Days Gone - Early Impressions

Days Gone was one of those games that was heavily featured in the Playstation digital store for a month or perhaps 6 weeks. It was shoved in your face and cost $60 so naturally, I paid it no attention because I almost never get involved in games when they are first released. The only 2 times I have engaged in being an early adopter of games for the PS4 was with Final Fantasy XV and later with the Final Fantasy VII remake. I got burned on both of these games because neither one of them is a very good game.

Recently, Days Gone became free for anyone that is a PlayStation Plus member and thus, I ended up downloading it. Since I knew it was a zombie themed game I likely wouldn't not have gotten the game at all if it wasn't free.

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The game is pretty exciting right from the start although I have to say that I never have been a fan of any game that starts the gameplay out with a 5 minute video that you take no part in. I suppose it was necessary in order to set the stage for the game and as far as video scenes go, this one was pretty great.

Then, as you would expect they put you in relatively easy situations so that you can learn the basic controls and while they don't explicitly state this in the "tutorial" they try to encourage you to use stealth rather than trying to blast your way through everything.

By the way it is very important to use stealth in this game haha.

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Not only does stealth give you more xp per kill (they don't state this in the tutorial, and they really should) but it also has the added benefit of not alerting the entire camp or horde of zombies that if you do alert them, and don't run away, you are gonna have a bad time!

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_{Even with pinpoint accuracy and perfect use of ammo the weapon he is currently holding is not capable of defeating that mob of zombies}

Once I started using stealth, it completely changed the game for me and while I normally do not enjoy stealth games that are purely stealth, this game at least give you the option of doing both or either. I do think that it would be quite difficult to complete this game if you intentionally never stealthed but there are probably some people out there that have done precisely that.

From the early stages I started to feel as though this game was essentially The Witcher 3 but with guns and modern-day settings rather than being in the distant past. Lots of hardcore people out there try to argue that they are nothing alike but here are 3 massive similarities

• Huge open world map that you can fast travel on if you have certain things unlocked
• You hit a button to "track" the area to see things that you normally wouldn't be able to see (this is s HUGE part of Witcher 3)
• There are a bunch of optional camps you can attack that sometimes will be much more difficult than you are capable of taking over and will need to return to later
• The option of stealth vs "hell in a cell" as an offence.
• The angle and animations look very similar
• The gathering of resources is totally optional but can be a big part of the game if you want it to be

Of course the two games were made by different studios but at least in my mind it seems just apparent that the games have a lot in common. If I am in fact correct, Bend Studios (the makers of Days Gone) must have not copied any code from Projekt Red (The makes of Witcher 3) because there would be a lawsuit otherwise.

Anyway, it's just my opinion: The games look and feel very similar except your "metal horse" in Days Gone in fact will run out of gasoline.

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Days Gone is a fantastic game and so far the story is something that is really engaging as well. We are not told why the world is the way it is at first, but pieces of the puzzle are introduced to us as the game goes on. Night and day and even weather plays a big part in how difficult certain parts of the game are (obviously a clear sunny day is easier to navigate than a stormy night) and the behavior of the enemies both human and zombacious are altered quite a lot depending on both of these things. This is a nice touch that a lot of games skip. Also, your bike handles poorly in certain terrain and as a motorcycle rider, I appreciate this attention to detail.

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There are quite a few people out there that have accused the game of being "repetitive" and I'll go ahead and say that I agree with this idea. However, let's put our thinking caps on and try to imagine how they could have possibly avoided this? You are in a zombie wasteland with various factions of humans vying for power rather than working together. How many possible scenarios can you imagine? How can they possibly mix it up any more than they do? Sure, your objectives are almost always to infiltrate a certain camp or to rescue someone, but in all honesty, what else could you possibly be tasked with doing? This isn't Minecraft after all.

I am about 15 hours into the game and only play it for a few hours at a time because yes, it does seem to repeat itself a lot. However, this is not tedious but more realistic about how shit would really be if you were actually in this situation and honestly, if we are going to be so critical about this game being "repetitive" then we can go ahead and say that all open-world RPG's are also repetitive.

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When I get a game for free, it is a lot easier for me to put it down and stop playing it but Days Gone is one of those games that uses almost all of the buttons so doing so would mean I would have to go back to square one and re-learn all of them, so this would be a bad idea that would likely result in me simply not playing it anymore.

If you are one of the people that starts to feel the lull of the game's somewhat repetitive nature know that this is a recurring theme among players of the game and everyone seems to be in agreement that everything changes once you hit level 15. I have a LONG way to go in order to get to that point but before I give up on it I am going to make it at least that far.

For now, I am going to stick with it and see what happens because at the end of the day the repetitive nature of the game is largely up to you. You don't HAVE to do the missions in the order they are given to you, so it starts to seem like an endless loop, why not just go for a wander and see if you find anything? What's the worst that could happen?