Days Gone: PS4 Review

Days Gone: PS4 Review

Developed by Bend Studio
Platform: PS4

Days Gone is the big hope for new IP for 2019.

But in truth, a lot of what the game does has been done before, and what emerges in the final wash, is a game that somehow lacks its own USP, despite looking mightily impressive and using a dynamic weather system to gaming advantage.

However, there are moments of open world survival game Days Gone where the mash up of Last Of Us survival and stealth, Walking Dead style zombies and camp complications, Sons of Anarchy bromance of the lead and his best mate and Far Cry series of camps and missions actually feels like it gels into something cohesive - even if it does fully lack some of the emotional heft of the great singleplayer PlayStation titles.

Beginning with the protagonist, Deacon St John, the game starts two years before you begin, showing how society began to crumble as a mysterious infection swept through America.

St John's beau, Sarah, is stabbed by accident, and his co-gang rider Boozer is seriously injured, leaving Deeks to make an awful choice - and one that haunts him in the two years when we rejoin the game. Most of the game is about finding a reason, a reason to survive, a reason to continue and a reason to hope.

Still riding around the wilds of the Northwest, this outlaw is a loner, spending days scavenging scrap avoiding the Freakers (a zombie-style nasty) and what's left of the dregs of humanity (the human animalistic Rippers, roaming marauders and those in charge of running various safe houses).

But Deacon finds himself smack bang in the middle of humanity's best and worst again as he discovers not everything he thought he knew was true.

While Days Gone stumbles through its opening chapters, with some truly awful dialogue (chiefly between Deacon and his biker buddy Boozer and sounding like Kiefer Sutherland rejected them from episodes of 24) and interactions, some implausibly long loading screens, there are moments when the game manages to rise above its shakier edges, long loading screens and the repetitive nature of the fetch and retrieve missions.

Aside from the weapons and crafting, the Red Dead Redemption style need to ensure your bike's always in top notch form and fuelled up, the Last Of Us options to customise melee weapons and your own bike, and the back and forth between camps, the game's internal logic cannot be faulted.

Amid the all-too-familiar conspiracy which emerges, and the inevitable tropes of the research facilities which lie scattered around the world, the Freakers are a truly terrifying enemy, something akin to perhaps some of the greatest zombies committed to a game.

Singularly, they can be dispatched with melee combat - but as a group, they're nigh on undefeatable.

Several missions see you needing to infiltrate research facilities to access various health benefits - but as these have lain dormant and unpowered for the 730-plus days since the outbreak, it's up to you to find the resources to get into them.

But giving them power fires up the automated messages which blare out from speakers and across the countryside, attracting more creatures and limiting your chances of survival. In one such mission, I neglected to turn off a speaker and thinking nothing of it, having got what I needed, I ran. But driving through later on, the sound had attracted an utterly insurmountable horde that could not be defeated - this is a world that carries on even if you're nowhere around.

With the Mad Max style Ripper gang waiting to pick you off, there's a great deal of uncertainty in the countryside, and with a soundtrack that ripples with unease, the mood created by Bend Studio is palpable.

The game looks great, and the handling of the biking is solid too, which is a plus, given how much time you spend on the road.

Littered with flashbacks, Days Gone finds its emotional core, but to be frank, it's weaker when compared to the litany of what's already passed in terms of gaming narratives. Occasionally, the review build stuttered with the scope of what the open world was trying to present, and has frozen, but hopefully early patches should remove the niggles here and there.

Ultimately, Days Gone is a solid PlayStation exclusive, that sadly, despite all of its efforts and outside of the biker element, struggles to find its own voice.

It's not the best the platform's ever had, but it's not the worst either. It does recall large swathes of The Last Of Us, and it is perhaps a pity that it never fully emerges with a strong independent voice of its own - no matter how beautiful it looks.

It does, however, muddy the waters of survivalist games a little, making every side you encounter feeling like they have something to hide - and if the familiarity comes because of a genre which is crowded, Days Gone is a worthy contribution to the pantheon.

However good it looks, you can't help but wish it had a stronger voice to shout above the crowded genre marketplace it's been launched into.