Days Gone (2019)

To my amazement, this guy is an even bigger tool that I previously thought:

Days Gone Director Blames 'Woke Reviewers' For Game’s Middling Reception

One of his listed reasons why the game didn’t do better was:

it had woke reviewers who couldn’t handle a gruff white biker looking at his date’s ass

LMAO! More like:

1. No one remembers that scene, nor do they care; and
2. Gruff biker my ass, he was a whiny little bootlicker.

Best and most revealing line of the article:

Garvin has since moved on from Sony Bend Studio, and is now working on a game that has NFTs.

Boy, this Jeff Ross guy has no shortage of bad ideas, eh?

After Sony Passed On Days Gone 2, Devs Pitched Open-World Resistance Reboot

Former Bend Studio director Jeff Ross recently revealed that he pitched an open-world Resistance sequel after Sony made it clear it had no interest in a Days Gone 2. There were also talks of a new Syphon Filter reboot. But none of these projects made it very far

Also:

Sony was interested in nearly anything but Days Gone 2.

God bless you Sony, and thank you for sparing us all.

I’ve reached the point where I’m clearly supposed to be a badass horde killing machine. And everything in the game, from story to mechanics to skill trees have been clearly pointing to this moment. I’ve killed all the important narrative related hordes and can now hunt hordes for fun.

And it’s so unbearably boring. It’s the same thing over and over. Set some traps, throw some napalm, mow the rest down with a machine gun. Set some traps, throw some napalm, mow the rest down with a machine gun. Set some traps, throw some napalm, mow the rest down with a machine gun. Set some traps, throw some napalm, mow the rest down with a machine gun. Set some traps, throw some napalm, mow the rest down with a machine gun. Set some traps, throw some napalm, mow the rest down with a machine gun. Set some traps, throw some napalm, mow the rest down with a machine gun. Set some traps, throw some napalm, mow the rest down with a machine gun.

I’m really tired. Can I start my holiday break now?

I’m struggling to understand what the TLOU fans turn TLOU2 haters love about this game. It’s really nothing like TLOU save for the zombie infested dystopian future. It lacks the tight structure of TLOU and it’s far more forgiving and “fun” with a standard video game power fantasy setup. Frankly isfthe reasons the TLOU2 haters like this game are white dude and zombies, that’s a low bar to clear.

This is far more like a Far Cry game, with things like breakable weapons and bike repair mechanics borrowing somewhat from Far Cry 2 specifically. The packs of roaming drifters that ambush you until you take out their outposts is very similar to Far Cry. Round this off with skill trees, weapon unlocks and crafting and this really is the zombie Far Cry that Ubisoft never made. Sure those things can be easily found in other games, but other games that I suspect were inspired by the Ubi style of open world design. To be fair I need to circle back to TLOU now because crafting and crafting resources in Days Gone are lifted directly from TLOU, except nothing is ever as scarce as it is in TLOU.

Gas as a consumable is pretty annoying mechanic. Having to constantly worry about gas for your bike is an unnecessary layer in a game that doesn’t really grant a sense of realism in comparison to a game like TLOU. But it’s especially annoying that you have a gas gauge and have to fill your tank because the game is littered with magical bottomless gas canisters. You can quite literally fill a gas powered generator and your bike from one gas can. You can also leave and return and still fill your bike up with that same canister. It’s ludicrous when in juxtaposition with a bike gas tank that burns through 50% volume on a short 5km drive. Constantly empty gas tank and magical bottomless gas can is what I suppose game devs at Bend call “a balanced mechanic”.

I enjoy the messy attempt at politics though. Having a radio broadcast that constantly recites conspiracist theories is great. Sure the game tries to undermine the content of the broadcast as a means to illustrate the absurdity of it all, but when the character undermining that commentary is a protagonist/poster child for “private militia” who spends half the game agreeing with the broadcasts, maybe your attempt at satire failed. This is really fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but it does feel a bit sloppy on Bend’s part.

Deek sucks. That’s pretty straightforward. He’s the kind of guy that isn’t aware of the irony of most of his actions, and runs on mercenary autopilot. I’m sure Bend thinks of him as a likeable antihero, but I just find him vanilla as vanilla can be. Not even that good French or Madagascar vanilla bean vanilla, just plain old American white vanilla extract vanilla. You know, the kind that kind of burns your mouth and throat at the end? Yeah, that’s Deek, shitty ass plain chemical vanilla.

You know what was neat? The first time I tripped an alarm at a Nero camp and four hundred zombies poured out of a cargo train and started chasing me. It almost impressive. I might be more emphatic about it, but I’ve already played Halo so you know how that goes.

Also the Prom Queen in Echo Generation scared me more than these freakers ever do. I expected so much more horror but it’s really just a power trip of a game wherein Deek can easily take down five or six zombies without breaking a sweat.

Why do I feel like Sony handed Bend Studios a list of “must have elements for PlayStation single player game design” before they started development on Days Gone? The more you play these Sony game the more you feel like it’s all one standard formula. Sometimes that works and the games transcend the formula. But sometimes you get discount The Last of Us. There’s nothing mechanically wrong with this game, but there’s also not a lot that’s particularly exciting.

I’m still going to play it because I want to know why this seems to have a minor cult following.

This was the game I was waiting on when I decided to play a bit of Echo Generation. Choosing between the two felt like a no brainer after poking around in both, and I’m going to shelve this for now.

I feel like the elevator pitch for this game was “imagine The Walking Dead meets The Sons of Anarchy, but a game.” That seems about right for what a studio would assume audiences for this type of game would want in 2019.

I also feel like I don’t blame Sony for killing the prospect of a sequel in 2021. After all, is anyone going to want to play a protagonist who probably would have been, if he were real, present at the capitol riots? In 2021? I mean, really?

Incidentally riding a motorcycle felt good, but Bend definitely applied the physics and manoeuvrability of a dirt bike to a custom bike that looks like a custom cruiser like a chopped up Softail, Dyna or Super Glide, and it did seem a bit silly.