Days Gone

Played a little (like first story mission) in 2020 then dropped it for other stuff. Think I posted about this but couldn't find it.

Started again and quite liking it. It's an open world 'zombie' game. The zombies are more like mutants. They can run and climb. There are human enemies too. Newts are creepy kid mutants that behave like monkeys. They run from you unless you are low on health or if you go after them and invade their space. I saw wolves attacking people too.

I'm still learning the mechanics. The melee attacks can be canceled into dodge roll. If you dodge roll into an enemy it causes hitstun too. Melee weapons you find break, but your knife doesn't. It's much weaker though.

Guns work as you'd expect in a third person shooter. You can find or but mufflers for makeshift silencer for the handgun.

There are stealth kills, crouch walking for less noise, and bushes to hide in.

The bike makes noise but you can idle down slopes which also saves gas.
You can drift and shoot while riding.

There are the usual skill trees based on ranged, stealth, melee, and resources.
Pretty much the same as Horizon.

Super open but I've come across some creepy areas like a mass grave and these mobile lab set ups where you find audio files on what happened.

There are human camps with shops and sidequests.

Will post more later. Still in early stages with no skills.

While I avoid melee where I can, it's actually good in this. Right now my combo is 3 but you can upgrade it to have more hits. Zombies take hitstun on each strike but if you keep up pressure they lean back and dodge then come back with a hit. Kind of similar to The Evil Within.

Melee weapons have different levels of strength and other stats. I really like the machete. Drops them in three hits.
Got an upgrade that lets you use scrap to repair weapons.

Fought some kind of super wolf that chased me on the bike, and a mutant bear. They don't like fire. Molotovs are good for them.

Most interesting is the crossbow. Using it is hard due to arrow trajectory. You need to aim higher to make it fly further.
The interesting thing is the poison bolts. These make enemies attack each other. I've only used them on humans so far. Sometimes one guy can take out 3-4 others before getting killed. Lasts a long time and they die from it eventually.

Only problem is so far the material used to craft them is only found in nests. I save them for human camps.

The map is huge. You can fast travel to places you've been but it takes a huge chunk of gas. Once fully upgraded it probably won't matter like in Mad Max.

If you can get past the open world, people who likes the open part of TEW2 might like this game to a degree. I've been through a few small town areas and they really reminded me of the TEW2 ones.

There are hordes. Huge swarms that come at you all at once. Pretty terrifying. You'd have to come back later with better gear and lots of bombs.

There are a few settings.

Easy
Normal
Hard
Hard 2
Survival
Survival 2

Survival ones sounds absolutely nasty.
https://gamersdecide.com/articles/days-gone-best-difficulty

Got to a new region. This is definitely 'bad' open world.

Like Horizon, if you dropped me at any random location I'd have no idea where I was because everything looks the same.

There are houses and small towns that are decent as I mentioned early but they're just abandoned buildings and stores with zombies lurking around.  

You get exp from kills, but it's very small. Reminds me of The Witcher 3 where the main bulk is from quests. Same here.

You can collect plants and kill animals for meat but this is just to sell to the camp kitchens for trust and credits so you can buy guns. There's no cool stuff to find in the world. Just crafting supplies and ammo.

The repeating aspects are bandit camps and Nero checkpoints. Nero appears to be some kind of containment organization. At these checkpoints you have to open their units but restoring power. You do this buy putting gas in the generator. Now I'm finding ones that require a fuse but it's always nearby. You should climb to the roofs first to disable the speakers otherwise they start blasting emergency orders which draws groups of zombies.

I couldn't navigate this world without the map and GPS if I wanted to. It's an endless mash of roads, dirt trails, forests and mountains.

There are forced walking segments. Some forced riding too.
But most of the time you're out alone doing missions.

The poison arrows are so good on humans.

Human AI for melee types is as stupid as it gets. They just run straight at you. Even after you blow two of their friends away the last one standing just keeps running towards you.

The hordes are pretty terrifying. I found a few and some are massive. Some seem to roam around.

I was about to attack a camp. Had about 8 people. As I rode past some woman took a shot and it alerted a horde I didn't see over some rise. It took out everyone there while I watched from a cliff.

Gunfights can often draw other enemies in.

There's no point stopping to pick up plants or kill zombies unless you have to. They aren't worth enough.
So most of it is just riding from place to place. Just following roads.

There's not a billion collectibles littering the map. The only thing is historical markers. But end of the day they're still dumb and still placed in such a way to make you ride to the middle of nowhere.

The side quests are just repeating now. Hunt this guy, get these parts, take down this bandit camp. The story main story missions are better.

I hate how fast travel dumps you outside a camp so you have to ride up to it, wait for them to open the gate. It should put you in the middle of the shops.

I don't know if I could play this again on harder modes.

I didn't like the combat in Elden Ring but it's world was great in that I'd always be able to identify the regions I'd visited before. In open games like Days Gone and Horizon, everything looks the same.

I can't believe. The story took me to a new region with two more camps. And worse, my trust and credits are at zero with these.

