Days Gone (2019)

1. Better than GTA5/RDR2/TLOU/Death Stranding combined
2. Likeable and memorable side characters (Rikki, Boozer, Sarah, Kouri, Taylor)
3. Being chased from a horde is a legit "HOLY SHIT!" moment
4. Fast travel, animations, respect your time as a player
5. Great use of voice acting, body language, and emotion portrayed through eyes

I'll admit that maybe the narrative can get a little generic, but damn was it a fun, epic, thrilling rollercoaster ride. All the annoyingly long overdrawn walking sections while the characters talk like in RDR2/TLOU are kept to a minimum. Side missions are fun, stealth is handled great. Damn shame there's no plans for a sequel. Haven't had this fun in an open world game since BOTW!

10/10

OMG guys, this was such a long trip. I was counting the minutes to get to the end, and normally that is not a good thing. Actually I have enjoyed the game (even with the multiple bugs that it has, sometimes disturbing and frustrating) but oh god, why so long!!! It was so repetitive in the end.... Positive things: the open world, the BSO (5 stars on that, although I don't understand how they chose when to start playing the music, was it randomly?), the feeling of riding the motorbike freely, the combat (specially with the hordes, yay!) , the landscapes (I took amazing photo's!), the character development specially Deacon and Boozer, Rikki was nice too!, nice variety of weapons and good controls..

Negative things: the bugs, the repetitive missions, they could have done the characters better (all the ones that you have to save during the game have the same face!! really? Come on creators!, the plot that after a while was sooooo slow,

Maybe I will consider trying to get the platinum on this game, just if I feel in the mood of keep going after the end. I am not sure yet. Maybe I miss killing hordes, I don't know... :)

I would actually give it 3,5 stars.

u know what ''gamers'' this game was FUN. killing zombies is FUN. bros being bros five feet apart because they're not gay (or are they ;) ) is FUN.

the plot and characters here are so good and the combat is satisfying and idk I had a great time and once it was over i had a game-hangover cause all i wanted to do was drive around on a motorbike and kill zombies - i do think the pacing is a bit off but other than that this is like open world TLOU:P2 mixed w/ TWD and i for one couldn't put it down, maybe i have a monkey brain, maybe i dont care

also BOOZER WITH HIS PUPPY WAS SO CUTE asjhdsdhsdk

I played this after getting if through PlayStation Plus. I was lukewarm on it for the first several hours. But after getting going, I found myself getting totally hooked. Some of the movement and motorcycle riding mechanics felt stiff, but I quickly forgot about those gripes in light of the fantastic story and beautiful environments. The combat was also very enjoyable.

Days Gone would be amazing as a TV series. I'd honestly much rather see the story here turned into a series than that of The Last of Us.

Days Gone is equal parts Red Dead Redemption, Assassin's Creed, Walking Dead, and Sons of Anarchy. You're Deacon St. John: a zombie- (sorry-- "freaker") fightin' biker-dude, in search of answers about your wife Sarah, who you get separated from at the beginning of the apocalypse.

You have a "Focus" meter, which is a slightly more interactive version of Red Dead Redemption's deadeye mechanic (you shoot in real time, rather than queuing up your shots which play after the deadeye meter runs out). Lootable corpses of humans and animals show up as little Xs on your minimap, just like in RDR. You also have the same plodding pace of slowly collecting items from abandoned shacks. And instead of a horse, you have a motorcycle.

Like Assassin's Creed, you'll spend dozens of hours clearing & claiming enemy bases. You'll roam the map, unlocking fast travel points and grabbing collectables. There are also AC-style eavesdropping stealth sections, which thankfully go away about a third of the way into the game.

The freaker hordes are a unique mechanic to this game. They're technically impressive (you fight hundreds of zombies at once), and the hordes are actually pretty fun to clear once you have the arsenal to face them. I will say that, while I managed to Platinum Days Gone in 61hrs and 100% every other aspect of the game, I didn't have the patience to clear all forty hordes (I got exactly half of them).

Playing the PS4 version on my PS5, the 60fps graphics were a treat. I did run into a couple bugs. For any cutscene that took place in Iron Mike's cabin, the floor and furniture weren't rendered; so people were walking around in mid-air above the basement and fiddling with items on invisible tabletops. And at one point, everything in the world started to render extremely low-fidelity (cars were blobs made up of about 10 polygons), which was fixed by restarting the game.

