I played the PC version.
tl;dr fun enough but nothing outstanding, well crafted AAA open world zombie game, buy on sale
spoiler free summary:
You are a former soldier turned biker ganger who is caught up in a zombie apocalypse. Ride your motorcycle across the post apocalyptic northwest fighting zombies and raiders, doing jobs for settlements, and searching for your lost wife.
The game is competently made but there is a lot of it that is close to paint-by-numbers for AAA stealth/action titles. You have your stealth takedowns, your distraction rocks, shooting and auto-targeting melee. Your "mount" is available right off the bat and upgrading your motorcycle is a big part of the gameplay. I liked how there was fast travel but you had to work for it either clearing zones so you could travel through them, upgrading your fuel tank so you can travel further, and occasionally stopping to find gas. This made it a bit more immersive up until the end when you have a big enough gas tank to travel across the whole map.
In addition to the stealth/action there are bike "races" where you chase down a target also riding a motorcycle. They are pretty awkward but still something different so a very occasionally nice change of pace. Some gameplay elements are kind of filler like the ability to track a deer once you shot it, but midway through the game ammo stops being an issue and generally you use automatic weapons so if you shoot a deer, it is dead.
The story is closer to resident evil but played straight and not over the top ridiculous. The zombies are virus mutants and the enemies sometimes include children and animals which is a nice touch. At the start you are helping camps with survival type jobs and eventually you go on to do missions for the purpose of fighting back against the zombies.
One draw of this game is the hoard mechanic where you sometimes find packs of hundreds of zombies that try to surround you and are instant death if too many get to you at the same time. In the beginning all you can do is avoid and run but by the end you have enough resources and character progression to fight and win against them.
The weapons and gunplay is pretty generic with the exception of the crossbow but since you can only carry 3 weapons and the crossbow takes up your "heavy" slot it is quickly abandoned when you get your first rifle. IMO this is a missed opportunity and the game should have made the crossbow always available in addition to your other 3 weapon slots. Your melee weapons decay so in the beginning you are constantly switching to new ones but eventually you get a talent that lets you repair them and from that point you just carry the best one. Which is good because later in the game the enemies tend to be stronger and not always having a good melee weapons means you would just never use it anymore.
The voice acting of the main character is particularly good with the writing and delivery nicely portraying constantly stressed and anti-social personality of someone who was in that situation but still able to get by. The other voices are passable with the best friend VA also doing a good job. Some of the random encounter survivor voices are pretty bad and sound like they called in an intern to read the lines that day though.
I found exactly one minor glitch where I did a sidequest "search" out of sequence and the area it told me to search for the final piece didn't have it. I eventually found it outside of that area, I assume where I was intended to start the search. But nothing gamebreaking or requiring a reset to fix.
In general I can't say I loved the game but it was fun enough, though by the end I was just grinding to finish. The hoards make for fun visuals and spectacle and even though they aren't necessarily the main gameplay feature, the rest of the game is necessary to make those experiences stand out.
Possibly spoiler filled detailed wokeness ratings ahead - numbers are on a scale from 0-5 with lower being better and >3 that aspect would make the game unplayable
Feminism 1.5: No main npc girlbosses women. One woman is in charge of the slave camp but she is a frumpy short haired dyke-type whose leadership is explained by her running a prison gang before the zombies. There are women marauders that you shoot/stab/axe. Your wife that you are searching for is a scientist and it turns out her research helped start the apocalypse but nothing really comes out of that. Other female characters are a notable npc mechanic who does occasionally give the main character a moral lecture and the doctor of the main camp is also a woman. There is one anti-feminist scene where you and your wife are on a mission to retrieve a piece of equipment an she goes in alone to an area, has to shoot a bunch of zombies while you find your way in, and when you get there she is locked up in panic pulling the trigger on an empty gun and you have to calm her down.
Faggotry 2: The previously mentioned mechanic and doctor of the main camp are a dyke couple. I think there might be a scene where they held hands, maybe hugged? I dont remember any more physical affection than that. There is a line of dialogue that could be interpreted to imply the main bad guy is butt buddies with his camp doctor but it is never made explicit. Otherwise no homos that I noticed.
Diversity/Negros/Anti-Whiteness: 2.5 Two of the three important NPCs at the final camp are black, one is a "scientist" and the other is a competent commanding officer. The doctor at the previous camp in a lesbian relationship is also black. There is a throwaway pre-apocalypse flashback line about the biker gang leader importing negros to troll "racists". Most of the generic npcs are White. Your best friend appears to be latino coded but it isn't explicitly stated. The doctor in the final camp is latino and he annoyingly inserts spanish into his dialog. Refreshing that this game has a consistently strong and competent White male PC who is unambiguously heroic.