Upside is more scary and tougher enemies are more commons. Breakers are like Hulk, and they attack anything except other Breakers. Screamers are these white haired female mutants that can draw attention. There are more Ragers (infected bears) and Runners (infected wolves that can keep up with the bike). Seen some kind of big cat that wasn't infected. Not sure what it was. Mountain lion? Also crows.

Downside is the big stuff takes too much resources to take down. The exp isn't worth it when story/side missions offer so much. They don't drop anything either except ears which you turn in for credits but it's just so little. Got some stronger rapid fire guns that I haven't tested on big stuff yet.

Got some new crafting recipes. One is for fire arrows which makes the crossbow much more useful. Drops normals and Screamers instantly at least on Normal. That's the one motivation to take down enemy camps. Exp and new crafting recipes.

Beat the main story last night.

Going to do the side stories and take down all the hordes then I'll make a post with my overall thoughts.

Done everything in the main game.

Won't be bothering with harder modes due to open world fatigue, and removal of fast travel.

Challenge modes have a separate upgrade and equipment system you need to grind. Not fun. Decent main game though.

The good:
*Crossbow bolt variation. Confuse, poison, fire, explosive.

Confused makes them attack allies.
Poison is an instant kill.
Fire deals damage over time, weakens freakers and infected animals.
Explosion is just that. Like throwing a grenade.

*Decent attempt at hit reactions. Dodge rolling causes hitstun on most enemy types.
Throwing a rock to stun and stealth kill like TEW's bottles. Smoke bombs cause coughing and break line of sight.

*Melee is good. Especially once you get the skill to repair weapons with scrap. Melee can be canceled out of with a dodge roll.

*The bike controls really well.

*The small towns and areas are OK.

*I liked the characters.

*Hordes are fun and scary.

*Lots of guns and tools.

*Enemies interact. Wolves attack freakers, the big type attack anything, and sometimes gunshots can alert nearby freakers who will attack human enemies. I was once on the outskirts of a camp and a sniper took a shot. This alerted a nearby horde that swept through the camp.


The bad or average:

*Open world sucks.

*Riding bike gets tiresome and you'll want to fast travel any chance you get.

*Story includes a fair bit of forced walking and riding. Flashback scenes are awful for this.

*A lot of 'bandit camps'.

*Bike chase fights not fun.

*Hardest mode removes fast travel.

*In each region is a camp and your credits get reset.

*Sidequests like bounty hunts get repetitive.

*Pointless collectibles existing only as a means to force you to go around the huge map.

*Challenge modes have their own upgrade system rather than load outs. Removes abilities to make you buy them back with points.


Overall, I would recommend this to anyone who likes action horror even though it's open world. If you can find it cheap it might be worth a try.

Decided to play through Survival 2, the highest difficulty, on NG+.

Not hard at all with all my guns and skills. The lack of fast travel is a real drag but not feeling any stress due to my gas tank already being fully upgraded. Will see how the late game and hordes go.

Done. Can't stand it anymore.

Lack of fast travel is mind numbing. Survival 2 changes nothing but enemy health and damage.

Been playing this because of the topic, shockingly enjoyable so far. Weapon loadout and stuff is pretty good, but I find the bike and elements around it most interesting. Going from point A to B isn't just mindlessly driving, I actually have to watch gas, make sure I have scrap for if I take damage, not wander off of it too far when I'm burning nests, etc. Really weird to see survival elements like this in a big AAA game.

Those are the good points, yes.

Later these elements largely vanish the more you upgrade bike and skills. Mad Max was the same.

Even driving everywhere on Survival 2 I didn't have any trouble with gas though that was NG+. You'll find it in the same places. Nero checkpoints, towing trucks, enemy camps, towns.

Getting pretty bored. I think I’m about halfway through and this is just dragging now. Encounters are all kind of playing out the same, combat isn’t much more than just “point at head and shoot”. The hordes are the coolest parts but I’ve only seen a handful.

Also the constant “okay go here, and now listen to people talk, okay go here, now do this menial task, now go here and listen to more talking” is just grating. Nobody ever stops talking and all the objectives and side stuff suck.

There’s quite a lot of guns…too bad most of them have no differences aside from some stats on a sliding scale. There isn’t as much to the melee as I was expecting either.

Also fuck those tracking and Nero missions.

There are two story hordes you have to fight I think. After beating the main story they'll all show up on your map. All the optional ones were much smaller than the story ones though I read on Survival they're larger. You also get the option to reset them.

The rest is pretty much how I felt. It drags on and on.

>about halfway
Where exactly?

Ended up dropping this. Got so tired of “follow GPS, watch cutscene, follow GPS to basic encounter” for hours on end. Also you can’t go 20 seconds in this game without someone starting a conversation over the radio. Just shut the fuck up already!

>where exactly
I don’t think I was even halfway I did the part where you blow up a dam and flood a camp or something.

There's another huge region after that. Worst one too. I actually thought the dam was near the end.