The story falls a bit short, and the truly compelling plot points are few and extremely far between. Playing this game feels like watching the last five or six lackluster seasons of The Walking Dead back to back for 60hrs. There's just lots of filler storytelling and little else. And what I saw as the most interesting story bit is likely missed by most people, since you don't see it unless you continue playing the game for an hour or two after the credits roll. Also, I would imagine that the radio broadcasts with frequent anti-gun-control & conspiracy theories would be enough to turn off most game journalists and have them review the game badly.

Throughout what id imagine was a 40ish hour playthrough of days gone i kept asking myself over and over "Do i like this game? Is it good?" and i kept asking myself that even as the credits rolled.

I think alot of that comes from how this game aggressively has nothing to say, its set in a deeply generic setting American zombie apocalypse, its got your generic protagonist, its got your basic dead wife (OR IS SHE?) man pain, and yet it goes through alot of the hallmarks of stories of its kind but without making any real sort of statement, its entirely a game where you will just do things but never really be asked to think about them because the creators dont really find any reason to comment on them or make some larger than life statement, and its not inherently bad to have a story JUST about people surviving in the apocalypse, and honestly sometimes it can even be appreciated when a game doesnt try to preach something to you or make some grandiose statement about what it means to go on living, but that doesnt necessarily make your game interesting either.

Days gone is not a bad game, mechanically it is very competent, the sound design is decent, graphics? It has em! It has everything needed to be a good game but then it just....isnt. It always either holds itself back from reaching out further than being what it is, or is betrayed by deeply boring or edgy writing because the writing wants so desperately to make Deek out to be a gruff beacon of masculinity who kills zombies and chews bubblegum and hes all out of hope for humanity, while also showing his "inner depth" and tender side by having him say things like how he has a rule about not tolerating hurting unarmed women but it falls so deeply flat because....and i dont know how to phrase this ....but NOT WANTING UNARMED WOMEN TO GET HURT IS SOMETHING LITERALLY EVERYONE BELIEVES IN??? THIS MEANS LITEARLLY NOTHING??? DO YOU ALSO THINK THINGS THAT ARE BAD ARE BAD WHILE THINGS THAT ARE GOOD ARE GOOD?

Story aside i will make a special mention of the hordes in the game, because that is a part it absolutely nails, it is genuinely intimidating being chased by HUNDREDS of zombies crashing into eachother just to attack you, and id love to see it in a better game.

Ultimately my thoughts on this game are that it is definitely one of the games of all time, it isnt a bad game, but its not particularly good either, its an inoffensive zombie game that aggressively has nothing to say and if you are going through it thinking that will ever change, it wont but if b movie zombie flick is your kinda junk food, its absolutely worth checking out.

Platinei o jogo depois de 30 dias (considerando que fiz pausas relativamente longas por ficar enjoado em alguns momentos), porém é bem tranquilo de se concluir o 100%, com exclusão de alguns troféus como: Pegar 181 coletáveis, 989 orelhas de frenéticos, vasculhar 500 corpos mortos, eliminar 200 inimigos com armas criadas e 100 abates furtivos.

Também deixo o aviso de que essa review conterá spoilers, então recomendo ler só depois que chegar ao meio do game... Ou zerá-lo.

A História

Num geral a história me agradou muito, desde o começo até o surpreendente final. O começo é extremamente frenético, já começamos com Firewall em chamas, tiroteio rolando, frenéticos a solta... E Sarah sangrando após levar uma facada, acontece todo o drama e já pulamos para Oregon 2 anos após o começo de tudo, Deacon St. John e Boozer caçando loucamente Leon para entregar como recompensa ao acampamento do Copeland (confesso que nesse momento não estava entendendo nada direito, mas futuramente tudo fez sentido).

Gostei muito do fato de que o Deacon só não desistiu de tudo (encontrar a Sarah) porque o Boozer perdeu o braço por causa dos Rippers (falarei futuramente).

