Days Gone Review

Into the shoes and onto the motorcycle of Deacon St. John, the zombie apocalypse bounty hunter of the Northwest, Days Gone takes players through a long and drawn out story that never gets it hooks in. Gameplay, on the other hand, is fun and exciting, but it feels as if more was promised than what is actually delivered. Past Sony exclusives like God of War, Uncharted, and The Last of Us have been historically exceptional video games. Under this intimidating umbrella, Days Gone is a letdown.

Just like reading a book, you need to be stolen away by the first chapter or else you’re going to put it down. It is the same scenario as Bend’s latest game. There is nothing in that first chapter that really wants you to keep moving forward in the story. While playing, you are holding onto the idea of that moment that the game is going to get better. No matter how much effort you put into this relationship, you won’t get that effort back.

From the onset, Days Gone‘s convoluted story is never truly clear and even remains that way ten hours into the game. Immediately, players are treated to a flashback sequence showing how the main characters are brought together. While hitting similar notes both visually and emotionally to the opening sequence from The Last of Us, there is little to capture your interest and leave you wanting more. Right after, another cutscene shows the present day, easily teasing an opportunity to transition straight gameplay… yet we’re greeted with a loading screen. This becomes a continuing theme for the entire game. In 2019 players have come to expect frequent instances of seamless transitions from cutscene to gameplay, especially early on in where games tutorialize the most. Here, Days Gone feels aged, frequently cutting back and forth between the two.

From my many, and I am stressing the word many, hours of playing Days Gone, I simply cannot nail down the story and what it is supposed to be. Early on the game, Boozer gets severely injured in a fight. The prevents him from doing missions with you and being your partner in crime for the game. The two mention a few times that their goal is to fix up Deacon’s bike so they can ride north and away from the area they have been surviving in after Boozer is back to health. A gigantic problem of the game comes at a point, after this, where the story gets muddled.

The narrative bulk of Days Gone is handled through Storylines. Storylines represent parts of Deacon’s life that players are told through completing various types of missions. Looking through the map and menus, the main Storyline is represented in yellow, while other colors are for Storylines not a part of the critical path. It’s easy to be confused as to what Deacon’s main story is because Storylines frequently overlap. In God of War, players were told nearly immediately that Kratos and Atreus’ sole purpose was to take their matriarch’s ashes to the apex a mountain. It wasn’t easy, there were problems, but the goal was clear. Halfway through Days Gone I could not have told you if the main story was to help your biker comrade Boozer, find out what happened to Sarah, or protect innocent, helpless Lisa. That’s not to mention a subplot involving the government’s shady operations.

As a result of Boozer’s injury, you must carry out missions on your own. This means going out on runs for your biker bro, taking out ambush camps, or hunting bounties. This all helps go towards the goal of riding north when Boozer is ready. The lines of the story start to blur when you run into NERO, the government team. Deacon lashes out while thinking of his wife, Sarah, and then follows NERO around. When stalking NERO, Deacon starts to learn more and more about the cause for the freakers. At this moment, you start to feel the overlapping of story. Deacon becomes fixated on figuring out what NERO had done in the past to cause this apocalypse.

St. John does not just try to find answers about the mysterious government division, he also searches for clues about what happened with Sarah. As you can see, the storylines start to pile up. If you didn’t think three were enough, well guess what, you get another. This storyline begins after a camp leader asks you to look for a little girl, named Lisa. Once you find this girl, Deacon decides that he is going to watch over her and make sure she that has shelter. This added narrative is just another cook in the kitchen and yes, there are too many.

Deacon is not a standout character, let alone a protagonist that players may root for. His actions always seem half-assed and he can be a jerk for no reason. I vividly remember a mission where you have to find Lisa, a tween who survived alone, for the first time. Deacon finds her house, gets into her room, and, because he has to be a tough guy, engages in cringe-worthy dialogue trying to get her out of the house. The idea of him being this rough-around-the-edges biker goes on hiatus during missions where he reminisces about his wife Sarah. Deacon himself is just another part of Days Gone that often doesn’t make sense.

We don’t really learn much from the story through gameplay as most of it is told strictly through cutscenes. Games like Uncharted tell a story through dialogue between characters while exploring the world. I have fond memories of Kratos and Atreus rowing their boat around the Lake of the Nine, listening to the rich tales Mimir would tell. The dialogue was so enthralling that I would stop rowing and just listen out of fear that I would accidentally cut one short. These opportunities could exist in Days Gone but are never realized. When Lisa is riding on the back of Deacon’s bike, there could easily be heartfelt exchanges of dialogue between the two. Unfortunately, both characters often sit in silence with only a loud ass bike making any noise. Even Deacon’s walkie talkie is wasted. There could have been plenty of instances of trading stories to Copeland or Boozer while riding to the next area but it doesn’t happen.

