Days Gone

A wonderful narrative-driven open-world adventure with survival elements. I highly recommend it, especially if you're into motorcycles.

Is the story groundbreaking? No, but it's well crafted, and has good writing and sometimes terrific voice acting. Is the gameplay innovative? No, we've seen upgradeable vehicles before, and range-plus-melee-plus-stealth is what all games of this type do, but it's done well in Days Gone and can keep you on your toes, even at normal difficulty. Is it diverse? Well, mission types do repeat themselves, but I found each iteration to offer uniquely emergent gameplay situations. It was only in the late game that I felt I had enough, so maybe the game is just a bit too long. Is it beautiful? You betcha! Riding across Oregon in 4K HDR is breathtaking, and the landscape and its structures are well detailed and convincing.

So, why does this game get lukewarm reviews? I think critics are just jaded. Perhaps there are just too many games similar to Days Gone and they are fatigued. It also seems that some reviewers don't like the characters and story, though I did. In any case, don't let the cynics infect your brain and don't skip Days Gone. I'm confident it will stand the test of time and be remembered as a classic.

That said, let me highlight a few issues.

First, the save system is really janky. You can only save in very specific situations, but frustratingly the "save" option is available even when you can't save. What a baffling design decision! Also, though the game auto-saves frequently enough, the save doesn't include the checkpoints in a mission. So if you quit the game or load your save it will send you way back to the beginning of the mission. The bottom line is that you should expect to have to repeat some sections.

Another potential point of frustration is a leap in difficulty towards the late game. Suddenly you have a new kind of battle for which you may be ill prepared. I enjoy a good challenge, but I felt they went a bit too far with this one and had way too many of them. Do yourself a favor and watch some videos of people playing through these, or else get ready for a lot of frustrating trial and error. Spoiler: it took me 10 long tries to defeat the Chemult Horde!

Finally, though the game only ever crashed on me once and offered smooth FPS once optimized, it does have bugs. There were missions in which an event would not be triggered. There are workarounds, but it's annoying. And a few times I saw objects or animals catapult into the air with weird physics. For me none of these bugs was too serious and I was able to take them in stride.

And now I can't wait for Days Gone 2!