Acampamentos

O sistema de acampamentos foi uma coisa que, particularmente, achei mais interessante no decorrer da campanha. Fazer missões para cada acampamento, evoluí-los para o nível máximo, criar relações com personagens e adquirir melhorias para moto e armas é sensacional. Com toda certeza é um dos melhores pontos do jogo.

Todos os acampamentos são extremamente bem construídos, desde o comandante (Tucker, Iron Mike, Copeland, Kouri, Garret...), até alguns personagens importantes para a história (Aokai, Rikki, Manny, Skizzo, Abby).

O único acampamento/tribo que não podemos nos aliar são os Rippers, mesmo com Iron Mike tentando apaziguar tudo, Deacon quer exterminá-los por conta do que fizeram com Boozer (que trama sensacional).

Por falar em Rippers, o plot-twist é incrível, temos o confronto interno do Lost Lake com Iron Mike tentando fazer um tratado de paz e Skizzo querendo matar todos, a traição do Skizzo para ajudar os Rippers e não deixar com que Iron Mike faça o acordo, a descoberta de que Carlos, líder dos Rippers, na verdade é o Jessie, ex-amigo e membro do motoclube que o Deacon e o Boozer frequentavam.

Coletáveis

O jogo contém muitos coletáveis, porém para platiná-lo é necessário apenas 181. Todos são bem interessantes de se coletar (por mais que eu não tenha pego todos), e te trazem maior imersão ao universo do jogo.

Fim do Mundo

São missões secundárias que ajudam muito o Deacon no decorrer da história, por conta dela, conseguimos evoluir os atributos de Vida, Energia e Foco do protagonista, fazendo com que fiquemos cada vez mais forte. Ela também nos dá alguns coletáveis relacionados aos gravadores da NERO (Uma entidade governamental criada para pesquisar e cuidar da crise gerada pelo vírus dos frenéticos), que mostram histórias e pesquisas que a instituição está fazendo para descobrir o que causou tudo isso.

Além disso, ela também nos re-apresenta um personagem que até então só aparecera no começo da campanha... O'Brian! Ele pede para que façamos algumas missões em Stealth (não curti tanto, porém são interessantes para adquirirmos informações do mundo de Days Gone), e em troca nos ajudaria a encontrar Sarah (Deacon acreditava que ela ainda estaria viva depois de algumas lembranças).

Hordas e Ninhos, Frenéticos, Animais selvagens e mais

Este com certeza é um dos aspectos mais legais do jogo, e que particularmente, foi o que mais me diverti fazendo. As missões secundárias "Exterminador de Infestações" são incríveis, você roda o mapa todo para eliminar os ninhos de frenético... E por ventura encontra algumas hordas (que depois são marcadas no mapa após terminar a história).

As hordas são extremamente divertidas de se completarem, exigindo que você fique o tempo todo correndo para não ser atingido por 100 ou mais zumbis, o único problema é você praticamente zerar seus recursos (menos itens de cura, se você pegar o jeito, nem precisará usá-los) com bombas, molotovs e napalm para matá-los (diquinha: Usem Bomba Caseira, Napalm e Granada de Fragmentação sem dó, são os melhores items para quando as hordas estão próximas de você, ou quando estão em um lugar fechado).

Durante a história ocorreram algumas lutas com chefões para que fossem introduzidos novos tipos de frenéticos: Os Quebradores e os Céleres, não vou comentar muito sobre, eles são mais fortes e é isso. Inclusive há um troféu de matar um deles apenas utilizando a faca, é bem divertido de se fazer.

No mapa também há outros inimigos, os próprios humanos (falarei no tópico a seguir), lobos, lobos infectados, corvos, ursos, onças e o urso infectado. Todos eles são extremamente chatos para matar e facilmente te derrubam da moto caso você não os veja avançando enquanto dirige.

Emboscadas, Acampamentos Inimigos e Saqueadores

São missões secundárias relacionadas a humanos, em que você deve invadir o acampamento inimigo (ou as vezes é pego por uma emboscada e deve matá-los), eliminar todos presentes no local e vasculhar o "armazém subterrâneo" para liberar uma nova receita, são divertidas de fazer, porém genéricas e repetitivas, não há muito o que comentar.

