Days Gone

I've played through this on Steam and I'm going to do so again on GOG. The #1 thing about this game: it puts immersion first. Even the simple act of traversing the world -feels- right, all the way down to the sound of the mud beneath the tires of Deacon's bike. Well, okay, there is one part about riding the bike that doesn't feel right: it will feel painfully slow at first. But don't fret! As you progress through the story you will have opportunities to upgrade the bike and eventually it will also feel right. The writing also stood out to me. Specifically, how characters talk and interact. Everyone seems to speak like real people speak. The only dialog that feels weird is Deacon's inner monologue which is used to inform the player of events or remind them of the current goals, as one would expect from this sort of title. You're not exactly going to like every character, including Deacon at times, and you're not supposed to. But they do all feel a lot more like real people than in many other games. But this is a game, afterall, so let's talk about the gameplay. At its core, this is a third-person stealth story-driven open world game. The game heavily incentivizes avoiding detection and using assassination-style takedowns to progress through areas which have a significant enemy presence. Going in guns blazing can work but the greater the disturbance you make, the more infected will come sniffing around, and you can easily find yourself overwhelmed. Of course, you will eventually discover equipment, upgrades, and strategies that can help deal with larger numbers of enemies but you rarely ever feel truly safe roaming the world. Finally, the story itself: this is Deacon St. John's story of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world. I found his journey to be deeply affecting and well worth completing every storyline in order to witness it all. If nothing else, I own over 1000 games on GOG alone, and this is the first one for which I felt compelled to write a review.

Played it on Steam, been just over 2 years since I finished it. My overall impression is that it has an unfortunately weak start. Human enemies don't impress, hordes you can't yet touch, incessant resource management fixing and filling your bike and inventory, and a weak narrative to boot. But it all ramps up exponentially after you reach 3rd camp. Takes somewhere under a dozen hours to get there, can't remember exactly. The bike and inventory capacity are upgraded, you're outfitted with better weapons, the narrative gets good, the world gets bigger and prettier. It becomes a properly solid experience, worth every penny. Unfortunately it ends on a cliffhanger, and because of the bad release state, we're unlikely to ever get a sequel to tie up the story.

I played Days Gone on PS4 and it's the only game on PSN I've ever platinumed. Picked it up as soon as it hit Steam, and now grabbing it again on GOG for a DRM free version. Hopeful that one day we'll see a sequel or even a spiritual sequel from people who have left Bend since the game launched. I know there was a lot of love there for the game, and it comes through in playing it and seeing the developers on social media since. Can't recommend the game enough still, in the words of one Richard Leadbetter from Digital Foundry, it's bloody brilliant.

Ive finished this game on steam already, spent around 52 hours to complete main story and majority of side activities. Core gameplay of travelling open world on a bike, sneaking, killing zombies and occasionally creating items for your use is enjoyable. Graphics are for most part beautiful and game runs great - only negative thing I can say is that npc faces look rather poor compared to otherwise high quality stuff all around. Sound is meh, worst thing is main character randomly yelling to himself when sneaking. And now the thing that almost made me quit this game in the beginning - characters and story. Deacon at the start is just so unlikable and annoying it makes early partf of the adventure insufferable. He gets better as the game goes on and you meet more characters, but majority of them are either not important or generally awful people. Also flashback scenes or "ImPoRTanT" parts where you just walk/ ride your bike slowly while listening to some random rock piece from soundcloud are way too prominent for my liking. Overall its a good game with some obvious weak points. Well worth it on a sale. In a sense its a bit similar to Mad Max - good but not great game with open world, upgrading your main vehicle and doing a lot of repetitive stuff.