Anti-West/Anti-Christian/Subversion: 3 The leader of the final camp is a religious older White man who talks about God's will so of course he turns out to be a villain. I'm pretty sure they animated some of Hitlers hand gestures and postures for some of his speeches but that could be my imagination. He is implied to be Christian because there is a mission to retrieve his stolen bible. There is a throwaway line about the prison population pre-zombies. Also another throwaway line about "truther bullshit". In the first zone there is an implied right-wing anti-government radio broadcast to which the main character generally reacts negatively.
edit: after thinking about it overnight I wanted to add that outside of the mandatory stealth sections this is the type of game that would benefit from playing it at a higher difficulty to help maintain the tension and immersion. So my advice would be to turn up the difficulty normally, and then turn it down during the stealth missions.
The game takes every possible opportunity to remind you that the interracial lesbian couple are a gay lesbian couple who are gay and lesbian by the way.
still not as bad as borderland pre-sequel just because there is much more time spent between dialogue cutscenes
Days Gone is such a weird game. On paper, it looks like it would be alot better than it actually is, but in action the combat/stealth/travel/shooting/verticality just comes across as... clunky. Akward. You get all these options, and none of them just work.
It's frustrating, cause it's got alot of neat parts that are unique enough you kind of want them in a better game.
Listening to the radio broadcast was always funny, cause no matter how much the MC bitched about what he was saying, none of what the radio guy was saying was wrong.
When you most of the skills and items unlocked the combat is much "smoother" but by then I was getting bored and just wanted to finish the game
As in I fought hordes like a retard so I really needed my improved stamina potions so I could run away more effectively
I played an enjoyed this game. I agree with a lot of your critique but some of it can be hand waved away. A lot of the diversity are mostly fleshed out characters, that don't fall into generic tokens. The truther camp, whilst treated with some scorn by the MC he does come around to some of his rhetoric and by the end that guy is a firm ally that sends men to help you in the final. I agree with the old religious guy being a bit of a nut that is disappointing. His initial plan is great, taking the fight to the zombies to retake earth and marshaling a militia to do so is super interesting, but then Spoilers ahead his plan turns into creating an arc to hide in to live out rhe apocalypse is a but silly and on the nose. The secondary villain is hilarious, a wealthy college frat boy pretending to be gangster and dressing and acting like a black rapper. The first main villain being a crazy, tortured ex bike gang member going feral in the apocalypse was honestly a far better villain than the rest and should have been the end game antagonist. Him or the dodgy government that come and go.
A good review though and I agree with all your gameplay analysis. It was very generic with a few standout mechanics that made it enjoyable.
I wish there was a comprehensive site for reviews like this, but every single one that pops up tends to get abandoned pretty quickly.
I would write more but I don't have nearly as much game time as I used to. I think this one took me about 3 months to beat.
Oh and also if you look over my 4 year post history I have at a few game, movie and tv reviews with similar styles.
Anyone here absolutely burned out on open world grindfests? I think my last bit of patience waned in 2022 or somewhat earlier with cyberpunk or maybe tsushima. Now i just can't stomach these 100h vidya anymore.
Pretty accurate - I've finished the game and agree with this review.
Hordes were an absolute standout - especially when you come across them in caves or at night, it creates a genuinely tense atmosphere of gameplay. I don't think I've seen them done quite like this in any other game.
The story was generally ok - although the 2 half felt a bit weaker than the 1st half. There was a good twist at the end which would have made for an interesting premise for a second game, but sadly I don't think we'll see one.
I liked how even though the story set it up they didn't go over the top resident-evil with the zombie mutants and just kept it pretty well grounded.
It's been awhile since I've played the game. But I remember enjoying it. It's a game that is above average but lacks any great aspect. The horde destruction is the funniest part of the game, deciding how you want to destroy them, laying out your traps, and then unleashing death to the freakers.
I had exactly 2 tactics, 1 was hide in bushes, and do attractor + grenade x3 then machinegun the rest
or it was machinegun, run, machinegun, run, machinegun run, go back to bike and reload ammo, then repeat
I feel bad for this game, because its sincere in a lot of ways that made it come out at the exact wrong time for it to succeed. Like, it came out during peak "cringe culture" and its complete dedication to the Biker Dude aesthetic and characters made everybody shit on it unnecessarily and tank any reputation it could have had.
I played it for a bit a while back but since I cancelled the Playstation account I lost access to it for free and never went back, but I enjoyed the time I spent.
Would have made an awesome rental game back in the day imo, that's what I kept thinking the entire time.
It felt like a throwback to 15 years earlier with the unapologetically masculine hyper-competent hero who isn't a drama queen, he is just tired of dealing with everyone's shit.
Spoilers, one great scene was when his best bro, who isn't totally stable, gets drunk and wanders off to potentially kill himself by fighting a zombie horde the main character says "ok we doing this, then lets go" and totally seriously is ready to die with his buddy, which of course snaps his friend out of it.
Its a cool concept, but the story is just to slow to keep me interested. I pirated it on the ps4 and couldnt play more than a hour or two of it.
Yeah it certainly has a slow build up, but I think 90% of games fail the opening build up section by spending too long setting up story.
But Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of the best action rpgs of all time and its opening is a literal fucking hour+ tutorial of nonsense that you can't skip. So I usually give that a pass in most games.
I appreciate the woke elements review.