Jogabilidade, Progressão, Gráficos e Bugs

Num geral, eu só tive dois bugs extremamente preocupantes e que quase me fizeram resetar o jogo, porém consegui resolver apenas reiniciando o PS4 (sim, tive que reiniciá-lo) e refazendo a missão do zero.

• Jogabilidade: Num geral, a jogabilidade é boa, comandos fáceis de pegar e bem tranquilos de se acostumar, não há nenhuma grande inovação. Em relação a GUNPLAY e variedade de armas, são bem divertidas e abrangem inúmeros modelos para que você use o que melhor te agradar.

• Moto: Essa com toda certeza é uma das funções mais interessantes, andar de moto em Days Gone é extremamente importante para que você alcance os lugares rapidamente. Além disso, o jogo trás uma mecânica muito bem feita de "durabilidade" da moto, ela quebrará se você bater muitas vezes, e gasolina, que no começo é bem chatinho já que seu tanque de gasolina dura pouquíssimo e você tem que parar em postos toda hora. Com o tempo você libera melhorias para Nitro, Tanque de Gasolina e peças que ajudam na resistência da moto.

• Upgrades: Além dos injetores da NERO, que melhoram FOCO, SAÚDE e ENERGIA, também há a "árvore de talentos", que ao evoluir de nível, você libera pontos para distribuir em Sobrevivência (upgrades relacionados a suporte, diminuição de gasto de recursos, melhor coleta e etc.), Armas de Fogo (aumenta o dano, libera a habilidade de Foco, diminui o tranco da arma, etc.) e Combate Corpo-a-Corpo... Bem autoexplicativo.

• Gráficos: Os gráficos são bons, as paisagens bem feitas. O sistema de iluminação, ambientação e animação de personagem são ótimos, o que realmente me frustrou em alguns momentos do jogo é a questão de queda de FPS, mesmo após a atualização de correção de BUGs.

O Final

Com toda certeza foi um dos finais mais emocionantes que já fiz nos jogos, todo o desenrolar da história é extremamente bem planejado. Após você decidir ir ao Sul em busca da Sarah, a reencontra trabalhando com a milícia, e para ficar junto com seu amor, Deacon decida ficar por lá, e é recrutado como Cabo.

História vai e vem, o Skizzo, após trair o Lago Lost e o Iron Mike, ele decide entrar na milícia... E reencontra Deacon, causando todo um fuzuê e fazendo com que Deacon seja condenado a morte. Graças a Kouri, Deacon saiu vivo da situação. Kouri era um dos comandantes da milícia, e após ajudar Deacon, o Capitão Garret também fica extremamente irritado com a situação, e faz inúmeros ataques ao norte (inclusive, por conta de um deles, Iron Mike acaba morrendo nas mãos de Skizzo, que virara um dos capitães da milícia).

Até então, o plano de vingança seria atacar a milícia com um caminhão bomba (em que o Boozer se sacrificaria para explodir tudo) e o acampamento do Lago Lost atacaria no flanco por outro portão. Por eu estar nível 3 com todos os acampamentos antes de fazer essa última missão, adquiri um final extremamente empolgante. Todos os acampamentos se juntaram para invadir o quartel da milícia junto.

Após toda a invasão, foi extremamente divertido ver Aokai, Copeland, Rikki e outros trabalhando juntos... Mas triste presenciar a "morte do Boozer" (não, ele não morre, apenas engana todos).

Depois da invasão, a vida de Deacon é um """final feliz""", obtivera o reencontro com a esposa, o melhor amigo ainda estava vivo, os acampamentos em harmônia.

Algum tempo depois do fim da história principal, O'Brian marca um encontro com Deacon. Ao chegar lá, ele avisa que o vírus está evoluindo muito rapidamente e o pior ainda está por vir. Em seguida, ele remove a máscara que sempre oculta sua cabeça e revela ser um frenético que conseguiu manter as emoções e capacidades intelectuais humanas. Antes de partir, ele avisa que a NERO esta chegando e não há nada que Deacon possa fazer a respeito. Isso dá totalmente um gancho para um futuro Days Gone 2, que infelizmente não irá rolar.

This game's biggest accomplishment is managing to makeg me care about a story where the zombies are called 'freakers', and where the the main character wears his hat backwards. This could have easily been a complete miss, but instead, it definitely had its charm, and it managed to make me care by the end of it to the point where I even laughed along with the characters like the sap that I am.

