented fish," he belches, while scuttling around and around his throne like a bloated hen.

You pull the shaved coconut from your satchel, aim at his tumescent, clammy, head... and miss - hitting him instead in the abdomen, causing him to double over, and emit an abrupt blow-off which echoes around the marble chamber.

So embarrassed is he of this spasmodic emission, that you are banished from The Kingdom Of Matter, forced to wander The Netherland - an aberrant, twisting, ephemeral continent which exists somewhere on the gusset twixt life and death - accompanied by a rancid, talking, bird of paradise called William Sod, searching for the parts of apocryphal golden washing machine, known only as Swirly Boi-7.

Now...

None of that happens in Days Gone, but I couldn't think of a way to hook you into this review by recounting what actually happens, because almost everything in Days Gone is stuff you've seen dozens of times before in film, TV, and many other games.

It's a zombie story. It's an open world game set around mountains and forests. And yes: as you've probably guessed, you do spend an inordinate amount of time looking for bottles and rags and shit that you can craft into Molotov cocktails. 
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CARBON-BASED LIFEFORM
Days Gone offers two elements which stop it being entirely a carbon-copy of so many other games.

The first of these things are hordes; swarms of zombies, which flow almost like water around and over the landscape, and won't stop coming for you until you've hidden from them for long enough, or - later in the game, once you've become a super-skilly combat dude - taken them down.

The hordes tend to be hiding out in caves, or just shuffling about aimlessly. The first time you trigger one, it's utterly terrifying, as they home in on you mindlessly. However, after a few encounters you realise it's easy enough to avoid them, and leave them to their miserable, tediously predictable, existence.

You know: just like on Twitter!!!!!!!!!!

The other of these things is that you navigate the world by motorcycle, and this being the apocalypse your bike is constantly on the verge of breaking down or running out of fuel. The first couple of times this happened, I was annoyed with myself. 

Later, however, I enjoyed the exposed knife-edge feeling of looking for "gas". Your bike not only offers a form of transport, but also a quick save point, and - as it gets upgraded - becomes a vital resource for ammo and the like. I soon learned to keep a better eye on the fuel gauge. 

ACHING, BABY
Beyond that, Days Gone is achingly generic. Even if you ignore the number of other games it clearly borrows from, everything from its setting to its main character is trying to basically make this Daryl From The Walking Dead: The Game. You even collect zombie ears - like Daryl did in that one episode of The Walking Dead - which work as a form of in-world currency. 

Overall it's a mash-up of Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, Red Dead Redemption, The Last Of Us and Left 4 Dead, without really understanding that it was what those games did differently which made them all a hit. 

This year alone we've already had two open-world apocalypses, in the form of Far Cry: New Dawn and Metro Exodus, and we'll be getting The Last of Us 2 before the year is out. Days Gone tries really hard to be good, but it doesn't exert a lot of effort trying to be different, and may just mark the tipping point at which we take a stand and say "Enough!"

The storyline and characters feel like an effort to build an emotional connection with the player because that's what they did in The Last of Us, rather than because that's what the creators of Days Gone were inspired to do.

We get semi-interactive flashbacks establishing the backstory and the central, motivating, relationship (just wait until you get to the thrilling sequence where you have to gather some lavender - twice!), and ultimately it's revealed as a rescue-the-princess quest, because apparently we're still living in 1995. Oh, and then you end up sort of forming a bond with a young girl, because - again - they had that in The Last Of Us. 

While well-acted, with relatively well-written dialogue, and eager to please - there are multiple storylines firing off all over the place, but in a way that's somehow less coherent than other, similar, games  - it's all just so been-there/killed-that.

​Worse still, some of the missions will see you trekking from one side of the map to the other for a two-line exchange of dialogue, or a no-challenge fetch-quest because your character has suddenly decided he'd like to give a geode - or "thunder-egg" - to somebody as a present. 

It's a shame that so much of Days Gone feels recycled and reheated, because - a number of small, irritating, bugs and frame-rate drops aside - it's a gorgeous game, and broadly solid and playable. I've already sunk a lot of hours into it, but at no point have I engaged with it as I did with any of the games listed above.  
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LEAVE ME ALONE
As with so many open world games, Days Gone is at its best when it's just leaving you alone to explore the world.

Though embarking on quests and side-quests will open up new areas, sometimes it's just fun to ride around looking for "evil" human encampments to eliminate, or finding zombie nests to set fire to; lob a Molotov cocktail into it, and then stand back as a handful of burning zombies come spilling out, gurning and jabbering like the Negan's baseball-bat fodder they are.

When you do engage with the stories, the pacing and progress can be weird; they've chucked everything at it without thinking about structuring it at all.

