In one of the best Russian comedies of our time, the question was asked: “I wonder how I could have understood that this is a great art if you had not warned me about it?” Well, it’s impossible to understand why Days Gone had exclusive status from F95zone if you don’t know about it in advance.
Over the past two years, this game has become the first dark horse of an extra-large size, a product that cannot be called either trash or a masterpiece.
This is a parade of compromises and a hotbed of contrasts, in the cramped little house of which a mediocre production in the style of the television series “Street of Broken Lanterns” and non-trivial dramatic scenes, almost on the level of The Last of Us, coexist.
Here adrenaline-filled action coexists with sleepy story-pacing: on one side of the scales, exciting survival in battles with hordes of enemies, and on the other – monotonous motorcycle races from point to point without worthy motivation and purpose.
This is a cover of all genre zombie survival games. There are few original ideas in the game, but those that are – give a reason to love the story, which, by some accident, was under the pressure of the ” PlayStation exclusive” label.
The first thing to blame is the beginning. It is without intrigue, experience, without reason to continue and delve into what is happening – this is an example of an illiterate game design.
The player begins an odyssey in a world that has been swallowed by a pandemic: communications are destroyed, roads are overgrown with grass, new series of “Game of Thrones” are not released, most of the planet’s population has died or turned into freaks – these are local zombies, only the creators of the game do not call them that, because according to the developers – zombies are dead, and their freaks are alive.
In its current form, this world is exchanging its last days, and the few survivors are divided into social castes: there are hunters, farmers, stalkers, bikers, and ordinary people who are going to raise the fallen order of humanity from its torn knees.
To do this, you need, firstly, to get rid of all the freaks, and secondly, to cleanse the cities and fix communications. This is what the protagonist of the game, Deacon St. John, is doing.
If it suddenly seems to you that the protagonist Deacon is the most ordinary-looking, uncharismatic, and uninteresting character in modern video games, then you can congratulate your ophthalmologist: your vision is perfectly sharp, it didn’t seem to you.
Long loading screens between scenes, indistinct dialogues and poor emotions, an amorphous introduction, and a stifling first hour of the game give the impression of the sheer hack, the loudest failure of the season, or, more simply, an unnecessary game like the sequel to the State of Decay. , and this is also the merit of stupid game design.
It is on him that you need to spend half of the time to understand: HuniePop 2game is not boring, it’s just too serious.
This word “too” worked well in The Last of Us and Red Dead Redemption 2, but here is a case of a dangerous balance between dull obscenity and small-town arthouse, which to understand – you first need to bite out, chew thoroughly, swallow, and only then ask for supplements.
At the beginning of the journey, you will hardly believe that the two wheels of the protagonist’s bike will one day come to family drama, social philosophy, religious conflicts, and the problems of mortal existence – all this is in the game, but it is not revealed to the players from the doorway, entertaining an aperitif in the style of Dead Rising.
The creators of Days Gone from Bend Studio, a subsidiary of Sony, have distinguished themselves in almost 20 years of work with only two significant events – the development of the Siphon Filter in 1999 and the creation of the portable Uncharted: Golden Abyss in 2011.
Of course, this is not a reason to call the novelty about the zombie apocalypse a game with a complex creative destiny, and therefore the developers took the path of least resistance, safely mixing 100% working things into the project:
Taking care of the settlement, finding new residents and collecting ingredients like in State of Decay; weapon crafting and crowds of enemies like in Dead Rising; Fallout afterlife ideology- there are sects, underground bunkers, and even a radio like in the Wasteland; but the main gluing material was the gloomy mood as in The Last of Us. Stir, shake, add crushed ice – get the result.
Perhaps this is the main charm of Days Gone: this is life after single-coil video games when at the head of the story is the generation of some random moments that will be unique for each player in their own way.
This is life after we all switched from five-hour corridor shooters to thirty-hour open-world action games with quests and pumping like in multiplayer role-playing games.
Conclusion:
Finally, this is life after Red Dead Redemption 2, which proved that today’s games can be played throughout the year, that everyday things are more important than drama, and that the measured pace of the game is not aimed at fast-food lovers.