That being said, the game is not without its faults. A lot of the storytelling, while ultimately fairly effective, does start off being pretty clumsy. Aside from that, there are also a few gameplay idiosyncrasies, along with a couple of technical hiccups. But hey, it only makes me more anxious to see what Bend manages to serve up with their next game.

Admittedly, I didn’t expect much from Days Gone. “Grizzled biker fighting zombies” seemed like a fun romp to pass the time. Unfortunately, this game is average to a fault. There’s some good parts, but they are set off by the crappy parts. I'd give this 2 1/2 stars if I could.

I kinda despise Red Dead Redemption 2 for ruining open world games for me. Days Gone’s Oregeon forests seem so empty and barren vs. RDR2’s Old West with its constant encounters and unique locations. Days Gone does have random encounters; but they are either off the beaten paths, so you have to go seek them out, or it’s one of the two types of ambushes the raiders set up. You are mostly just riding your motorcycle, which granted, riding motorcycles is always fun, especially when you get it upgraded to do some sweet jumps. You also don’t have as much interaction with the world or the sorta fun roleplay features I liked. Again Days Gone is just the bare basic model of an open world game.

Your bike is your main, and only, form of transportation. Since you’ll spend a lot of time with this iron horse, you are able to customize it. The choices aren’t too deep. Some you have to get for the performance boost, even if you aren’t a fan of the aesthetic. Really all that sets your bike apart from another player’s is the paint job. I get it’s the apocalypse, but a few more cosmetics would’ve been nice. Maybe options that could make your bike look like a 50s hog, a dirt bike, a military bike, or a crotch rocket. You can tell Bend Studios put some time into making the bike feel good to drive. It takes a little to get a handle on it and stop crashing into trees, but when you do its fun and the mechanic of coasting to save fuel is a good tactic to use. You also have to keep track of your bike stats, making sure it’s refueled and repaired. This reminds me of the car systems in Mad Max, but Mad Max did it better. In Mad Max you come across fuel cans that have various levels of gas left in them so one can might not refill your tank, in Days Gone every fuel can has an infinite amount of fuel. You can fill up a generator, your bike, and still have enough left over to use it as a fire bomb. That’s fine in most cases, but not when this game tries to be a survival game. I think an unlockable skill to siphon gas from wrecked cars would be a neat, in-world way to get gas. Days Gone also makes a big deal of conserving ammo as well, but you can refill it at camps for cheap.

The game also has a crafting system for throwables, because that’s a standard thing for post-apocalyptic open world games. As you’ll learn in the gameplay, you’ll be using Molotovs a lot fighting the zombies. This is when the crafting system started aggravating me, because I never seemed to have enough kerosene or bottles to make more than 1 or 2 Molotovs at a time. You also carry one melee weapon with you, that with upgrades, you can repair. I recommend grabbing a machete. You can find it early and it takes most things out in 2 hits. And that is one thing this game does better than Last of Us, a game it’s compared to, you always have a melee weapon and there’s no stupid unkillable, insta-death zombies.

Days Gone is full of glitches, as you’ve likely heard in other reviews. I had the day one issue of audio cutting out completely. Later on, I had an issue after a mission of a horde spawning on top of me. The worst glitch that was game breaking involved one of the last NERO missions. I had to enter a cave, but the textures hadn’t loaded in and there was a huge wall of texture_06 blocking me from the entrance. I can tolerate a little bugginess, but this game was more than I was willing to overlook.

To get into the characters and story, you play as Deacon St. John, a biker with all the generic backstories. He was a soldier, in a biker gang, lost his wife, and is a tortured soul. It took me awhile to warm up to Deacon, and I still wouldn’t consider him a memorable protagonist. He really seems to have the best character moments when he’s interacting with Boozer, his best friend, and much more memorable, or his not dead wife later on. With most the other characters, he’s just a typical gruff, asshole, lone biker with a hidden heart of gold. Deacon also has a habit of talking to himself a lot. It’s a common tick of video game protagonists as a way to fill in the player, but where Nate Drake does it with flippant sarcasm, Deacon almost gets a little psychotic. I mean, he’s got reason to be a bit unhinged having survived through all that, but he can get dark. It may be unsettling, but it does add to his character. This also brings up another good point that pokes at the tropes of post-apocalyptic stories. Most of the people who survived this long aren’t good people. There’s no preachers, teachers, or firemen and few doctors, most of the survivors are people who were already a bit ruthless before the zombie outbreak; outlaw bikers, gangbangers, preppers, and prison wardens. In reality, yeah, most of us wouldn’t make it far into the post-apocalypse. It does backfire a little in a story sense, because it leaves us with a lot of unlikable characters. If I had to pick a camp to join, I’d go for Copeland’s prepper camp, I don’t get why Deacon hates him more than Ada who runs a slave work camp.

