Days Gone Review

After Sony's extensive and highly acclaimed library of exclusives such as Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, God of War, and Spider-Man PS4, many expect Days Gone to provide an equally outstanding experience. Days Gone isn't a spectacular game. The gameplay doesn't provide anything revolutionary, with tedious tasks making up a bulk of the adventure.

Where Days Gone excels is delivering a solid narrative of survivors attempting to find purpose in this destroyed world and attempting to find a reason to wake up for another day of fending off humans, the infected, and their mental destruction. However, even the strong narrative is eventually weakened due to the myriad of technical problems. For every positive feature within Days Gone, there's something that negatively hampers the experience. 

Days Gone takes place 2 years following the first outbreak. You take control of Deacon St. John, a mechanic and biker searching for clues about his dead wife. Traveling through Oregon, Deacon and his best friend Boozer complete jobs for various camps for credit in order to survive each day. The story starts slow, building up to various different long-term objectives. Some involve the Freakers, the name of the zombies within the world, and others for more personal desires.

Deacon isn't a hero; he's far from it. Like Joel from The Last of Us, He is a survivor who has done many shady things to survive. The narrative slowly showcases every line Deacon has crossed to become the person he is. This includes killing people without question, his ability to track Freakers into their home territory, and his apathy towards Ripples, a cult that worships the Freakers.

The phenomenal voice-acting and choreography translate well into what the characters are trying to convey, both in their tone of voice and body language, but only in the cutscenes. During gameplay, all the character models have one specific look that doesn't change.

Days Gone attempts to capture how real people deal with these heavy situations. Pauses between certain words, characters interrupting one another when disagreeing, and body language conveying points of annoyance or anger are easily telegraphed. The one major issue that causes the entire story to fall apart is the technical shortcomings.

During the final third of the game, the animation and sound aren't synced, probably for 90% of the cutscenes. This causes the most profound scenes in the game to lose their impact, especially when the scene ends before the audio finishes. This, coupled with textures failing to load, gives you a recipe for disaster.

Deacon is a biker, and his bike is his world. Not only does it serve as your primary form of transport, but it also serves as your safe point and fast-travel station. This critical part of Deacon requires constant maintenance, such as refueling and repairing. This quickly becomes frustrating as the player has to constantly look for fuel and supplies for this vehicle. If it happens to get stuck, you're forced to either reload an older file or pay for it to be transported from a camp. 

Despite the issues of having to babysit a piece of metal, riding through the environments of Days Gone does highlight the incredible details put into the world. Days Gone is utterly beautiful, with a lush and detailed world. There's an excellent variety of locations, such as forests, dark caves, and a snowy mountain. It's a shame that traveling through this world usually involves massive dips in the frame rate, especially if you play on an original PlayStation 4. The PlayStation 4 Pro manages a bit better, but expect sudden drops at random.

The gameplay for Days Gone is serviceable but can become annoying. Much of the game involves searching for supplies to craft items, with the player activating their radar every five seconds. This wouldn't be a problem, but for some reason, the game provides not only an icon for items but also interactive doors. In addition, the icons are very small and use a dull white color to make them hard to see, especially key objects meant for analysis.

The worst feature in Days Gone is the use of the touchpad to access the menu. During intense battles, I would often accidentally touch the touchpad, creating an annoying pause. Without a way to turn this off, this became my most hated feature.

Third-person shooting is a bit off due to unreliable hit detection and questionable controls. Most upsetting is that some of the weapon-targeting reticles cannot be seen in bright environments because they're so thin. Deacon does have access to many different weapons, some of which are locked behind camp "Trust" requirements that can be earned by completing optional missions and turning in items such as Freaker ears and resources.

There's weapon durability, but thankfully, it's only limited to melee weapons and is a bit more forgiving. Don't expect The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild levels of breakable weapons.

Stealth is an option and highly encouraged since Deacon can die easily. Enemies have exceptional accuracy with any weapon and can absorb unreasonable amounts of damage during the earlier parts of the game. The cone of view for enemies are hit and miss, sometimes they can see you above cover and other times will ignore you within inches of their body. Players can exploit bushes since enemies cannot see Deacon when he's hiding.

The enemy variety is lacking. The traditional humans range from your traditional sniper to heavy assault and suicidal chargers. The Freakers, while well-designed, have been seen and done before in other games. The swarmer is the most common variant, attacks anyone on sight and can take lots of damage.

The Screamer attracts all Freakers in the area; the Breaker is a Hulk-like beast, and Newts are children who were infected and attacked in packs. The animals, with the exception of herbivores, each have their own Freaker version, but none of the creatures truly stand out. The most deadly enemy is the Horde, hundreds of Swarmers that move and attack together.

Each of these enemies does require particular strategies to defeat, but none of them stand out, and players can easily link them to other zombie titles like Left 4 Dead and World War Z. The game highlights that there are over 40 types of Freakers within the story, but there is so little shown in the actual game.

Much of Days Gone's missions require busy work. This includes running errands, such as collecting specific items or destroying one of three base camps. The base camps include infected nests that house Freakers, bandit camps, and NERO camps, which contain injectors that boost health, stamina, or bullet time, called Focus.

The errand missions become so tiresome that in 1 mission, you literally have to collect an MP3 player from a camp now invested with hundreds of Freakers. Other missions include bounties and dynamic situations within the world. Much of the game is padded with missions like these, which are required given the number of funds needed to repair and refuel your bike at camps.

Fortunately, there are some exceptional missions. These missions are not far from the busy work but offer the best parts of Days Gone. Heading into an abandoned mine or hunting down a unique Freaker offers some of the most intense moments within the game. Offering a combination of great combat situations inside atmospheric areas. 

By killing enemies and completing missions, Deacon gains experience, camp credit, and "Trust" linked to a specific camp. The camp credit is separated from each camp, and "Trust" provides access to more items the more you gain, such as weapons and ammo.

Deacon can upgrade himself in 3 categories, such as reloading while sprinting or more powerful melee swings. Since enemies rarely change, the challenge begins to wan, allowing Deacon to easily take down enemies that required nearly eight swings with only 2-3.

Days Gone may have an exceptional narrative of survivors attempting to outlast the zombie apocalypse, but it is shattered due to audio issues. The player has to perform dozens of tedious tasks before providing an impressive mission. And Days Gone fantastic soundtrack and graphics are some of the best this generation but then suffers from massive frame rate dips.

Everything Days Gone does right has a negative impact rather than positive features. The game suffers from many technical problems, but those willing to endure these issues will find another gem in the PlayStation 4 exclusive library.