For example, your character's levelling-up and ability to earn money is second to the level of trust you have with various communities. Increasing your trust rating through side-missions is the gateway to better weapons and bike upgrades, but I ended up having a levelled-up character, with a ton of money in my pocket, long before I had a sufficient level of trust in order to buy the juicier guns.

Something about it all felt a bit... off.

Ultimately, Days Gone's biggest problem isn't any of that; as stated, it's the crushing lack of originality. Zombies, post-apocalyptic settings, and open world map-moppers are all fun, but surely we're reaching saturation point with any one of those things?

Nothing in Days Gone is remotely surprising, and I yearn to be surprised. A post-apocalyptic zombie open world is the default for any video game today, and for all the work that has clearly gone into this, it's bizarre that so little effort was expended when coming up with the setting. It's classic "What do people like?" thinking. 

"Oh, well... let's just do more of that then..." 

It's a game lacking any personality of its own, with nothing to say, content to be part of the horde. You know: like a zombie!!!!!!!!!!!!

La-la-la-lah-da-dah!

SCORE: 0 Originality Points out of 1 Billion
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9 Comments
HdE
29/4/2019 11:11:15 am

That was a properly fantastic review.

Days Gone isn't the kind of thing I'd generally be interested in, because zombie fiction just doesn't appeal to me. But I'd seen some really interesting looking stuff on YouTube ahead of the game's release that made me think about picking it up. It sounded like there were a lot of nifty play mechanics at work, but everything I'm hearing makes me think it might be a bit of an unbalanced experience.

Might have to check it out when it crops up in Argos for twenty quid.

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MENTALIST
29/4/2019 11:14:13 am

Your Digitiser Live banner at the top there makes it look like you scored the game 4/5.

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Guru Larry link
29/4/2019 11:31:09 am

I've been playing it all weekend myself, to me it's the game State of Decay should have been.

Would have liked some larger roads to drive down, it's nearly all dirt bike tracks.

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Meatballs-me-branch-me-do
30/4/2019 01:00:14 pm

Really? I came here to say “I watched some guy playing on YouTube while I was miserable at work and it looked way less interesting than State of Decay”.

In a time when zombies, survival, open worlds and crafting are overwrought, State of Decay frigging grabbed me, man. The melee combat felt furious and desperate. The guns felt suitably powerful. The huge, well realized world made cars essential for getting around. Fortifying and expanding your chosen home was fun, and the story missions were doled out at just the right pace to keep you interested beyond yet another hunting request or group of randos spawning in a house.

Days Gone seems to lack this overall investment in doing what you please in favour of being much nicer to look at, and grittier and edgier, because look there’s crazies who speak in tongues and cut themselves!

Like, cars themselves never ran out of gas in State of Decay, man. That would get in the way of the fun. You had gas at home? Good enough, the game trusted you or your friends to have filled up. The worst thing was parking up and having to bring your post-apocalyptic groceries inside.

Oh, and the military DLC campaign for State of Decay? That was awesome. Better guns, more resources, and the frequent desperate sieges to keep your base secure. Loved the angle over yet another “tortured antihero who lost it all... and he wants it back”.

So, er, Days Gone gets better further in?

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Lombs
1/5/2019 09:06:34 am

Nothing you say about State of Decay makes it seem like more than a generic zombie shooter though. Cars never running out of gas is at best a preference, but I would argue that's something Days Gone does better. Maybe a shorter-lived, more shallow, 'fun' experience is offered by State of Decay, but it was a very generic staid title that didn't take any risks, for sure

Spiney O'Sullivan
29/4/2019 12:06:03 pm

This game looks at least competent on every level. It just looks... fine, I guess. Okay, and probably decent, even. It's just a bit hard to get excited about The Last of The Walking Dead Left 4 Dead on Dead Island in the Dying Light 28 Days after World War Z.

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bit.bat
29/4/2019 05:45:56 pm

I dont care how much of a tough, bike-riding, zombie killing badass you are, surely you wouldn’t park your bike amongst corpses and sit down for a rest. I mean, if you must be in that general area at least sit a few meters away from the bodies. Or even just turn the other way and look at the lake rather than, you know, the dead people.

On another note, as much as we are oversaturated with zombie stuff, theres only a handful of really good games. Its a shame, I still find the idea extremely creepy and terrifying.

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Daph
29/4/2019 06:21:05 pm

Best twitter joke ever... 😂 ❤️

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Gaming Mill link
30/4/2019 09:33:54 am

I don't know what it is but I've got a real hatred of zombie games. When I was semi-popular on YouTube a few years ago I was even offered a copy of a new one (can't remember what, don't care) and I don't turn down anything that's free normally but they seemed a tad hurt when I told them all to fuck off.

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