Now onto the story, which is a low point of the game for me. Okay, there’ll be spoilers in this section. This game feels like its 80 hrs. long and it has no right to be this long. It could easily have been a 30 hr story and had a much better, focused impact. The first few hours of the game are sorta listless, you are introduced to Cope’s camp, do one mission then never speak to him for hours, talk to your wife’s tombstone, then visit Ada’s camp where you do a few missions for her. It’s a few missions too many, but you finally head down to Iron Mike’s camp and the story starts getting a focus. You work with the camp, become a bit more of a team player, and try to find your wife who may be alive. The game reaches a point when you invade an enemy camp, flood them out, and kill their leader, who is an old gang member of yours. It all wraps up in a nice bow and feels like a good ending to the story, but it isn’t. You go down south thanks to O’Brian, whose character I liked as time went on. Apparently your wife is down there somewhere. You go down there to join the Militia, which I’ve seen enough media to know any group called “the Militia” will be the bad guys, especially when the leader is a Bible thumper. But before they go evil, you find out your wife is working with them to find a cure for the zombies. This whole section is so detached from the first part. To me, it feels like Days Gone was based on a series of books with the part at Iron Mike’s being book 1 and the Militia plot being adapted from book 2.

You may notice, I haven’t said a lot about the zombies in the story, because honestly they aren’t that big a part of it. You spend most your time fighting other survivors of ill repute. I’ve never been a fan of zombies anyways and I think Days Gone would’ve been better as a Mad Max type apocalypse, maybe with a small faction that is zombies relegated to a section of the map. The zombies in this game aren’t really explained well, and when it comes to zombies you either explain all their backstory or none of it, don’t half-ass it. These zombies aren’t even zombies, their more like Fallout’s feral ghouls. Bites don’t spread the disease, heck I don’t know how the infection spreads. The game also has a Left 4 Dead collection of zombies with tanks, witches, and reachers. This is the first game I’ve seen with zombie kids you have to kill. It’s a bit hardcore. Actually there are some really tonally dark moments in this story, Deacon does a lot of mercy killings that don’t leave you, or him, feeling good.

The best part of the zombies and the only reason to have them in the game is for the hordes. A lot of the game is pretty dull, mostly riding bikes and sneaking into camps, but the horde modes are pure adrenaline. It’s one of the few times in recent memory I was anxious while gaming. It’s hard to remain calm when you just see this mob of 200-800 zombies all charging at you will reckless abandon. Even with a machine gun, it’s like shooting into a mass of meat with little effect. These horde fights mix the adrenaline of the chase with some strategic thinking. It helps to case the area, set traps, and find chokepoints before you poke the beast.

All in all, for the most part Days Gone is just a fun time killer that kills too much time. Riding your bike and fighting hordes are a unique experience, but the glitches and meandering story drag it back down to the mud pits of “meh”. The best description I’ve heard of this game is that it’s a “dad game”.

I'm no longer under embargo so I can finally say that Days Gone is...

Very mediocre.

Standar open-world stuff, full of mechanics that other games used better ages ago. The world is pretty but it has no impact. The main character is an asshole and the plot is a boring mess that goes for hours and hours and hours and hours... The survival systems are a slog. Just when you're having fun you're suddenly of materials or gas for the motorcycle.

I only reccomend this to people obssesed with open-world games that are not yet sick of zombies and want spend 40 hours exploring and taking photographs. But even then, they're probably played better, similar games already.

It can be fun and engaging at times, but honestly, It's not worth it.

My review in spanish: https://gamerfocus.co/juegos/days-gone-resena/