There’s a strange feeling to the flashbacks, though. Actual emotion and concern for the characters are complemented by incredible visuals. Watching the sweat run down the faces of characters draws players in just enough to have a sense of what they are feeling. While these flashbacks can be engaging, the story jumps back to the present and players may sit there wondering what happened.

Days Gone‘s main problem is that it’s way too long. At 20 hours, I felt like I was midway through the game but not even sure if that count is accurate. Often the game feels even longer. It’s like watching a bad movie, pausing it to use the restroom, and the television says you still have an hour left. Having a long game is okay, sometimes we want hundred-plus hour sagas, but only with a legendary story and worthwhile gameplay will length be less of an issue. The more I talk about the story and its issues, the sadder I get, so I am just going to move on and talk about the gameplay.

Days Gone has fun gameplay and can often smartly incorporate stealth, but, of course, it comes with problems. The best part of the game is easily riding Deacon’s motorcycle. In my opinion, that I will probably get berated for later, Days Gone has the best motorcycle riding in gaming. The bike feels heavy. It’s hard to steer. It’s loud. All aspects of a real motorcycle! I enjoyed having a gas tank that continuously drained, making it so you could not drive every second of the game. I would have liked an option to walk the bike if I wanted to move quietly or if I was out of gas. There were issues with the sound of the bike though. Sometimes if you hop on the bike, it would be silent, but the sound meter on the HUD would indicate otherwise.

Stealth was surprisingly entertaining and something that I tried to do on every mission because it added a challenge to combat. A very clever mechanic was finding bear traps and using them to your advantage. Players can place a trap and then throw a rock to lure an enemy right into the trap, which is very satisfying.

The random encounters with enemies meant that combat remained exciting and fresh. There were times I found myself clotheslined by wires at different times and shot off the bike without expecting it. The game excels most when keeping players on their toes and presenting scenarios that require inventiveness to come out unscathed.

One flaw that constantly showed up was during missions or exploration I would be sneaking up on enemies only to have Deacon scream at the top of his lungs at Copeland’s radio messages. Bend Studio should have taken a page out of Insomniac’s book on sound design. Marvel’s Spider-Man smartly had recorded the same lines of dialogue but one with Spidey being quiet or still and the other where he in motion. Days Gone could let Deacon whisper his words when hiding around bushes instead of these immersion-breaking moments.

Gunplay is also another high point in making combat stand out. Guns are hard to aim and be precise with, which give them the feeling of real weapons. The sound design behind gunshots give depth, certain guns are louder than other and bullets echo through dense forests.

Zombies or freakers as Bend constantly emphasizes, change their behavior based on the time of day. At night they populate the open roads more densely. During the day, light makes them angry which increase their strength and ferocity. This ensures that freakers are a constant threat no matter when Deacon is roaming the world.

The first big enemy of Days Gone which, again, is several hours into the game introduced a mechanic that proved to be frustrating. A bear comes along near a gas station after you get Lisa and blocks you from accessing your motorcycle. So I was fighting this bear for a tedious amount of time, slowly working its health down using gas tanks and throwable items. Eventually, I work my way around the bear and get to my bike, yet wasn’t able to ride away from the fight because the game refused to let me on. To me, this was a problem since the game teaches you to flee from massive freaker hordes if you get overwhelmed. There is literally a message early in the game that appears on screen telling players that sometimes retreating is the best tactic and when I positioned myself to leave at the right moment, Days Gone prevented me.

After killing enemies or completing missions, you gain XP just like in many other games. XP obviously goes toward leveling up, and giving you points to give to one of the three skill trees: melee, shooting, survival. I found myself using mostly survival as it helps early in the game. You will be able to accumulate more items and plants, and also it can help with stamina and health. The skill tree portion of the game is not absurd by any means. It is very standard as far as improvements and skills to your character. The skills are simply enhancements.

Days Gone uses Oregon as its open-world backdrop which makes for some very beautiful environments that change with random weather. I find it to be a nice touch that rain caused dirt roads to get muddy, which in turn has an effect on how Deacon’s motorcycle handles. The snow on the trees was a delight to see and gives the world much-needed depth. The visual density of Days Gone is a classic case of finding beauty in a negative place.

It’s hard to sit here and say how gorgeous of a game Days Gone is while multiple issues reared their ugly head. A lot of rendering issues happened throughout my time with the game. If I left my PlayStation 4 in rest mode and then returned, I experienced several framerate problems and even freezes where audio would play while everything else on the screen froze. I wish there more display settings so I could have changed the safe zone of the game as some of the game was cut off around the edges even though I had changed the system settings to combat this.

Running on a treadmill and Days Gone are very similar experiences. You put in time and effort, yet you remain in the same spot. Thrilling gameplay and crazed “freakers” cannot save this game from its LONG, uncompelling story. Ultimately, the number of hours invested in Days Gone do not pay off. This is not a full throttle Sony exclusive that we’ve come to know and love, it’s miles away from that.