Seeking out answers for his dead wife, Deacon St.John our main protagonist finds himself fighting through zombie hordes, infected wildlife and his fellow man with hope that he’s yet to find her…(But it doesn’t end there.)

Days Gone starts with introducing Deacon and the basic bike mechanics to the player, the bike at first being difficult to control as it slides around with even the smallest nudge of the joystick, however after playing for a couple of hours, easy to master as you’re introduced to a bike mechanic early in the game who offers Deacon multiple upgrades (exhaust, engine, wheels, saddlebags, radiator,nitro etc.) which manipulate how quiet, durable and fast the bike can be. (Because somehow chugging through a post-apocalyptic world with a VERY loud rust-bucket is a good idea?)

As the story in Days Gone progresses I found myself unable to establish an emotional connection to any of the characters or events designed to tug at the players heart-strings, instead I found parts of the story drawn-out and illogical, characters backstories and writing to be shallow, watching cut-scenes is comparable to watching paint dry at times.

Consistent Performance Issues Can Make Exploration Difficult To Enjoy

One of the first things to catch my eye was the attention to detail the environment had with dense forests, dynamic weather system and lighting, taking full advantage of the PlayStation 4’s graphical capabilities, but at times at the expense of the frame-rate as some areas struggle to consistently run at the 1080p at 30 frames limit which ruins the immersion, and textures for cars, characters and environments may not always load in, Days Gone is either too ambitious for current generation consoles or poorly optimised by the developers.

Despite the poor performance Days Gone offers a large open-world to explore with exciting environments, buildings to find loot in and different factions providing multiple flavours in the world, such as the zombie-obsessed-fanatics the ‘Rippers’ who not only actively avoid killing zombies but want to be like them, ‘Marauders’ act as your standard ‘looters and armed bandits’ who set traps around the map designed to send you flying forward off your bike and beat to death with baseball bats, ridding the world of these apocalypse pirates will remove their traps from the map and allow you to use their camps as a fast-travel point.

Friendly camps stationed in each part of the map allow the player to earn trust with their faction and purchase a variety of guns, med-kits, upgrades and grenades by doing tedious missions that get repetitive very quickly and had me rolling my eyes very far back when they’d ask Deacon to track down another bounty.

Combat And Crafting Rescues You From The Soulless Story

‘Freakers’ is just one word in Days Gone’s odd lingo dictionary and is the name given to the common zombie, you’ll also encounter other genetically enhanced Freakers which threaten the player with various mechanics and once discovered become another commonly encountered enemy.

Crafting in Days Gone reminds me of how The Last of Us operated, finding different crafting ingredients around the environment to create weapons, ammunition, environment traps, distraction devices and health, stamina, focus supplements however Days Gone allows the player to craft on-the-fly through a quick-access equipment wheel. A mechanic I found myself using very often is the ability to scan the environment (including through walls) for icons that may represent loot-able items indicated by a triangle when scanned at distances, I found it to be a very valuable mechanic when exploring.

One area of Days Gone i found enjoyable and well designed is the combat system offering both melee and gun play as well as the use of Molotovs, explosives and traps that provide extremely valuable game-play strategies to defeating more advanced enemies and determine how long you’ll survive the apocalypse for. Melee weapons can be found throughout the game and have a durability and damage rating, but can be repaired in exchange for scrap (looted as part of the crafting system) and have proven to be very reliable in close-combat situations.

The hordes of ‘Freakers’ are so intense to defeat, accompanied by equally intense audio designed to rush adrenaline and fear into the player as they appear endless and move together as one large mass of terror, defeating a horde rewards the player with a great sense of relief and achievement similar to the Dark Souls series. My advice? Do.Not.Fight.Unprepared!

Verdict

Days gone offers it’s player high-intensity adrenaline rushes, but falls short on being able to establish an emotional connection through the story and main protagonist. Days Gone tries too hard, and it shows through the lacklustre writing and inability to retain interest from its audience however, the environment design, gun-play and large open world had me on the edge of my seat, coming back for more.

Rating: 3.5/5