 |
| What do you mean "They're behind you!" this ain't no panto! |
It took me a long time to "get" this game. By "get" I mean "understand, appreciate, embrace" as I actually bought it fairly close to launch. I love anything post-apocalyptic in nature (which probably says a lot about me in general) but on paper this felt more akin to Red Dead Redemption in scale and strategy, only swapping a grumpy nadgery horse for an equally grumpy and nadgery motorcycle.
Deacon St John, the protagonist of the game, is a world-weary biker living in "the shit" with his biker bro Boozer. A cataclysmic chain of events has plunged the world into chaos (mmm, sounds familiar) only it's not a nasty little virus polishing off the last of humanity, it's our old pal the zombie.
If you've never seen, heard of or played this game you're probably muttering under your breath about the sheer number of other zombie games out there. Zombies are to neck-beard gamers what unicorns are to 8 year old girls. They're bloody everywhere and you'd think everyone would be sick to death of them by now.
Deacon is on a mission to find out more about his wife's disappearance. Sarah was last seen being bundled onto a helicopter by a shadowy organisation known as NERO, tasked with trying to understand and clean up the zombie menace.
Soon enough the world has slid into chaos, and lone biker drifters mooch around the landscape scraping out a living hunting bounties, killing zombies or (more likely) defending themselves against human aggressors.
So, again, why did it take me so long to get this game?
Probably because I hadn't appreciated its sheer scale and length af first. It felt for a long time like every mission undertaken by St John was repetitive and boring, the storyline felt so cliched and hackneyed that it didn't help me engage with the characters or their plight.
Then I saw my first horde.
 |
| Oh shit! |
There are very few "oh shit, oh shit, OH SHIT" moments in videogaming. When you get to my age and you've been playing games almost from the very start, you think you've seen it all but nothing quite prepares you for the first time you see a horde in Days Gone. Bend Studios did a brilliant job on the art direction and scenery in this game, their character designs are great but their engine tech for the worldbuilding within this tasty zombie-filled treat is one thing, the way they manage to render SO MANY DAMNED ZOMBIES on screen at the same time as a truly chaotic seething gnashing brain-scoffing mass really does take your breath away. Right up to the moment when you realise the bloody things are heading for you in double-quick time and all you've got left is half a clip of machine gun ammo, no throwables, and no medkits (and, like most bikers I'd imagine, St John manages to run for a couple of yards before he's out of puff. Where did you leave your bike again?)
Later on in the game you start to get cocky. You see the hordes are a persistent state, meaning that they don't reset every time you kill a few stragglers - so you can play the long game of chipping away at the buggers, bombing them with napalm molotovs, running like fun to get the hell out of there, then coming back a bit later (perhaps after dark when they're strangel mollified) and having another go at them.
I cleared my first horde purely by fluke, armed to the teeth with just about everything I could lay my hands on, first chipping away at them from a distance with a sniper rifle before going gung-ho and blowing up a ton of oil canisters and tanker trucks to take out more of the massing zombs. After that it was like kiss chase, the deadliest game of kiss chase ever as I egged them into chasing me, rode my bike around and ran as many down as I could kill before retiring and doing the whole thing over and over again fluking it right at the end by setting up a pinch point between two trucks which the twerps couldn't help but run through thanks to a well placed distractor.
Wow, strategic eh? I am describing it in far more grand a fashion than how it actually played out. Most of the time I escaped by the skin of my teeth.
 |
| Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! |
Again, hats off to Bend Studios for making that two hour horde kill one of the sweatiest, most intense gaming moments in recent history.
The thing is, there was nearly a two year gap between me getting the game and finishing it - only to find thanks to my good buddy Whizzo (the bugger who convinced me to buy this game in the first place after a lot of eulogising about it on Twitter - I need to unfollow that guy, he's bad for my wallet!) that I hadn't finished it at all, and despite the 'riding off into the sunset' moment that I thought polished off the game finally, and that final trophy and Deacon St John avatar dutifully emailed to me by Sony all those years after my initial purchase that I'd missed the "hidden" ending of the game.
I won't spoil it, suffice to say that A) it is one of the most "What the FUCK" moments in gaming (echoed by St John saying exactly that during the scene!) and B) Sets things up beautifully for a sequel.
If that sequel ends up on the PS5, it might be the one game I buy Sony's shiny weird looking new console for, because if Bend Studios can wring something this amazing (tech-wise) out of a PS4, I truly can't wait to see what they do with the PS5.
Even after completing it PROPERLY I'm still playing it. I can't quite put my finger on why I feel I need to "100%" this sucker. There's something addictive about tackling those hordes, killing off those scavenger camps, or (in most gameplay sessions recently) just cruising around the beautiful ruined landscapes, wondering when I'll next find myself in close proximity to the Canadian or North American great forests, soaking up that amazing atmosphere. Thankfully without any danger of being eaten in my sleep (I hope!)
Comments
Post a Comment