Sony’s latest first-party exclusive title may have been its biggest unknown. Days Gone is a post-apocalyptic melting pot of a game. One which incorporates third person shooting, survival horror, RPG, along with borrowed bits from popular games such as Red Dead Redemption 2. Bend Studio, the developers behind the game were some of the creatives behind classic PlayStation titles such as Syphon Filter but more recently the studio had carved out a niche developing other studios IP for different Sony platforms. Days Gone represents the studio’s first original story in quite a few years. After spending about 40 something hours with the game, there’s something interesting to say about it.
DAYS GONE
Developer: BEND STUDIO
Published by: Sony Interactive Ent.
Available for: PlayStation 4
DAYS GONE is a world of new familiarity. Whether you’ve watched FX’s Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead, or taken part in any form of World War Z; there’s something you’ll instantly be at home with. The game puts players in a simple enough premise. You’re a biker seeking answers about your wife’s death while riding through the Oregon wilderness. Oh did we mention that your backdrop is infested by zombies? In Days Gone all life is infected by a virus which turns people into ravaging mindless beasts known as “freakers”.
What sets Days Gone apart from the genre examples it borrows from is its attempt at balancing character drama with the situation at hand. You’ll play as Deacon St. John (because the only other name more bad ass would have been “Fred Beef”), a gruff biker with an unwilling leader charm to him. In his search for answers, Deacon will come up against the National Emergency Response Organization, aka NERO, as they research the freaker outbreak. Think about if Rick Grimes would have bothered to try and solve the “walker” problem instead of just being one of the two worst parents on the planet.
Much like Walking Dead, the zombies aren’t the only danger. In the world of Days Gone, people are just as sh**. You’ll encounter human marauders and feral Freaker-wannabees, called Rippers, who occupy camps (aka outposts). Several of your missions will involve infiltrating and assassinating for various reasons. One of the more story building moments was about getting your best friend back from a gang of kidnappers. Not all of these elements speak to each other and it’s a bit odd. While one of these groups don’t add to the overall main story being told, it does at least leave the door open for future exploration of this world.
While Days Gone doesn’t always get the balance of interaction and story right for a video game, it definitely brings its own factor of enjoyment. The big “it” in Days Gone is the hundreds-strong writhing masses of gnashing teeth and grasping limbs of freakers you’ll encounter at certain points. These encounters have high stakes. You can sometimes spend close to an hour strategically taking out parts of the horde with fire bombs and various traps. Then in a frantic search for more supplies to build weapons with; you can be killed and lose a good amount of your progress.
The other component of Deacon is his, less than trusty, bike. In a biker story, the motorcycle should feel like a character or an extension of our protagonist. While Bend nails the general maneuvering and overall fun of riding the bike, you’ll find it as fragile as our own real life soft flesh. As you ride down the road, you can be attacked by animals, raiders, or even a random freaker. Once the bike takes a hit, you’ll probably need to stop and repair it. At times your motorcycle can have escort mission levels of frustration between parking it far enough from danger and having to find spare parts for it. The sweet jumps to get into new areas of the map and overall Jesse James level of feeling riding down the highway do make it worth the hassle in the end.
Days Gone may not have the polish of some of its first-party brethren but the world created by Bend feels grounded and ferocious. As someone who’s lived in bad, really bad, neighborhoods most of their life; I understand the feeling of uncomfortable you’ll constantly feel. There is no moment where you don’t expect the worst while you’re taking in your scenery and I absolutely dig that.
It isn’t all sunshine and roses, Days Gone falls victim to the tropes of some of the best open world examples. There’s a bit too much repetition in unlocking new camps and NPC variety is far from a baker’s dozen. Perhaps that’s all due to our setting, even before the world ended, remote Twin Peaksy Oregon wasn’t exactly a metropolis. They’ve certainly captured what it feels like to be in the Oregon wilderness in both the splendor and nothing to do-ness. While few games these days ship imperfect because they can always be patched later on, this one’s bugs are a bit too blatant to be ignored. I went through an entire cut scene with no audio and crashed once or twice several hours in. There’s definitely going to be a few things for the studio to workout post-launch.
While few games these days ship imperfect because they can always be patched later on, this one’s bugs are a bit too blatant to be ignored. I went through an entire cut scene with no audio and crashed once or twice several hours in. There’s definitely going to be a few things for the studio to workout post-launch.
Overall, Days Gone is what you’d expect from a studio that’s done solid work on the properties of other developers. While the story is serviceable, it can feel a bit too safe at times. I would have liked Sam Witner’s (SW: The Clone Wars) stellar performance as Deacon have some consistency and twists to it. Despite that, everything in this game is fun to try at least twice. Sneaking, clearing out freaker nests, riding your 2-wheel crotch extension, all hit the enjoyment mark. For a first time out, the game gets more right than it does wrong and definitely sets up an interesting world which hopefully Sony will allow more exploration in.
